Contributor I

Answered

YT Music to Chromecast Audio to Line-In Port drops audio often

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I have 10 pairs of Polk Audio RC80i in my home, powered by 2 Sonos Amps and connected to a Sonos Port. When I stream music via Android’s YT Music directly to a Chromecast Audio that has as 3.5mm adapter to the Sonos Port’s Line-In, there are 2 major issues. (I don’t use YT Music integrated into the Sonos App because of latency and difficulty in navigating music)

(1) I seem to get ads on my YT Premium stream (have a ticket with Google about this
(2) Rather commonly, my music will cut out for what can be 10-30+ seconds at a time.

This has mostly happened when playing my Zen playlist at very low volumes, but I’m not sure if this issue is part of the whole S2 debacle. I run a lot of Ubiquiti gear for my home network, but there’s no device/traffic-specific settings I’ve applied there in.

Ideas?

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press250Answer

Prodigy III

Hi @Aaron M, giving this a bit more thought I have a thesis:the low-volume output from your CA is barely above the voltage necessary to register as ‘active’ on the line in to your Sonos Port, and when your music hits a particularly quiet section your Port decides there is no input.

You’ve got two volume controls to play with: the CA volume controlled by the Google Home app and the Amp volume controlled by the Sonos app. Try increasing the CA volume (say, doubling it) and compensate by decreasing the Amp volume. If my hunch is right, upping the CA volume will keep the Sonos Port convince that it always has an input.

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A

Aaron MAuthor

Contributor I

Findings

DIRECT TO AMP
When connecting the CA directly to an Amp (via 3.5mm to RCA adapter), YT audio can be set as low as possible and music played flawlessly.

DIRECT TO PORT, MAX VOLUME ON YT, MIN VOLUME ON SONOS
When connecting the CA directly to the Port (via 3.5mm to RCA adapter), YT audio can be set to mid-range (higher than low volume) and the Sonos App can be used to lower the volume. Like this, music played flawlessly.

DIRECT TO PORT, MIN VOLUME ON YT, MAX VOLUME ON SONOS
When maxing the Sonos App audio and then lower the YT App audio like how I originally set things up, I started to experience cut outs.

ADDITIONAL FINDINGS
I made an observation. There was a song that for the last 10-15 seconds, the music was very soft. Mixed with the low volume, this was practically inaudible. As the playlist moved to the next song, the first 9 seconds played before the song cut back in. This song starts off with some rather intense sound. I scrubbed the song back to the beginning, expecting the audio to cut out until we were 9 seconds in, but the audio played immediately from the start of the song.

So I played the previous song and dragged the slider to the last 20 seconds. Sure enough you hear audio until around 15 seconds until the end of track. It’s hard to tell whether audio is cutting out at the point or if the combination of the soft music and low volume were just hard to hear. But sure enough, when the next track played, it skipped the first 9 seconds of it before cutting in.

I think what @press250 was postulating could be true. For low-intensity songs played at low volumes, the Port (but not Amps) will assume no music is playing, and will cut out. There’s something about the way it handles a new track starting where it doesn’t sample the music/signal if it had previously detected such a low signal that it caused a cutout. After the exact same 9 seconds of playing the new song, the audio cuts back in. But if you scrub it back to the start immediately after the audio cuts in, the song plays from the very beginning.

The transition to a cutout state mixed with the next song playing in the list seems to be a culprit. And this is ONLY an issue with the Port; as the Amp does not exhibit this problem. The Amp allows the YT App to be as low as possible and the Sonos App fully cranked, and it will always play the audio at a low volume; no cutouts. But the Port is seemingly broken. Its logic results in cut outs when the YT App audio source is too low, and the signal doesn’t seem to get re-sampled again until events like a new track play (even then, taking it ~9 seconds before it can determine that there is a signal, and route the audio to the speakers) This is about the same time it takes when you initially “Cast to” the Chromecast. There’s this expected timespan where the source app (YT Music) is going from outputting music on my phone to sending it via wireless network to the CA.

press250

Prodigy III

Hi @Aaron M, great diagnosing! I’ve seen audio gear with “power saving” mode turn off at extremely low volumes. Happily, the gear had a ‘sensitivity’ setting to remedy the issue. Anyway, that is what gave me the idea.

A

Aaron MAuthor

Contributor I

@press250 Well, unless there’s a debug mode where I can change some advanced options on the Port, it looks like this might require a software fix. I’ll report our findings to Sonos in hopes that they look into it and confirm our findings. Thank you for all your help!

A

Aaron MAuthor

Contributor I

Well, sadly, I had a chat with Sonos Support, but there was obviously a language barrier in place and I feel the rep wasn’t understanding that I wanted to provide feedback for software engineers to look into. After waiting 12th in line and then waiting an average of 3-5 minutes per response, each of which wasn’t moving towards me providing the feedback, I just asked for an email to send my information to Sonos directly.

I really hope that an opportunity to fix this issue wasn’t lost just because of cost-cutting efforts in support.

They gave me a case number and told me to contact the CEO, so I’ll send the info there and hope it isn’t lost into the ether.

Findings

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