AirPlay cuts out on pause

I can’t believe that such a common action is still buggy after so much time. This is literally frustrating me more and more each day and I’m close to abandoning the Sonos ecosystem.

I now tested this with my roam and it’s the same problem. I had a call with the Sonos hotline and they told me a work around is to press the play button on the speaker twice. And that actually works. But they couldn’t tell me when this bug finally is going to be fixed which is disappointing. I mean not being to able to pause and play  is a major problem in my eyes.

I also noticed that when you pause your music via Airplay and then open up the Sonos app, the Sonos app thinks the music never stopped and is still playing. So it seems like the pause command is not getting through correctly.

My father has a Receiver which also is Airplay 2 capable so I will test in the next days if this happens there too or just with my Sonos.

I am 100% sure that does not fix the issue. My MacBook and Sonos are both in 2.4GHz. I also tried to connect the speakers via ethernet cable to may modem and the issue still persists. This is definitely some Airplay issue. If Sonos does not fix them soon I will sell them and am out of their system.

Toms_i, you are right it was a coincidence. Does not fix the issue. 
Ken_Griffiths, thank you for the link however none of those solutions are resolving the issue. 
 

send help, Sonos. 

Having the exact same issue and couldn’t be more frustrated. I bought a Sonos One and used it in the kitchen, mainly with Google assistant, and thought it was great. I then bought into the whole Sonos ecosystem and spent >£3000 on various speakers for every room in the house. I am pretty sure I will be sending these back as it seems clear from all these posts that this isn’t going to be fixed any time soon. 

Every time I want to use Airplay to listen to something (e.g. YouTube) when using my mac I have to connect via settings. If I pause for more than a few seconds, when I press play again the video continues and no sound comes out. I have to reconnect to listen again. This is beyond frustrating. This issue in addition to not being able to increase or decrease the volume with the mac volume buttons just really adds up to a dealbreaker. 

So very disappointed, thought I was onto a real winner as love the aesthetics and sound. However core functionality issues are not being resolved. 

I’m assuming that he has a cable modem or other router to which his airport is connected.  I had airplay working across a subnet like that, but I had similar problems to these - very flaky connections.

Unfortunately this is still an issue after I bought a pair of Sonos One last week.

I found a work-around (doesn’t work 100% of time though) which basically uses Apple Script to simulate the action of connecting to Mac’s default speaker and then connect to Sonos, which I then trigger with one key press using Better Touch Tool

tell application "System Preferences"
	reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "System Preferences"
		tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
			click radio button "Output"
			tell table 1 of scroll area 1
				select (row 1 where value of text field 1 contains "Macbook Pro")
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "System Preferences"
		tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
			click radio button "Output"
			tell table 1 of scroll area 1
				select (row 1 where value of text field 1 contains "Sonos")
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

if application "System Preferences" is running then
	tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end if

Since I bought the Beam from Costco, I am taking it back to them.  This bug was too much of an irritant for me unfortunately.  However, for those who have this problem, there is a workaround if your beam is accessible, i.e. within reach.  Pressing the pause/play button ON THE BEAM, almost always works in picking it up fairly immediately.  If you do the same from your iOS device though, it is a hit or miss - mostly a miss.  But if you want to walk over to your Sonos device and press the button there, it almost always works.  Good luck with your setup!  

Is there still no fix for this?

Hello there,

i just found this topic and wanna share my problem:

i have two Sonos 5 and listen to music either from my iPhone or Apple TV via airplay 2 to it.

everytime I pause music for some time (a few minutes) and press play again the music won’t play again though the Sonos.

weirdly: when I watch YouTube or Netflix on my Apple TV with the Sonos connected, I don’t have this probleM so the audio starts right away again. When I use Spotify or Apple Music and stop it it won’t come back.

it seems like when listening to audio via Airplay 2, the connection goes to idle mode or something and doesn’t wake up again.

it’s really bothering. Is there any chance Sonos will address this problem soon? 
 

This is still an issue unfortunately. I may whip up a little status bar utility for Mac to resolve the issue. Bonus points if I can make it default to using Sonos Airplay on first open.

So great to read this thread. Thanks to all the contributors. 
 

I just bought two Gen 2 SL’s and immediately hit this problem. 
 

I literally had an Arc, two more SL’s, and a mini-sub in my cart ready to overhaul my entire home theatre system and so grateful I didn’t. And now I won’t. I can’t think of a way to acknowledge a problem other than with my wallet. 
 

VLC, QuickTime, streaming apps, and webpages - all the same. Press pause and the audio disconnects when connected via the AirPlay top menu. Whereas my Apple TV and all my old Airport Expresses are rock solid. Sorry Sonos, I guess we’re just not lucrative enough to care about. So I’ll be shopping elsewhere. 

I’m using 2x Symfonisk speakers as stereo pair with ma AppleTV 4K.

Every time I pause the video for more than a few seconds audio dies.

Have to deselect them as audio output and select again for audio to work.

Till the next time, I pause the video.