After Adding Move, Sonos Doesn't Work Well Anymore

  • 1 June 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 42 views

After I added Move to my system, the whole thing went wonky. It doesn’t even matter if Move is in a group or not, so these things may not be related. However, let me just describe the situation.

My setup is:
Bedroom 1: IKEA speaker - wireless
Dining Room: Stereo Pair of Play:1 - wireless
Living Room: A single Play:1 -wireless
Family Room: Surround setup consisting of Beam, Sub, 2 Play:1 as surrounds - all wired to ethernet

Bathroom: a single Play:1 - wireless
Kitchen: Move - wireless

The Play:1 are all the non-smart variety.

I use a Mac with the App or iPhones with the App to manage everything.. Stream music primarily from Spotify but also use Apple Music and local music library from devices.

Everything worked very well most of the time. However, as I mentioned, around the time I added the Move, everything got weird. Issues materialize as:
 

  • Groups sometimes fall apart
  • Delayed or very difficult to get Groups to start playing music
  • Members of group audio cut out and often get out of synch
  • Weirdest of all: the Sub gets out of synch by like half a beat and results in bass-ey echoes and sloppy-sounding low end. Sometimes it gets *really* out of synch

Nothing changed on my home network. I use the Asus ZenWiFI AC system with a base and 2 extension nodes. It worked well before and I didn’t change it. 

 

I should note that when I first connected the Move to the network, I received a warning that it was using an “extender” and may experience issues. I solved this by using my wifi configuration tools to “pin” the Move to the base station so that it is NOT using any extender. The extenders are actually downstairs on another level, so even though the signal might have been a bit stronger in the kitchen, the upstairs is all one open room and the Move has “line of sight” access to the WiFi base station. 

I have some suspicions, but they are technically unverified and amount to superstition:
 

  1. Is the Move a “WiFi” only system? Does it not participate in the Sonos self-created network?
  2. Does the Sonon self-created network even exist anymore? It seems like maybe the speakers are not bridging through the wired nodes anymore? The reason I was wondering this is that it seemed like the Move would *only* connect directly to the wifi and fussed about being on the extender. Aren’t all Sonos speakers “extenders” if they are creating a “Sonos wireless network”? Or is this whole tech not even real ???

Anyway, are there any tips from the community on what I should try. I’ve fiddled with just about every


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3 replies

You are correct: MOVE is WiFi only, it cannot join SonosNet (the private SONOS mesh). It is also good practice to pin MOVE to the base station. I find that MOVE is a bit more agile than the older units with respect to dealing with WiFi mesh points changing channels and transferring MOVE to different mesh points, but if the mesh point is on a different subnet there will be trouble.

Which WiFi system are you using?

I’m using Asus ZenWiFi distributed system and installed it in early 2020.

At least as a test can you wire a player to the base Asus? 
 

Maybe this applies to your system.