Drop Outs Discussion

Unfortunately you’d have to do all this background reading to grasp the full gory saga:

My Orbi’s are all setup as one unit (Base + 4 satellites) and all are in AP Mode with DHCP disabled.  Routing/DHCP are handled by a Synology Mesh Router (with its wifi disabled).  Yes, I have a separate modem, router/DHCP, WiFi AP.  Each does one task only.

What device can I buy to check interference.  I’d hope you all give me more credit than that, I’m not running my microwave while I’m testing.  Plus, nothing else is happening on my network.  My security cameras are all handled by Orbi’s 5GHz backhaul and very few devices even both to hit the 2.4GHz network.  What is so odd is that symptoms I continuously get are: HomeKit apple tvs go “No response,” my Hue lighting quits working, and requests just fail when I start setting things up some of my more complex ways.

So I’m trying to get back to basics and just confirm that the way Sonos intends this to be setup does not work.  I mean I’ve had Sonos since like 2016 and never has it worked as expected.  But it still seems like the best networked speakers.  I just settled for 2 or 3 zones simultaneously and called it good.  Then I expanded my system more and decided that I wanted to try to solve the issues.

I still haven’t gotten an answer.  If I play a lossy audio file to 2 nodes, does it broadcast that 500Kb initial buffer data once?  What if I play it to 10?  What about 20?  Does it broadcast the 500Kb once or 20 times?  I had hoped that it was clever enough to have shared wireless certificates where each device could hear all traffic (like OTA broadcast TV) but given how the system crumbles I’m not so sure.  I don’t even bother trying to play my FLAC library.  I’m still perplexed how it’s so challenging to push 500Kb to a few nodes.  So I said it, tell me what I need to buy to diagnose this.  But also, has anyone put 32 Sonos Ones in a room and successfully played them where they sound like a wired system with zero drop outs, hearing the first chord, etc.?

Talk about your larger systems that are all wireless: if you search Apple Music and play Song 1, do you hear it start within 5 seconds, hear the first chord out of every speaker, and then no drop outs?  Right now I do hear the first chord out of most speakers, and within a few seconds nodes go silent.  After about a minute most will recover.  But WTF???  Am I asking for too much that 18 Sonos speakers all sound like wired systems?  It’s also important to me that they have fast/low latency connections because I would prefer the volume adjustments and any changes to tracks to all occur at the same time, that doesn’t seem true right now.  Even if it pre-shares the action and takes the action at some number of ms in the future, so they can all do it at once.  i.e. when I used to do AirPlay 2, it just bugs me to no end to hear a stereo pair change volume or start/stop at different moments.  This is what led me to running an Ethernet cable between a stereo pair.  For starters, is this even officially supported?  If not, why not?  Why can’t the first actually take over and just run the 2nd as a secondary, so your stereo can be/appear as a single node, thereby increasing node capacity?  I expected the adjustments to be closer to instant, but is it sending the data twice to that one speaker (if the 2nd has wifi off)?

These questions started coming up because it doesn’t perform like I want it to and so if I know more about how this all technically works I might be more able to accept concepts as not possible that I have been trying.  But then again, when I had it all implemented as I saw best, it does work great!  The rest of my network quits then and sometimes Sonos nodes just disappear.  I spent days diagnosing my Orbi system and getting an RMA back in like 2016 to which I later realized the issue was caused by Sonos.  Do I just need to get a managed switch for every one?  I just need Sonos on its own VLAN where it is protected traffic and can’t interact with anything else for any reason.

This forum stuff is all good, i spent years in the J. River forums from like 2003-2014 or so.  Brings me back.

So it’s not just a Sonos problem?
 

Are there forums for those other troublesome items, and have they been able to offer any advice? 
 

Will things work with your network set up in a less complex way?

Sonos is causing these problems.  My first question shows 3 configurations.  The ones that Sonos plays flawlessly lead to network instability.  Right now, about 50% of my network requests from my iPad fail because they travel down the Sonos network and die.  I just had to jump on my phone hot spot to even post this right now.  But if I do the SonosNet as suggested (one Ethernet device, everything else wireless) I can’t play an mp3 in more than ~3 zones at a time (I mean synced).  So just trying to find a solution that makes my 9 zones play flawlessly while not destroying my network.  That’s why I asked if managed switched might help because I could put sonos on is own VLAN so it can’t break everything else.

Does really nobody know if playing an mp3 to 2 or 10 zones sends the data twice or ten times?  Why is this such a difficult question?  If it sends the data 10 times, then it is no wonder why everything crumbles beyond a couple of zones.

My conclusion so far is that my system is too large to be run entirely on SonosNet — for whatever reason, yes I know there are larger systems out there.  The way that it will perform very well or exceptionally, is it several speakers are handled by Orbi’s 5GHz backhaul.  But that leads to network requests, at Orbi satellites, round robin getting sent to the attached Sonos speaker (instead over Orbi backhaul).  If wifi is on, the Sonos network slowly handles those requests and gets them to the router/internet.  If wifi is off, the requests get dropped.  No success or failure, just radio silence.  This is what leads to random instability where device requests just go silent.

When Sonos are all plugged into Ethernet where able, iMessages just don’t show messages for 10-120 seconds.  Web pages spin, loading loading loading.  Requests just stall, spin spin spin.  How is this a thing that can happen?  What is a way to prevent Sonos from breaking the network when you use what is there.  Can it be told to not handle non-Sonos anything ever?  No other devices should ever send any requests over its network.  Only its traffic and nothing else, ever, for any reason?

Why does Sonos accept network requests as if it has a way to fulfill them?

But audio *only in this configuration* plays as it should.  Everywhere, correctly, without dropouts.

Maybe this Sonos patent (link below), in regards to identifying a group coordinator for a group of networked playback devices, may help you to find some of the answers you are perhaps looking for…

https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2017/0192739.html

I don’t think the coordinator is the issue.  It always jumps to the best choice anyway, it’s really just a simple SonosNet setup that doesn’t work vs. plugging everything into Orbi, which makes audio play great but the rest of my network requests die.  I’ll read through that patent though.  Thanks!