Question

Sonos Playbar 5.1 5GHZ Interference

  • 17 September 2019
  • 8 replies
  • 501 views

Userlevel 4
Badge +7
Hey guys,

I have a lot of Sonos speakers including a 5.1 system with a Playbar. I also use an Orbi system for my wifi. I am using Sonosnet with the playbar using cat 6 cabling to my router.

I was having a lot of issues with the rear speakers in the 5.1 system dropping out whenever I am also using wifi internet while watching 5.1 content. I put it down to likely interference in the wireless backhaul of the Orbi.

Due to the placement of the rear speakers I could not wire them directly to the router but have instead placed the wireless orbi satellite near them and plugged them in via ethernet to the orbi satellite and switched off the wifi radios on both the rear speakers.

The system now appears to be working flawlessly with no more dropouts on the rear speakers and best of all I can stream on my computer while watching TV at the same time with no issues. Is there anything inherently wrong with how I've set this up now and any issues I might come across with this setup? Really as far as I can tell their is still only one wifi hop going on as the Playbar is wired in and therefore the only hop would be from the Orbi router to the Orbi Satellite via 5GHZ. Should this be able to maintain similar performance to Sonos 5GHZ?

Thanks

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8 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +5
Since I turned off the 5GHz on my router, everything is OK!
Userlevel 7
Hi Cococo

It appears you have everything sorted out. Kudo's ☺️! You do not want to turn off your 5Ghz for reasons you stated and also because Sonos uses the 5Ghz band to communicate with a sub and/or surrounds in a HT setup; as the 2.4Ghz isn't fast enough.

Cheers!
The sync won't be off, but the surrounds could drop out. The amount of buffering in the surrounds is very shallow, as they expect to either be on a dedicated 5GHz connection to the main home theatre player, or wired.

As it stands they think they're wired to the Playbar, but they're not. They're at the mercy of the Orbi-Orbi wireless connection. Any overuse of the available bandwidth by other network devices, or perhaps inbuilt maintenance of the Orbi mesh when it looks for a better channel, and the connection could suffer and the surrounds run dry of data.

It may work, but it isn't a supported configuration.
Userlevel 7

Hi Cococo

It appears you have everything sorted out. Kudo's ☺️! You do not want to turn off your 5Ghz for reasons you stated and also because Sonos uses the 5Ghz band to communicate with a sub and/or surrounds in a HT setup; as the 2.4Ghz isn't fast enough.

Cheers!
Thanks. So basically there isn't anything inherently wrong with plugging a sonos into an orbi satellite? I was a bit worried that the audio sync would be off between the Playbar and surrounds, but I assume the whole system must have some built in mechanism to time the audio between the 5.1 system?


Typically, you would plug the Sonos product into the main node making sure that the satellites were not in DHCP mode. Therefore I must assume that the satellites are being commanded by the main node as they should be. Sometimes the unorthodox works ☺️! Keep us posted if any issues crop up in the future. However, @ratty is more versed on this than I.

Cheers!
Userlevel 4
Badge +7
Since I turned off the 5GHz on my router, everything is OK!

Thanks for that suggestion but you cannot turn off the 5GHZ Network on an Orbi and it uses 5GHZ for it's backhaul connection to the router.

Anyone have any other info?
Userlevel 4
Badge +7
Hi Cococo

It appears you have everything sorted out. Kudo's ☺️! You do not want to turn off your 5Ghz for reasons you stated and also because Sonos uses the 5Ghz band to communicate with a sub and/or surrounds in a HT setup; as the 2.4Ghz isn't fast enough.

Cheers!


Thanks. So basically there isn't anything inherently wrong with plugging a sonos into an orbi satellite? I was a bit worried that the audio sync would be off between the Playbar and surrounds, but I assume the whole system must have some built in mechanism to time the audio between the 5.1 system?
Userlevel 4
Badge +7
The sync won't be off, but the surrounds could drop out. The amount of buffering in the surrounds is very shallow, as they expect to either be on a dedicated 5GHz connection to the main home theatre player, or wired.

As it stands they think they're wired to the Playbar, but they're not. They're at the mercy of the Orbi-Orbi wireless connection. Any overuse of the available bandwidth by other network devices, or perhaps inbuilt maintenance of the Orbi mesh when it looks for a better channel, and the connection could suffer and the surrounds run dry of data.

It may work, but it isn't a supported configuration.


Thanks ratty,

That's a very good point about Orbi changing backhaul channels etc. I never thought of that. I was just thinking Orbi would have a far more robust and advanced 5GHZ infrastructure than Sonos due to being much newer wifi gear.

I guess the only surefire way to ensure there is never any interference or dropouts is to hardwire using cat 6 all the way to the router directly.
See how you go. It may work, but if it doesn't you'll at least have something to blame.