Drop Outs Discussion

I don’t really understand how starting an Apple Music song takes 15-30 seconds to start playing in most zones.  Why is this happening?  When I don’t rely heavily on Orbi to handle bulk traffic effortlessly and quickly, the system is basically unusable.  But then HDMI sources stream in realtime to all zones pretty well.  How is a 1MB buffer of a lossy music file harder to stream than realtime audio in 60ms?

Your options 2 and 3 still depend on some of your Orbi devices. This is not “the standard expected setup”. Expected set up on Sonosnet means all devices (apart from the wifi only ones) are wirelessly connected to the speaker that starts Sonosnet. Thsi speaker should be conected to the Base Orbi. 

#3 is exactly that.  One device (Beam) plugged into my router with Ethernet.  Nothing else plugged in.  I don’t understand how this is acceptable.  Should I make a video showing I have it set that way?  The wired zone starts right away and the rest take 10-45 seconds to start emitting audio.  Worse yet a couple of zones play the first second or two and then silence for 30 seconds.

My challenge is that doing the standard setup -- which I got setup with tech support -- is laughably unusable.  Do I have some kind of wireless interference?  That’s always the “cause” and hence why I always have ended up back to relying heavily on Orbi.  If Orbi had a way to ignore any connected devices and prioritize its own backhaul like a physical abstraction layer then it’d be perfect.  It just somehow lets packets go to Sonos that shouldn’t go to them.  Sonos should be on a VLAN and all of these issues would go away.

Ok for serious -- I just set it up 100% exactly as I am supposed to.  Beam is plugged into my router with an Ethernet cable and every other speaker is disconnected with wifi on.  I tried all 3 channels, with 20/40 and 20mhz on my home wifi.  It just doesn’t work on all of my 9 zones, spanning only 18 Sonos nodes.  3 are movable (BT compatible) and off right now.  How many zones does Sonos support simultaneously 100% over SonosNet?  How can I diagnose what is wrong?  Every single connection point box in the status page is green.  The lowest number I see in or out is 45.  My physical layout is so simple that every device is connecting to the beam directly with no additional hops.

My Beam is a secondary node with everything else being a tertiary node.  Is this how it should be?  Will only a Boost be a Root Node?

Whenever I start plugging devices into my Orbi’s with wifi off, the system works much better, but some devices vanish randomly depending on where I am at home so I’m guessing some requests are getting sent but dropped.  Might also have to do with my surrounds/sub being plugged into a headless switch.  Tomorrow I may try all that I have (keeping wifi on everywhere) and then just adding ethernet cables on top of everything as-is to see if that shows any improvement.  If I could see all 9 zones working flawlessly (hearing the first chord of songs, fast adjustments/seeking, and 99%+ no drop outs) I would have a lot more confidence.  I don’t think there is much wireless interference around me because few people use the internet that much.  I do genuinely need some support on if I’m trying to do something physically unsupported or is something just wrong?  I keep expanding my system but maybe I’ve just gone too far and need to return everything still within the window.  Getting to span 2 or 3 zones is handy but not really good enough.

For extra interested readers/smart people: can someone explain what a Sonos speaker does when it’s plugged in via Ethernet to a mesh satellite (AC3000 Orbi Satellite)?  Is it actually connecting as that device/IP address?  Or is it virtualizing itself to get to the Root Node?  I ask because I see MAC addresses that are 1 character position off so I’m guessing there is a different MAC address for wireless and wired BUT I only ever see the primary one in my router table.  So the secondary one must be for Sonos internally?  The issue that I will have is that randomly some devices will just appear or vanish, depending on the Orbi I’m connected to (making this guess based on walking to the other side of my home will make them re-appear).  What is the logic here?  It’s unfortunate that the Orbi backhaul cannot 100% replicate/mimic a hardwired connection so nothing is different.  Clearly something is different and there is a prioritization stack (to non-Sonos) traffic that leads to devices vanishing or requests getting dropped.  Just trying to get a more fundamental understanding of the behavior so I can try to troubleshoot and devise a complete solution.  I have still yet to identify any solution to my system, be it exactly as Sonos intended, or the opposite of what was intended.  My system is just very unstable and useless beyond 2 or 3 zones.  It’s not okay, in my opinion, that it takes each speaker 30-60 seconds to sync up a lossy audio song and start playing continuously, and frankly that’s even best case scenario that rarely is able to happen with my 18 nodes.  I want my system rock solid with bandwidth and capacity to grow as my whims desire.

Has anyone bought 32 Sonos Ones and put them in a room out in the middle of the desert/nowhere to see if they play flawlessly over SonosNet?

Is your primary Orbi hub currently acting as a router, or are all your Orbi Hubs bridged (in AP mode)? If one is acting as your router, then switch it and try the Orbi setup in AP mode instead, ideally with some or all hubs wired back to your main router (with its own WiFi adapters switched off) .. then try running your Sonos products on the Orbi WiFi signal instead of SonosNet and see if that perhaps may work better for you. That’s how I run my own 31 node system using Plume WiFi-5 mesh and it works well for me. Three out of four of my Plume Hubs hang off 16 port unmanaged switches, which are each wired back to the main router and are located front/middle/rear of premises and cover two floors. 

I am able to switch all over to SonosNet by wiring either a Boost or a Sonos Port to the main router and if I do that I also cable my Arc and two Beams to their nearest wired switch too and that works fine aswell, but for some reason I have two One (gen-1’s) in a remote location that don’t always work well when on SonosNet, as they try to connect direct to the root bridge (port/boost) when internal doors are open, but then may struggle when doors are closed with people milling about between rooms - so I currently prefer the system running on the plume WiFi signal.

So that’s perhaps a suggestion for you to consider, if your home setup perhaps allows for such a configuration.

I presume you've been round the house with a WiFi Analyser to check for interference?.

Apparently Microwaves are bad for 2.4ghz interference I've read?.

I only have 7 devices but they work perfectly on SonosNet.

I've tried to put everything we can on 5ghz and leave the 2.4ghs for Sonos and our Arlo cameras.

If you are on S2 my be worth trying WiFi only on 5ghz, no Sonos wired direct to a hub/ switch/ router?.

Seems hard work getting Sonos to coexist with mesh networks.

Hi. I haven't read all of this thread, but one phrase from the OP caught my eye.; "with WiFi off". Have you set any of your speakers to "Disable Wifi". If you have, please tick "Enable Wi-Fi ". Otherwise you could be totally sabotaging your system