Question

SonosNet or WiFi

  • 21 May 2017
  • 5 replies
  • 2643 views

Badge
In my house i have 3 Airport Extremes AC. All hardwired together. Obviously my 3 major wireless channels are now used. I also have SonosNet setup and is working. My 3 Apple Routers can see each other but don't overlap to much. I live in a thickly settled area and can see about 10 other Wifi Networks from my house. I have 1 Playbar with a SuUB and 2 PLAY1 setup as 5.1, I have 5 other PLAY1s and 2 PLAY3s, 5 CONNECT:AMPs. I want to try and cut down on WiFi Interference which brings me to my question...

What is better? Is SonosNet better in regards to speed, stability and reliability? If I make the move to switch Sonos to run off my WiFi will the speed and reliability be reduced? Will there be longer lag/response times in changing music or operation if i go to WiFi?

for those who can, here is a diagnostic i submitted... 7418975 ...the times i have called in, ive been told i have alot of interference around certain players.

I am also curious if there is a way to disable wifi cards on players that i have hardwired to my network?

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.

5 replies

Disabling the wifi on my wired Sonos products solved all of my problems. I now have a stable system, no dropouts or reboots...
Yes, same here... As there isn't cabling to every room, I also feed the Sonos units via homeplug type units - another supposed 'no-no', but it's by far the most reliable approach here...
Badge
Disabling the wifi on my wired Sonos products solved all of my problems. I now have a stable system, no dropouts or reboots and I love it. I was about to throw my Sonos stuff out the window, but instead they now have a very happy user. When I explained to Support what had cured my issues they were just delighted that the problems were solved, no issue whatsoever with turning off the wifi.

I use Apple Airports and other AppIe products. I found on the Apple website an installer of systems who mentioned that there were often problems when mixing Sonos and Apple. He had done dozens of installations and he said that wiring all Sonos products and disabling the wifi was the way to avoid any problems.

Many devices have a switch on them to turn off the wifi, but Sonos has it in the software instead. If I were Sonos, I would advertise this easy way to solve numerous issues. In fact, I would put a selection to disable the wifi in the advanced features of the Controller so that it was easier for people to do it. Result - happy customers, and isn't that the goal after all?
It's worth pointing out that Sonos don't officially condone disabling the radio, and will often refuse to support a user who does so. They may well choose to remove the link.
Userlevel 6
Badge +5
I'd hardwire as much as possible. Limits interference, reduces latency, etc. Benoit Steiner has published a guide on how to turn off the Wifi functionality in a Sonos using the web interface, see here: https://bsteiner.info/articles/disabling-sonos-wifi

There are some energy savings (i.e. ~2W on average) but, if you own a older external Sonos controller like the CR100, then turning off Wifi per Mr. Steiner also disables the ability of a CR100 to talk to the amplifier. I suppose that if a CR100 is only used next to one particular amplifier that you could turn off the Sonos Wifi hardware in other parts of the house?
In 99.9% of the cases, Sonosnet is preferred. The only reason WiFi mode was created was to stave off the silly marketing point of the competitors that Sonos "doesn't use WiFi".