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Linking two halves of a stereo pair via Ethernet

A
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I think this question has been asked before - probably multiple times - but a search of the subject line didn’t find anything. I did however check to make sure I haven’t asked the question before…

Is there anything to be gained by linking two halves of a stereo pair together with a crossover ethernet cable?

Ok, I’ve asked it, and it looks stupid now it’s written down, but… the thinking is that one half of a stereo pair almost certainly gets sent the whole stereo signal via wifi - it just throws one half away.

And of course the other half of a stereo pair needs the same amount of wifi bandwidth to get the other half of the stereo signal - and it throws the other half away.

But if the two are linked together, one can send the data to the other via the wired network, thus halving the wifi bandwidth used.

Yeah, I know - sounds unlikely, but I had to ask!

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Best answer by Airgetlam 29 April 2024, 12:46

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Stanley_4
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Wiring a pair of surrounds together was suggested to me as an option a while back, nothing was said about using a crossover cable to do it so you might try a normal cable first.

 

A
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Thanks - I guess the problem is that I have no way of knowing whether it’s doing anything useful or not. The wifi performance of the system varies so much over time with no changes, so trying to work that out would be near impossible.

The problem with using a normal cable is that I’ve no way of knowing whether the Ethernet ports are auto-sensing. A crossover cable should be certain to work (to each it looks as though the other end is a hub/switch), but a straight cable will not if the ports do not have an auto-uplink function built-in.

Who suggested that this might work? Was it someone who works for Sonos?

On reflection, I don’t think this will work. It would depend on each of the halves of the stereo pair deciding to send/receive part of its traffic via wired and part via wireless. I doubt that a Sonos speaker has that ability built-in. My guess is that each will decide whether to use wired Ethernet or wireless, and will then use the one interface for all traffic. But I would be happy to be wrong about that.

buzz

I don’t recommend wiring L/R together. Maybe it will work most of the time, but there can be some occasional very esoteric issues (been there). You can wire one or both to a network switch.

All of the pair’s traffic is first requested by the Left speaker. The right channel is split off and sent to the Right speaker.

Stanley_4
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Using the link was in a discussion here on the forum, don’t recall who said what.

You would disable the radio on the right speaker to force it to use the Ethernet link to the left.

Airgetlam

I absolutely wouldn’t use a crossover cable. The Sonos isn’t expecting that. I’d connect (if you really feel it necessary) both by cable to a router. 

Bruce
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Agreed - I’m just going to leave it alone. The speaker pair in question is not in a location where it would be at all easy to get Ethernet cabling to either.

In an ideal world I would like to get as much Sonos traffic as possible off wi-fi and onto hard wiring (to try to make performance with HD content as acceptable as possible) but there is a limit to what is practicable in a 1970’s built house.

Airgetlam

In that case, wire one of your speakers (or a BOOST, although they’re no longer in production) to your router with an Ethernet cable. That will put all that are capable on SonosNet (the newer Sonos speakers are not SonosNet capable), a parallel WiFi signal. I think you’ll find, if you do measurements, that Sonos doesn’t actually take huge amounts of bandwidth from your WiFi, but I’ve done a similar thing, running my system from a BOOST, all except my Roam, which is on my WiFi. You do need to take additional care that the SonosNet signal doesn’t interfere with your WiFi signal, but that’s fairly easy to do. 

Bruce
K

 

In an ideal world I would like to get as much Sonos traffic as possible off wi-fi and onto hard wiring (to try to make performance with HD content as acceptable as possible) but there is a limit to what is practicable in a 1970’s built house.

Seeing how little bandwidth is consumed by audio, that isn't a good enough reason to take the trouble. Wanting to get more stable music play is, if the Wifi environment in the home is the type that causes music to stutter and drop out often. So if the music play on Sonos wireless is stable, don’t bother to run wires.

A
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In that case, wire one of your speakers (or a BOOST, although they’re no longer in production) to your router with an Ethernet cable. That will put all that are capable on SonosNet (the newer Sonos speakers are not SonosNet capable), a parallel WiFi signal. I think you’ll find, if you do measurements, that Sonos doesn’t actually take huge amounts of bandwidth from your WiFi, but I’ve done a similar thing, running my system from a BOOST, all except my Roam, which is on my WiFi. You do need to take additional care that the SonosNet signal doesn’t interfere with your WiFi signal, but that’s fairly easy to do. 

 

Hi Bruce - I’ve been through all that! I started with a Bridge and a small S1 system, then a Boost with a larger S2 setup, but it has never worked well for high-bitrate FLAC - I suffered stutters and dropouts when trying to play one source of FLAC onto the whole system. So I dropped the Boost and went to a 3-node mesh, which made things a bit better.

But… more recently I noticed the Sonos guide which recommends a max 5:1 ratio of wi-fi to fixed cabling, so I have (in the last few weeks) modified my system to try to achieve that. It does seem to help significantly, which seems to support the view that contention on the wi-fi side was the source of at least some of the problems.

But there are things that mystify me about the way that Sonos uses the wireless side of the system. The one biggest retrograde step in my system was adding a Move - it seems that the fact that it cannot use Sonosnet really messed things up (for my specific circumstances). Getting rid of the Move was the single best change in my system.

106rallye
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Is your stereo set up reporting any problems, for you to suggest this?

A
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I was trying to think of ways to make optimal use of the wi-fi bandwidth, to reduce the stuttering effects. I don’t need it to report anything to be able to hear those.

106rallye
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Maybe the community could help solve the stuttering another way? How is your system connected?

A
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Ach, I just wrote a long reply and the forum software popped up a message saying “something’s gone wrong” and it all disappeared.

In short - I’ve tried for several years - not going to put more into it at the moment. I’ve spent enough time trying.

buzz

Been there. Sometimes I’ll select and copy text -- just in case.

buzz

Sometimes EoP works, most of the time it’s not worth messing with. If your WiFi coverage is sketchy, you could bring an EoP connection to a switch near the pair and wire the pair to the switch.

Modern WiFi is much improved. Back in 2005 WiFi was crude enough that SONOS developed their own mesh network that was very effective. Modern WiFi has improved to the point where it’s not worth the effort for SONOS to continue supporting SonosNet. That’s why the newest SONOS wireless is WiFi only.

A
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I don’t actually know what EoP is! But yes, I had a spare Cat6 wire running across the loft to the other side of the house, so I put a small switch at the other end and wired both of one of my stereo pairs to it.

I’m now at a ratio of four hardwired units out of a total of eleven. It does seem to help, though skipping tracks forward or back still leads to short periods when some speakers drop out. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two more hardwired connection would give me a near-perfect result, but it’s just too difficult in a 1970s brick-built house.

If I was starting from scratch in a new house I would go with a fully wired solution, but that’s not an option now.

buzz

EoP (Ethernet over Powerline). Your scheme is much better.

E

In my previous setup with 2 Play:1s, that where connected wirelessly to a Boost, this seemed to work and improve connection stability. Currently I’m using a One (L) and a One SL (R) connected through WiFi. When I connect left/right speakers with an Ethernet cable, as soon as I disable WiFi on the One SL, it will lose its connection. So at least with these speakers, it appears this doesn’t work.

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