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Avoid launching the Sonos App at all to improve stability?

  • 21 July 2024
  • 4 replies
  • 104 views

Well, having previously posted that I’d managed to get a reasonably stable Sonos system 80% of the time since the infamous App upgrade largely due to overhauling our WiFi, that figure took a dramatic downward revision yesterday morning. On launching the Sonos App for some morning music, one speaker of a stereo pair immediately lost connection and 5 hours of repeated factory resets or ethernet cable connections failed to get it to rejoin, just endless ‘lost connection’ error messages during setup. Only solution has been to move another speaker to form the pair, as this was a set where a stereo pair really mattered and I now have one useless Sonos One (Gen 1). In the process of sorting all this, the Sonos App also suddenly lost all of the Apple Music Playlists I had pinned, just to rub its appalling instability in.

I’ve now got to the point where I’ve decided not to launch the Sonos App at all and simply stick to Airplay and the Apple Music or Apple Music Classical App. At least that way, I can hopefully avoid the random trashing of our system and at least listen to some music. Question is, will it really improve stability or are the problems with Sonos deeper than just the App?

4 replies

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

It would appear that one of the big changes in the new Sonos app is it’s changed from using uPnP discovery to mDNS (Bonjour) instead, so whilst network issues aren’t going to fix the hopeless local library support and inexplicable lack of queue editing, it may be that your setup had some issues around mDNS that were not exposed until the new app… 

I guess the question is going to be around what changes have you made in overhauling your WiFi to see if general stability can be improved at all… 

Userlevel 7
Badge +14

Hi @Iain59 if you’ve not already done so, consider assigning fixed IP addresses for each of your Sonos devices. It’s one of the first “best practice” steps in debugging connectivity issues.

Go to play.sonos.com. While not yet fully functional, this may be an improvement for you.

Userlevel 3
Badge +2

Hi @Iain59 if you’ve not already done so, consider assigning fixed IP addresses for each of your Sonos devices. It’s one of the first “best practice” steps in debugging connectivity issues.

Everything has always been on a fixed IP and tied to specific mesh nodes. Recent firmware 80.1-55240 and App 80.05.05 upgrades have certainly improved things quite a bit, but the App is still not fully stable. However, AirPlay stability is now pretty close to 100% so happy enough to stick with the Apple Music and AM Classical Apps, which I think are better designed in any case!

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