Trending Lyricist I

On The Verge Of Dumping All SONOS Product If I Can't Get Connection Issues Solved

30 replies
2426 views

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.

Connection Issue

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

Show previous replies

Ryan S

Retired Sonos Staff

Correct, you can just plug any player into the network and they'll sort out the rest. It'll usually take a minute or so to switch over from wireless to wired (and might wait until the end of the song that's on if you're listening to music). Because Sonos uses our own mesh technology when you have devices wired in, they'll bounce the signal around to get to the network the fastest. So wired players will add extra spots to get access.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.

C

CBello305Author

Trending Lyricist I

Appreciated, Ryan.

Do you have any ability to look at diagnostics, or is that only doable via a SONOS call? I can ping them tomorrow—too jammed up today—but did submit diagnostics and had a number ready to go, barring you had the ability to do here.

buzz

Grand Maestro

CBello305,

Post the diagnostic confirmation number here or give it to a live agent.

I have wiring buried in the walls. You can use a "Network Switch" to expand the number of ports on your router. Common configurations are 5, 8, 16, 24, and 48 ports. One of the ports would connect to your router and the others are available for your house wiring. "Unmanaged" 8-port switches are available for well under $100 and can purchased online or at most office supply stores, Home Depot, Best Buy, and similar stores. A "Managed" switch is a higher end product used on larger, more complex networks that one might find in a business. This is more than you need and Managed switches require some configuration, Unmanaged switches are plug and play. Be sure to avoid anything in the Hall of Shame.

C

CBello305Author

Trending Lyricist I

Buzz — Doubling back here. In the past 11 days I've dumped my Arris router/modem combo I was renting from COX and have replaced it with a NETGEAR Nighthawk X4S (DOCSIS 3.1) combo—while also upgrading my Internet speed to COX's GIGABLAST (95Mbps download speed and around 35Mbps upload speed.) Nothing has improved with my set-up—which still has registered IP addresses for all SONOS products.

I've tried calling support a few times over the past week, but hang up after being on hold at the half hour mark (as that bad jazz waiting music is too much for me.)

I sent diagnostic info in about an hour ago and the conformation number is 894570271.

Today is the last day this week I have to mess with this until the weekend, where I'll double back and give it another try.

To say I remain beyond frustrated is an understatement—right down to SONOS' customer service lack-of-accessibility, as well.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

For fast responses the Sonos twitter or facebook contacts may be faster.

C

CBello305Author

Trending Lyricist I

Stanley_4 — Will they respond to diagnostics numbers and related-info there?

T

Tom_49

Trending Lyricist I

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!)

Airgetlam

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.

Bruce

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

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.

buzz

Grand Maestro

After replacing a router one should shut down EVERYTHING on the network and reboot. One function of a router is similar to "take a number" when entering a building. Clients are known by that number as long as they are in the building. Unfortunately, there is no general notice sent out to the clients when a router is replaced. The current clients retain their original IP address ("number"). There is lots of potential for mischief. If the new addresses are from a different block, the original clients will be stranded. If the same block of IP address is reused, there may be duplicates. You can imagine the spats that can result -- "Mine", "Where's my order", "I didn't order that", and on and on. A device might be sleeping when the router is replaced and the network will seemingly be OK. Days later, however, this device might come online and create a duplicate. A further complication is that IP addresses are rented and must be "renewed" periodically. The renewal IP address may or may not be the same as the original. This renewal process allows the possibility that duplicate IP addresses may work out naturally on their own after a period of days. This can be a source of frustration because the system seems to heal by "magic".

The reboot essentially throws everyone out of the building and new IP addresses are given out as the clients return.

Address "reservation" in the router establishes a table of clients that have been given VIP status and they will always be assigned (exclusively) the same IP address. Of course, if the router is replaced, the reservations are lost.

Sign up

Login to the community