Move - issues with grouping and playback

I’m having terrible drop out issues with my Sonos Move, Start music on the Move then join other speakers (2 x play 1’s/ Sub, 2 x Play 3’s) most times the Move will stop but the music starts playing on the joined speakers (running off my Sonos Boost - Sonos Net) then other times it plays but takes 15-30 seconds for the joined speakers group. Phoned support a while back and they said that my WiFi booster was probably interfering and to turn it off and try that, It helped but still got dropouts and I need the WiFi booster in the house.

I resorted to bringing a Play One from another room when we have a party as the Move is to unreliable, really annoying for a £399 Speaker and not a good advert!

Move runs off WiFi and all others speakers run off Sonos Net (Boost), the two don’t seem to work well together I would of thought that Sonos could have the option for the Move to use the Sonos Net (Boost) instead of WiFi for large home systems to keep reliability. (Long time Sonos user with 15 Sonos Speakers in and around the house costing nearly £4k)

Be nice to see a reply and a fix from Sonos on this issue and thread, it looks like a common issue with the Move. 

Suppose I will have to take a day off work again to ring Sonos Support (Mon-Fri 9-5)  

Bythebeach, 

A couple of questions ...

Which WiFi band is the ‘Move’ using and what channels are in use by the Router and SonosNet?

Do you have the WiFi credentials stored in the Sonos App “Networks/Wireless Satup” 

Does your local network have any other Hubs/Wireless Access Points and if so, are they operating with the same (SSID/Password) credentials and channels as your main router?

I purchased a Move recently and I’m having the same issue.  I can join the Move to a group and even pause the entire group using the move controls but no music will play.  It works fine if I start music from the move and add other Sonos speakers.  Has anyone found a resolution?  I have a case open but it’s not progressing.  

Sounds like a network issue .. what are the details of your network setup?

Which WiFi band is your move using and does your Sonos system run on your WiFi, or do you have any devices wired and hence running the system on SonosNet?

Any wireless access points, repeaters or satellite hubs etc?

Sonos Boost is using Channel 11 for SonosNet..  I have an SSID for Sonos that operates in both the 2.4Ghz and 5 Ghz band…. 4 AP’s but only 3 adversities that SSID to avoid channel overlap..  Channels 1,6,11 are used by the 3 AP’s.. my user SSID is 5Ghz only but shares a VLAN with the SONOS SSID because the controller has to be in the same VLAN

Ensure your Sonos Boost is wired to the primary hub and that the primary hub 2.4ghz WiFi is set at least 5 channels away from your chosen SonosNet channel 11 ...so set it to fixed channel 6 or 1,

Set the satellites/access points to not only use the same SSID’s as the main hub, but to use the exact same fixed wifi channels as the primary hub, so that’s either channel 6 or 1. Do not put them on different channels. Hopefully your 2.4ghz and 5ghz SSID’s do not have the same name for each band, it’s best if they have different names.

I would also try this ... have your 'Move’ connect to the 5ghz band (I suggest you set that band to use fixed channel 48 on all your access points) and 'if relevant',  goto the Sonos App and remove/reset any stored 2.4ghz WiFi credentials in “Settings/System/Network/Wireless Setup’ these are not needed when using SonosNet and also remove and previously used 2.4ghz network in the slightly different area of  “Settings/System/Network/Other Networks” … (long press on SSID Name to remove it).

Then see if that resolves your grouping playback issues.

Hi Ken, 

I have the same issue as MjjW and just tried to do everything you wrote, except setting two separate names for the WiFi 2.4 and 5GHz. I was not able to group and ungroup Move. I don’t have sonos boost, but I have other 8 speakers besides Move, which is the last one I bought.  

In fac, (seems that...) I solved the issue just reinitializing the Sonos Network from the Android app. When I first configured Move, I did not “refresh” the installation for all the speakers, so maybe it took a different network or something like that… Maybe the solution is just to reinstall the Network once you install a Move speaker. 

Anyway, I will keep the thread updated if there is any other issue.

Thank you

Best,

Maurizio

Grouping Move with Playbar has the Move frequently dropping the sound for a split second every couple of minutes.  Very annoying.

There’s a couple of things you can try here.. 

1. If referring to the TV audio, then change the Home Theatre Group Audio buffer size in the Playbar ‘room’ settings. It defaults to 75ms but there are three other options for you to choose from. See which setting work best.
2. If referring to music (not line-in) audio, then maybe try a different ‘fixed’ WiFi channel (1, 6, or 11), or perhaps try switching the Move to a completely different WiFi band if your router supports both 2.4ghz and 5ghz.

Hope those things help to resolve your intermittent audio dropout issues.

Yep, I'm experiencing a mixture of the above, existing speakers on SonosNet (Boost) added move this weekend, on S2, grouping music sometimes they all play, sometimes just the move, if I skip tracks sometimes the move continues to play the previous track and then catches up, sometimes move apears offline but continues to play music, never had any issues until I introduced the move (had a sonos system since 2013), its almost as if It doesnt know whether to use SonosNet with the original speakers or wifi and jumps between them