At my wit's end here. Currently owns dozen PLAY1 speakers, a PLAY5 and a subwoofer—the latter two both second gen. (Also recently purchased a SONOS Boost to help problem-solve.)
Issues with these products used to be beyond minimal—but seems every SONOS-related app updates over the past year has worsened the overall experience, rendering the products absolutely useless.
Issues I'm dealing with are comparable to many others on here who have invested thousands of dollars into this system, but still don't have viable answers.
Breaking point was reached last week after spending hours going down the message board rabbit hole and dedicating IP addresses on my router to each piece of SONOS hardware in my home—going into my Arris router's LAN Settings, inputting the 12-digit MAC address as well as the dedicated IP.
Went through all steps of resetting my router, plugging in all devices one-by-one, et al— still in a nightmare situation. (Have also played the change-the-router channel game between 1, 6 and 11 and no combination there proved better than the previous)
For a party this weekend, I relied on my MacBook as somewhat of a hack. It's plugged into my home's Cat5—bypassing the need for songs to stream wirelessly. Even with that, the app was still insanely sluggish when attempting to change songs—and the process of importing my iTunes playlists into SONOS still wasn't seamless, as it cut off at the letter "Q", when I reached the max number for the importing process.
As I went further down the rabbit hole, I've found things about setting music up on a NAS drive and similar solutions (re: plugging hard drive with music into USB port of router, etc.)—further leading me to believe SONOS has an issue with this product (and app) that must be solved, as it shouldn't be this difficult to stream music at home.
All this to say, the juice is no longer worth the squeeze. Not sure what happened with the SONOS process or why things have become so complicated over the past year with the hardware / software issues—but I never would've invested this much money or time into a home audio solution that required a computer engineering degree.
BASED ON ALL OF THIS, what are my options to rectify this issue?
Would a better router help the cause? What about upgrading my Internet speed—which is currently the best option Cox Communication offers, outside of their new, highly-priced Internet Gigablast plan ($120-per month—up to 1 GBPS download / up to 35 MBPS upload speeds)? I've also found a local AV company that boasts a proper knowledge of SONOS home instillation; but have hesitated to call until I've tried to troubleshoot on my own. (In zero mood to invest another cent in this process right now.)
The amount of man-hours I've spent over the past decade creating playlists, ripping CDs to iTunes, downloading hi-res cover art, etc.—not to mention money invested in SONOS—and to STILL not be able to play music with ease ... officially ready to lose it, dump all this hardware, start with something new and go scorched earth on all things SONOS, advising all potential customers to beware of what is starting to feel like an inferior home audio solution.
All and any expert advice is appreciated. Thank you for your time.
On The Verge Of Dumping All SONOS Product If I Can't Get Connection Issues Solved
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Question, did you try unplugging all products, then adding one, playing and test, then add another, play and test, then another, and on and on until you recreated the problem? So many ways to isolate the issues doing this. As soon as you start getting the problem back, then start unplugging the first unit you plugged in, then the second, listen for issues. You may be able to isolate the unit or two units not meshing well. Usually you can troubleshoot the problem unit/area this pretty quickly.
Borrow a friend's android device and connect to the sonos wifi directly using sonosnet. (settings advanced, enable sonosnet wifi - or something like that) Apple products do not work as well for troubleshooting issues with sonos (and in rest of life!)
Borrow a friend's android device and connect to the sonos wifi directly using sonosnet. (settings advanced, enable sonosnet wifi - or something like that) Apple products do not work as well for troubleshooting issues with sonos (and in rest of life!)
CBello305, in answer to your question, yes, the people who are on the Twitter and Facebook areas have the same access to your diagnostics, as they are Sonos employees.
Userlevel 7
+22
As said, they are staffed by Sonos tech that have access, probably about the same as the forum and e-mail support folks, but I don't have any inside info.
The only real different method from what I have seen are the phone lines, folks get redirected from here to there for a lot of issues, replacements, real-time diagnostics, assistance in music library setup, odd moises and likely other stuff I don't recall.
When I have a problem the phones are my go-to method, hold times can be bad but sometimes you can get a call-back offer that is worth taking.
The only real different method from what I have seen are the phone lines, folks get redirected from here to there for a lot of issues, replacements, real-time diagnostics, assistance in music library setup, odd moises and likely other stuff I don't recall.
When I have a problem the phones are my go-to method, hold times can be bad but sometimes you can get a call-back offer that is worth taking.
Thank you for the detailed response. Yet to call SONOS with this, but alas, seems like the last resort.
Router could certainly be quirky and the problem. Currently renting the Arris router provided by Cox (out of sheer laziness at the time they set things up here), so maybe it's worth investing in a new one.
No WiFi repeater. Did purchase an EERO system to help with some dead zones in the house—but have since disconnected that in effort to just run SONOS proper and to see if that was the issue. Thus far, things remained just as bad without EERO.
Yes, at this point my SONOS Boost is the only unit hooked to the router. I had originally tried to run one of my speakers through my Cat5 set up (in the master bedroom), but it didn't take. Have the ability to plug at least 4-5 speakers into a Cat5 port based on where the speakers are set up in my home, but couldn't figure out how to make that work and went the Boost route.
Router could certainly be quirky and the problem. Currently renting the Arris router provided by Cox (out of sheer laziness at the time they set things up here), so maybe it's worth investing in a new one.
No WiFi repeater. Did purchase an EERO system to help with some dead zones in the house—but have since disconnected that in effort to just run SONOS proper and to see if that was the issue. Thus far, things remained just as bad without EERO.
Yes, at this point my SONOS Boost is the only unit hooked to the router. I had originally tried to run one of my speakers through my Cat5 set up (in the master bedroom), but it didn't take. Have the ability to plug at least 4-5 speakers into a Cat5 port based on where the speakers are set up in my home, but couldn't figure out how to make that work and went the Boost route.
Userlevel 7
+22
I would stick with just the boost hooked to router. Keep it a few feet from router and keep the channel for sonosnet 5 channels away from your home wifi channel.
According to compatibility page Arris has had some broadcast storm type issues if more than 1 sonos unit hooked to router. So definitely be sure the boost is only Sonos item hooked to router. https://support.sonos.com/s/article/41?language=en_US
Is there the ability with Cox to use the EERO as your main router instead of the Arris?
According to compatibility page Arris has had some broadcast storm type issues if more than 1 sonos unit hooked to router. So definitely be sure the boost is only Sonos item hooked to router. https://support.sonos.com/s/article/41?language=en_US
Is there the ability with Cox to use the EERO as your main router instead of the Arris?
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