Question

Best way to make stable groups

  • 14 August 2019
  • 69 replies
  • 7784 views

After years of resistance, I now have a TV in the patio dedicated to music videos, to be played there and streamed to other Sonos zones indoors. I am seeing the group break up often, even where all the concerned Sonos units have solid green signal strengths back to Boost.

Line is set to uncompressed; both compressed and the choosing the Airplay device trick does not seem to work; the latter does not fix the lip sync problem caused by the former.

The TV is connected to a Connect in the patio, which is used to initiate a group with the 2 other zones indoors, which are also closer to the Boost than the patio Connect. Often, and usually when I choose to change the video being played, these two drop while remaining as a group, leaving the patio Connect playing on its own. When I add the Connect back to these groups, play resumes on all three zones, and, I suspect, in a more stable manner.

Any ideas as to solutions? If I wanted to wire an ethernet cable from the Patio to the router what would I have to do - one end would go into the jack on the Connect, and the other back to the jack on the Boost? Would that solve the problem?

PS: The TV is connected from its audio analog line outs to the Connect Line in.

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69 replies

Uncompressed has a shallow 75ms buffer, to try and maintain lipsync. Compressed is a couple of seconds. 'Airplay Device' with Uncompressed uses a 500ms buffer. With Compressed it possibly adds another half second to the two secs.

If daisy-chaining the Connect off the Boost fixes things it suggests that either the Connect's WiFi card is not performing as well as the Boost (Boost is better tech anyway) or the unit is somehow in a less than favourable position.
The column on the left does not look nice; probably because the Firestick that supplies the TV via WiFi is, as it as to be, in the vicinity.
Ah, that might well be a factor. Have you tried the Firestick on 5GHz?

In any case, this becomes moot once the Connect is wired to the network - the Connect could be red and it would not matter where the group was limited to network wired speakers?

It wouldn't matter, and once wired I'd probably opt to disable the Connect's radio.
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Hi everyone, I figured I should jump in here too. I've been chatting with Kumar, as he indicated.

With grouped playback there are a couple terms I laid out for him that help understand the way Sonos music playback when grouped works. This is kind of the intense "magic" behind Sonos that most people don't need to worry about. So feel free to ignore. I'm going to try and trim down the definitions so they're a little easier to understand, so there are some specifics that are glossed over as it's not really needed. But if anyone's interested, here you go:

Some basic terms:
Root Bridge - the STP designated device which has the priority on the network as the main node. Layer 2 traffic is prioritized here and it's used for general network connections.
Group Coordinator (GC) - the Sonos speaker that is creating the group of speakers that you're playing audio to.
Group Member (GM) - other players that are part of a group, anything not the GC.
Direct Routing - player to player connections created automatically based on signal strength from one to the next. In the network matrix, anything connection with signals over about 25 dB will have an available direct routing connection.

Generally, audio is grabbed from the source by the GC and then transmitted to the GM(s) through the shortest available path via direct routing.

In Kumar's case, the GC accesses the Connect's line-in via direct routing (unless it's the Connect itself), and then it distributes it. For the Connect, this could be wirelessly to certain players if they aren't wired in and close enough.

As to the line-in compression setting, Automatic, generally the idea is that it switches between Uncompressed and Compressed as needed. There is a bit more nuance to it though. I'd recommend trying that out as a troubleshooting step.
Kumar,

I can only show a quick screenshot, but here I’m playing TV audio over (uncompressed) line-in via a Sonos Connect.

The stereo audio, from BBC News channel, is outputting to 8 Sonos Rooms over SonosNet (I have a Boost as my Root) .. The shown setup is not my entire Sonos system, but the line-in output consists of a total of 16 assorted Sonos speakers and I can assure you I’m not suffering any dropouts ... so you should not be having any dropout issues with your system. I’m not saying it would likely work in a party situation with bodies milling about the place, but it is working before I’ve even considered using the “AirPlay workaround” or switching to compressed audio.

I have a total of 61 connected wired and wireless devices linked to my Netgear router, but like most folk not all these devices are ever in use at the same time.. I just wanted to demonstrate to you that what you’re trying to achieve is certainly possible over SonosNet and probably over your WiFi too.
My permanent ethernet wire laying is done, with one hiccup when I wired a couple of connectors the wrong way because I held them facing the exact opposite direction of the correct one. But once that was corrected, and the Connect WiFi disabled, grouped play of wired units with the source being the line in on the Connect in uncompressed mode works flawlessly. As logic dictates it should.

However, the Connect Amp across the room from the root bridge still stutters when added to the group. Even though it has signal strength of 50 or so, and is therefore always green for signal strength. Ryan has the diagnostic and will revert to see if he sees anything there that points to a problem that can be solved. I will give it some time therefore, but I am losing hope that wireless grouped play of uncompressed line in sources can be flawless to the same extent that NAS sourced play can be, except in ideal conditions prevailing through out the session. And in parties, with people circulating in the open space, these will be extremely difficult to obtain.
Photos attached in support of PM conversation with Ryan.

In the play 1 photo, this is the root bridge wired to the apple router that can be seen. Next to the router is the black modem, and the white WD NAS. Adjacent to the router, on the floor, is the Sub, in a dust cover.
Both the play 1 and the Sub are usually green in the left boxes, but can sometimes go into yellow/orange, and even an occasional red.

The Connect photo is really of academic interest now, seeing that it will be wired to the router as well, via a switch - as of now, because the ports on the router suffice, there is no switch.



Question for members as well - why would the play 1 suffer noise issues as the matrix indicates from time to time? Ditto for the Sub.
Ryan seems to have given up; even after swapping some wired with unwired units, the uncompressed stream from the now permanently wired Connect will play without stuttering only with other wired units. At least this justifies my effort of wiring the key units I need for open space coverage with lip sync, though such sound in the far part of the open space would have been nice to have. Wirelessly because it is awkward to extend wires to there.

I suspect that the Sonos ability to wirelessly deliver uncompressed minimal buffer signals via 2.4GHz is not quite where it needs to be, not even where the Boost is the transmitter of such wired signals it gets from the Connect on which, by the way, WiFi is also disabled. All it takes is to rock the wireless boat just a little for things to go awry. When all units in the group are wired ones, grouped play is rock solid.

Which is probably the reason for the boiler plate response from Support that Connect - or even the new Port for that matter - isn't meant for streaming TV audio. Logically, even if the source to the Connect was a turntable, the exact same issues would be seen. But the compressed option for Line In can be used there with its large buffer AND smaller data needs, because lip sync isn't an issue here.
Question for members as well - why would the play 1 suffer noise issues as the matrix indicates from time to time? Ditto for the Sub.
A question I occasionally wrestle with, when I spot a flood of noise with no obvious cause. Presumably it's due to an external source of some kind.
Whatever it is, it is hard to trace. For the play 1 it hasn't been a problem until the streaming of uncompressed signals from the wired Connect onwards, to other wireless speakers in the same open plan area as the play 1. I can't see any other reason for stuttering in music play in these, using the signals from the source/group initiator, the wired Connect.

One of the two speakers in the group is another play 1 pair; that will be addressed via more wire, but the Living room Connect Amp stutter can't be solved this way, it is not easy to run a wire to it across the open space.
The TV audio is diverted to the Connect line in to also be able to use an amp+outdoor speakers for better sound in the Patio, and that part works fine, including autoplay; indeed, this also confirms to me that there is no issue with that part of the signal including the integrity of the Line In jacks on the Connect, the issue lies elsewhere in its propagation wirelessly to other Sonos speakers.
But even if the Patio Connect was to be a dumb device just for propagation to other Sonos speakers, the issue I am facing with those speakers stuttering would still exist, I reckon.
Kumar,

Just to try to assist you a little further, perhaps?

Here I played TV audio for 30 minutes, or so and then submitted a system diagnostic: 1287332135

I was playing the Connect line-in TV input to 12 Sonos speakers, contained in 6 Sonos rooms. I chose my speaker devices on the ground floor of my home to save me keep running up and down the stairs, so I could better monitor the playing rooms to try to ensure there were no apparent audio dropouts... I didn’t notice a single one, but please accept I can’t be in every room at the same time, but usually I can detect such dropouts by the shift in the audio stage, particularly when stood in my central Hallway area.

At the end of the test, I stopped the audio and submitted the mentioned diagnostic. I have included a couple of 'limited' screenshots too.

The audio test was with the line-in set to 'uncompressed'. The TV audio out is actually via my Sony TV HT Receiver, rather than from the TV itself, so not sure if that Receiver connection would make a difference? The reason I mention this is, as previously mentioned this Sony Receiver has a lip-sync facility that allows me to slow the TV audio output and I usually have that delay set to approx. ~40ms. This may therefore be a factor that helps the audio in my case (not sure?), but I don’t see why it would, unless the audio is compressed in some way by the Sony hardware?

Sony HT-AS5 manual: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/res/manuals/4166/41665721M.pdf

The Connect (media room) is wired to the network and was not included in the playing group, which were as follows:

Fireplace (2 wireless Play: 1’s)
Breakfast Bar (2 wireless Play: 1’s)
Dining Room (wired Beam HT + 2 Play:1 surrounds)
Family Room (2 wireless Play:5’s)
Hallway (wireless Sonos One)
Utility (2 wireless Play: 1’s)

The Connect source name is set to ‘audio component’ and the source level is set to level 8 (portable player, PC)

Note my network runs on SonosNet using a Boost, set somewhat central in the Home and is set well away from my central Netgear router.

FWIW, I will add that I do have a wireless 'repeater' Access point in my kitchen/utility area a TP Link RE360 that repeats the 2.4ghz and 5ghz radios.

The walls in my home are brick/breeze-block and plaster.

I’m not sure if any of that detail will assist you. I’ve only described what I consider to be the relevant parts of my home network here, but there are various switches and other components etc.
Waiting for Sonos support to respond, a thought came to me whether given the layout in the sketch, with a NAS wired to the router not shown there, would moving from Sonos net to Wifi be a solution? Does the WiFi have a better ability to carry the uncompressed data, seeing that all the places where it needs to go to in grouped play are in line of sight of the router?
Kumar,

Just to add i have made a mistake in my post above, the actual line-in to the Connect is in fact direct from my Sony TV RCA line-out connection and not from the attached receiver.. so that makes your issue even more baffling? So you can actually ignore my HT-AS5 Receiver, as it’s irrelevant.

Sorry for that 'schoolboy' error, but the line-in audio test still stands.
Ah that’s fine then Kumar, I wasn’t sure whether, or not, the 'Connect' was outputting audio to a Receiver at the same time.

Hope the cabling option solves the matter. I have seen it before where some folk have to use compressed audio and/or the AirPlay workaround for their setups, whilst others, like me, seem to get away with uncompressed and timely audio. It must be something to de with the network and signal, so cabling some things might prove to be the answer for you, hopefully.

Let me know how it goes.
Ken, first let me thank you for the enormous effort to help; much appreciated.

I think there are two things that largely explain your success:

  1. Effectively, your wired Dining room and Boost are receiving a wired signal of uncompressed audio from the TV. If those are then distributing it around to the other wireless units, that is a critical difference from a typical Sonos system that has a Boost wired to the router, and the uncompressed source fed unit wirelessly connected to it.
  2. The other reason, I suspect, is that the Beam is insulated from RF interference - does it not show green in the left most box for it in the Matrix? And ditto for the wired Boost.
The Sony box of tricks that does the delay adjustment is probably not doing any compression; I can only guess to that bit.

Again, many thanks!
Kumar,

I don’t see a problem at all with trying a WiFi connection here, the answer has to be 'try it and see'. The important thing seems to be having a degree of separation between your devices. I choose to recommend a distance of 4 feet, but it’s what is convenient for you.

I will just add that personally speaking, I tend to choose a SonosNet connection, as it’s 'exclusive' to Sonos devices and I much prefer that, in fact I tend to run my 'other' WiFi devices in the home mostly on the 5ghz band, where practicable, but not all my devices support that connection, the Harmony Hubs, for example, will only run on the 2.4ghz band.

SonosNet's exclusivity has proved to be less problematic in my case and I can easily run 'line-in' Sonos connections (uncompressed) to large speaker groups, with no dropouts, using that type of connection, whilst also watching streaming movies on TV and Surround Speakers over a 5ghz link, using an Apple TV device etc.
Yes, will do; I will first run a test with a patch cable before installing a permanent one properly, if the test goes well. I can't see any reason for there to be stuttering then as long as the source stream is glitch free, but the effort of a permanent wire install makes the test necessary.
Compressed is a no no - even for music videos, the consequent lip sync issues ruin the experience.
On installing the patch cable and disabling WiFi on Connect, I have the expected results, but I was hoping that a larger group will also play well; it does not.

Cut/paste from an email therefore sent to Support, if anyone here has any insights, without the access to the diagnostics information that only Sonos has now:

Quote:
Can you help me with at least some review of the diagnostics, if you can't do more for me? Because only you can do this now, with much information that we could see earlier, no longer there for us to see in the Matrix.

I have now wired the Connect to the same router to which the root bridge play 1 is wired. While the play 1 is now playing fine in a group with Connect, another wireless member of the same group, Living Room, is stuttering: Diagnostic 1269669520

What is wrong now? with the Connect WiFi also disabled, its "age" as you call it, should not be a factor.

Now I replaced the Living Room with the Dining room play 1 pair, and things seem to be ok: Diagnostic 315553685

What is different from the earlier case, that this group plays ok?

And then, with another speaker, Play 1, added to the aforesaid group, so that the group now has 4 members, and is playing ok: Diagnostic 982479128

Hopefully these specific questions for each diagnostic now being sent, will yield specific, and therefore more useful, answers.

Unquote
I am attaching a sketch of the layout and the Sonos unit locations to make things clear. Some comments on the layout:
  1. There is no door between the Patio Connect and the Boost, allowing a line of sight from about 16 feet between the two units.
  2. The Boost is placed next to a Play 1, on a table, with a bonded Sub on the floor adjacent. The router is on a smaller table, about 3 feet below the Boost.
  3. The Dining Play 1 pair, also with line of sight, is about 16 feet away.
  4. The Connect Amp at the other end of the Living room, at the top of the sketch, is line of sight, but about 24 feet away.
  5. Router on channel 1, and Sonos on 11.
  6. All units are in green tunnels in matrix.
No surprise therefore that for music played via NAS/Apple Music, there are zero issues, including in grouped play, regardless of which unit is the group lead. I have occasional issues in an adjacent bedroom on the other side of a brick wall that has a yellow tunnel, but all units in the sketched space always perform flawlessly.

Repeating the question in the first post, therefore, what are my options?

I can run an ethernet wire from the Patio Connect to the vicinity of the Boost with some effort, but what do I wire it to there? And will this address the problem of unstable group play at all, or will it mess up even what is working fine today where grouped play is used?

Any help will be much appreciated. The TV to Connect Line in works fine in the Patio, but extending the sound to the open plan adjacent seems to be a challenge. At a minimum, I would like to extend the sound to the single play 1 + Sub, grouped with the Connect; not having the Play 1 pair or the Connect Amp do this as well would be something I could live with.

SonosNet's exclusivity has proved to be less problematic in my case and I can easily run 'line-in' Sonos connections (uncompressed) to large speaker groups, with no dropouts, using that type of connection,
Good for you, and I am then surprised that the Sonos first response before seeing any diagnostics was that they are not confident of the capability of their products to do this beyond a limited group size, given the large bandwidth needed for the transfer of uncompressed line in.
Here is the reason for my question - I recently moved up from a 16 to a 40 Mbps broadband plan and found that in an adjacent bedroom where I was using an AEX as an access point, wired to a Connect Amp, the received speeds through the Sonosnet tunnel remained at 4-5 Mbps. When I reconfigured the AEX to work wirelessly with the router, this speed jumped to 10 Mbps, and even more, at times.
I guess "try it and see" is the thing to do, seeing that this is quite easy, if one follows the precise Sonos instructions to go back and forth between wired and wireless.
What I have noticed in the matrix is high noise levels on the Connect, which moves from yellow to orange boxes; I suppose this from the streaming stick which necessarily has to be in the vicinity.

I have sent Sonos Support a bunch of diagnostics as well.
Why bother with the Boost Kumar? .. did you ever perhaps try just using the Play:1 wired instead as the Sonos Household Root device.

If that doesn’t work I would maybe try more separation between the Boost and the Play:1. I tend to prefer 4 feet of space between devices, but that’s mostly a personal thing.

I assume there are no stored wifi credentials in Advanced Settings/Wireless Setup?

Have you tried simply swapping WiFi and SonosNet Channel to see if that makes a difference.
Good question, Ken. In fact I used the Play 1 as the wired device, as root bridge. Last summer I found it was running very hot even when silent, and the Boost was available and sitting in a desk drawer, so I moved the root bridge role to the Boost and conserve the play 1 and the system works fine just as before - except for this line in signal propagation to a group.

I will try what you suggest and move the 1 back to wired root bridge role, see how things go, and report.

Another curious symptom which puzzles me: I find that when the play 1+ Sub are playing in group with the line in driven Patio Connect, the sound levels from them seem to be a lot lower than at other times, including when they are playing as part of a group where the NAS is the wireless source. Why should that be the case? I thought digital wireless means on, stuttering, or off. If on, there should be no audible impact.

I keep thinking that the proximity of the streamer to the Connect is causing interference to the Connect and curtailing its ability to supply signals to the other units in the group and if this was so, I am not sure this will be addressed by your suggestions.
Why bother with the Boost Kumar? .. did you ever perhaps try just using the Play:1 wired instead as the Sonos Household Root device.

If that doesn’t work I would maybe try more separation between the Boost and the Play:1. I tend to prefer 4 feet of space between devices, but that’s mostly a personal thing.

I assume there are no stored wifi credentials in Advanced Settings/Wireless Setup?

Have you tried simply swapping WiFi and SonosNet Channel to see if that makes a difference.

Why bother with the Boost Kumar? ..
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