I have moved Boost and Office.

Boost now isn’t centrally located as it appears there is too much interference there…. Less reds which is surely good right?

Less red is certainly better, but the real test is not looking at the matrix, but listening to the system. Are you still having dropouts? Can you play all sources as desired? 

So far so good with streaming from local sources… no dropouts and 7 speakers playing at the same time. Only listening on 1 but testing the system out!

Lounge is as far away is it physically can be from any other wifi/bluetooth equipment now, shame that everything upstairs connects through this.

The boost is currently in a pretty remote location but this is a test and it could be moved upstairs possibly to the Guest Bedroom as I have a switch in there so that may improve things.

OFDM ANI level: 0 is best, 9 is worst. Noise floor in the -110 range is very good, -90 range is so so, mid -80’s can become problematic, somewhere in the mid to low -70’s the player will disappear from the wireless network.

Problems can be transient, such as the baby monitor or a microwave oven, There is a medical facility next door to me that can be a challenge at times. 

BOOST is simply a player with the audio stripped out. You can use another player as a test “Boost”, moving it around to test the effectiveness of adding another BOOST. Note that the players with a MAC Address beginning with “00:0E;58” use older radios that are not as effective as the newer units.

Update: Wire as many players as is practical.

I used to have a number of players wired in but believed this wasn’t the best practice, however I am now considering giving it another go.

When wired, with wireless disabled things were much happier but not perfect, however this was back when we had a baby monitor, so now that has gone, I may revert to some of them wired.

Dropouts are creeping back in, local and cloud audio. The matrix is below:

Nothing has changed physically inside, and I see no new wireless networks from neighbours.

I’ll wire some in over the coming days and see what happens, I will also move my boost again!

A couple of questions:

1. For ones that I wire, should I disable Wifi?
2. Should the boost be connected to my router (gateway) or the nearest switch to the router (lowest STP value) - or shouldn’t it matter too much? 

1. no.
2. it shouldn’t matter if the switch itself is unmanaged. If it isn’t, then the router itself is the appropriate choice. 
    
3. have you called in to Sonos for guidance at all?

If all of the players are wired, BOOST is redundant.

Something has changed, but is not visible in your scanner.

Wouldn’t having wifi and wired enabled create loops?

I currently have managed switches with STP enabled and configured with the appropriate values depending on where the switches are in the chain

I havent yet called Sonos but think that is worth doing now as I am struggling

Yes, it is most likely something external rather than internal so out of my control

I have cabled in one Sonos to the switch nearest my router, lowest STP value, and getting more drop outs than before and notifications of network loops

Next step is to contact Sonos.

Wife is currently preferring to use Alexa devices as we have now got them playing local music using Plex and it can do Spotify and Amazon Music without drop outs

Have you refreshed the matrix?  It won’t update unless you come out and go in again (ie re-click the Network Matrix link).  Nursery was originally wired but you have said it no longer is, so I wonder if this is really the current position?

Yep, step one is to turn back on the Sonos radios, the WiFi disable doesn’t disable WiFi it turns off the internal radio completely.

Same question on managed switches, why? Is your wired traffic so high that you have to try and manage it to keep from overloading your links?

A wired Sonos with the radio on works almost exactly like a Boost so again, turn on your radios before spending money you may not see any gain from.

There are specific, and rare, situations where you want the radios off. Do you have a rack of several Amps, Ports, Connects or ZPs?

Yes i did disable Wifi on the wired devices, my previous wi-fi setup (BT Whole Home) provided very poor Sonos performance so I had to wire some devices in to get sound in some rooms. I will re-enable WiFi on my wired devices.

STP is enabled, not RSTP. This was the first thing I tried.

In the kitchen I have a zigbee switch near the speaker, boost is near my Hubitat hub with zigbee receiver so this may be the first thing to move!

Do you mean the devices connected by WiFi or via SonosNet? I can see just one Roam on WiFi.

Apart from the nasty ambient RF noise levels the matrix shows a SonosNet with a distinctly suboptimal mesh. The Boost is supporting just one node directly, and it takes 3 hops to reach Guest Bedroom (Boost -> Kitchen -> Bathroom -> Guest Bedroom). Re-enabling the radio on the two wired devices with it currently disabled may improve things.

I have to ask: why Omada? It’s a business solution with a high level of complexity, not designed for home use. In particular you could find that Sonos devices on WiFi are inaccessible due to subnetting or isolation between network segments. Configuration tweaks may be available in the Omada management console to address this.

I meant on the SonosNet devices, Wifi is the term the Sonos App uses so I chose to use it here :)

I chose Omada as it works well for me at work, I am an IT Infrastructure Engineer so am familiar with the setup but translating it to getting a good setup for Sonos is where I am getting stuck.

We use HP Aruba, Omada and Ubiquiti at different sites at work and I preferred the Omada system over the others, so wanted to see if it would improve things at home.

My previous Wi-Fi coverage was poor, so I wanted to install Omada to install the coverage around the house, which it has done, but given the issues I am getting with Sonos I may revert back. I can still return my kit and not lose out! Which I am leaning towards, as the system is too complex for the needs at home. I would have liked to add VLANs for my IOT devices but this may be overkill… Something that works solidly is better. Possibly a better Mesh Wifi that the previous BT solution as that was poor at best!

What I am seeing today after some changes:

1. Re-enabling “Wi-Fi” (as its called in the Sonos App) to re-enable Sonosnet introduces loops on my wired devices
2. Removing ethernet and going Wi-Fi only on these devices, works for a while after re-adding the speakers, but they soon lose connection again.

So in hindsight, If i was to start again… what would the best route be?

Wireless from the router isn’t good enough to give coverage everywhere, BT Whole Home Wifi performs pretty poor but did have less issues than with Omada.

Does wiring just one Sonos device create loops?  

As well as the boost or the boost only?

Current setup:

Lounge / Nursery - wired, wifi (sonosnet) off

Boost - wired

Dining Room (Roam) - Wifi (not sonosnet)

Others - sonosnet

Like many such home solutions Sonos depends on there being a single flat broadcast subnet. No subnetting, no L2 client isolation and no blocks on device discovery. It’s not unusual to run into problems on enterprise grade networks, whether at home or in the workplace.

If re-enabling the radios causes loops then the switch(es) on the paths between the wired units are most probably just blocking STP BPDUs. 

With only Boost wired, what does the matrix look like?

As for alternative WiFi meshes, most home grade systems should be fine at least with the Sonos system in SonosNet mode as all the WiFi needs to do is carry controller traffic. Attempting to operate the entire system in WiFi-only (“wireless”) mode, i.e. without Boost and without any wired nodes at all, could have mixed results. It’s worth a try, if the Omada first gets swapped out for something more friendly, such as Deco, Orbi, Velop, etc.

@wolvesphil,

Here’s one suggestion to maybe consider…

Maybe try just wiring the Boost only to the Omada router and leave every other Sonos Product wireless (with its WiFi adapter enabled obviously) so all then run on their own SonosNet wireless connection and leave your Omada setup to just do its own thing.

Remove the Omada WiFi credentials in the Sonos App network settings (they’re not needed when running all on SonosNet) and try to set a SonosNet channel that is not in use by the Omada network.

You need to check that multicast broadcasts for ‘device discovery’ by the controller App can see the Sonos system when the controller device is connected to any of the Omada access points… sometimes this is where issues can sometimes occur with various mesh systems.

Do not wire any Sonos device to an Omada satellite hub and just see if that perhaps may work better for you.

If I change setup, Deco is the one I am contemplating most. I like with Omada that I can see more info but I guess I don’t really need to see granular detail if everything just works! And my family would be much happier!

I have now set it so only my Boost is wired, tested the wireless devices and they are working well. I have set STP globally on my switches for now rather than on each port, with a lower priority that the Sonos default and things seem happier… Time will tell!

The latest matrix is:

I think moving the Boost may be the next step to improve things.

Oh yes, missed that (Thanks @ratty) - in that case the WiFi credentials will need to remain in the Sonos App’s network settings.

There is a roam

There is still a lot of interference, not only around the Boost, but also surrounding the other devices shown as red on left hand column of the matrix, but I would certainly let things settle for at least 20-30 minutes and keep any Sonos devices at least a metre away from other wireless (and Bluetooth) devices - then perhaps look at changing the SonosNet channel - but always allow time for things to settle down before making any change.

This image may assist you too, as it shows the zigbee channels that can sometimes interfere with 2.4Ghz non-overlapping WiFi channels:

 

 

I think moving the Boost may be the next step to improve things.

There is still a lot of interference, not only around the Boost, but also surrounding the other devices shown as red on left hand column of the matrix, but I would certainly let things settle for at least 20-30 minutes and keep any Sonos devices at least a metre away from other wireless (and Bluetooth) devices - then perhaps look at changing the SonosNet channel - but always allow time for things to settle down before making any change.

This image may assist you too, as it shows the zigbee channels that can sometimes interfere with 2.4Ghz channels:

 

 

That graphic is useful, and something I wasn’t aware of! I have changed the settings of my Zigbee Hub and Sonosnet and will see if this makes any difference (when my Sonos speakers are back online as they have since disappeared...)