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Connect Amp keeps dropping out audio

  • 19 September 2023
  • 95 replies
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95 replies

B
Badge +3

OK will do, btw Sonos are still saying that the problem is lack of memory and report the following :

  1. Kitchen ( Connect Amp): Free memory: 1672 KB, 1.66 MB only

  2. Living Room ( Connect Amp): Free memory: 2376 KB, 2.376 MB 

  3. Master Bedroom (Connect Amp) Free memory: 1708 KB, 1.708 MB

  4. Dinning Room ( Connect Amp) Free memory: 1564 KB, 1.564 MB

I guess it is feasible but going to try and set static IP’s next when I get a chance, will let you know.

B
Badge +3

Does anyone know the memory requirements for S2 versus S1 and whether it might be worthwhile downgrading my system to S1 to free up memory?? Im not interested in any bells and whistles and just listen to the radio streams.

B

I have a similar setup and nearly identical isseus to the OP (Big Bull). We have a large multi-room yoga and Pilates studio with 4 Connect:Amp devices, 3 Play:1 devices and 2 One SL devices linked as a stereo pair.

All of the Connect:Amp devices have had frequent (but intermittent) drop outs over the past several months, exactly as the OP described. They are all hard-wired to the network switch, but I still had Wi-Fi enabled on each of them as well (I didn’t know there was an option to disable it until reading this thread). I just disabled WiFi a few minutes ago, so I will see if that improves our situation at all (I suspect it will not based on this thread).

I fully believe that it is likely a memory limitation issue with the S2 software running on these older Connect:Amp devices. However, I don’t know how to find the amount of Free memory for each device, can anyone help me with that?

FWIW, these issues seem to have occured after the June 2023 software update to S2 version 15.5. Interestingly, there is an alert posted in the release notes of the 15.6 update released July 25, 2023 about adjusting how older Sonos products use their internal memory. See below (copied from https://support.sonos.com/en-ca/article/release-notes-for-sonos-s2):

Alerts:

  • With this update, we’ve adjusted how some of our older Sonos products are using their internal memory. Because of this change, updates for Play:1, Play:3, Boost, Connect, Connect:Amp, and Sub (Gen 1 and 2) will take longer to complete than before. The reset process for these products will also take more time to complete after this update.

I am holding out some hope that disabling WiFi may improve the free memory issues a little bit, but if that is not the case then I may consider downgrading our entire system to S1. According to https://support.sonos.com/en-ca/article/sonos-s2-compatibility, One SL devices can only be added to S2 systems, but One SLs that are already part of an S1 system will continue to work as they do today. I guess this means I may have to run 2 separate systems, an S1 system for all of our older devices and an S2 system for the One SLs. This isn’t really a problem since we never link rooms together anyways, but it’s annoying for our 40+ instructors who will all need to have both the S1 and the S2 apps installed on their phones.

Any other advice to try and diagnose our issues before making a major change like this downgrade? Your help is much appreciated!

B
Badge +3

Hi Bill I got fed up chasing my tail with suggestions from Sonos support that I have replaced one of my 4 Connect Amps with the newer Amp which has more memory and so far I haven’t had any drop outs! Still early days so will keep on testing the unit to see if it’s definitely the solution, the remaining Connect Amps are still dropping out intermittently! If this is the solution then it’s a costly one as it means replacing the other 3 😡

J

We are having the same issue. We have 2 connect amps on our S2 system that have been fine for years. Then all of a sudden within the last month and a half both of these amps are dropping the audio and raising and lowering the volume all on their own. Both of these devices are hardwired to our router, and have the wifi turned off. We have a beam, with two play 1s as surrounds, and a Move that are having no problem playing music. 

It seems very suspicious that both of these amps started to exhibit this same behavior at the same time. We have rebooted all of the Sonos devices, as well as the router to see if this was the issue with no success. 

Anyone else seeing this?

Airgetlam

Have you submitted a diagnostic and called Sonos? There are two things that come to mind when reading your post, ducking associated with a voice assistant and/or overheating of the Amps for some reason. A diagnostic would go a long way to finishing out, but unfortunately, those of us in the community have no access to that data, only Sonos employees do. 

Bruce
B
Badge +3

Just quick update on the problem - The new Amp is still working fine and no drop outs so far whereas the Connect Amp in the other room is still dropping out intermittently! I do find that if the Connect Amp is dropping out regularly if I power it down and then power it up again it seems to fix the problem for a few hours which still isn't satisfactory as I dont want to be doing this regularly! It does look increasingly like this is a lack of memory problem caused by Sonos software upgrades eating up more and more memory!!!! As for submitting diagnostics I am not sure it's worthwhile as I submitted numerous diagnostics to Sonos Support (call handlers!!) who insisted it was WiFi interference until finally admitting it was lack of memory! I think anyone with legacy Sonos products has been screwed by Sonos forcing them to spend on new equipment when it isn't necessary for people like me. I dont want any fancy software gimmicks I just want to listen to the radio!!!! Why they cant come clean and issue a software update for the older systems with limited capabilities I dont know but I guess its good for sales!

B

We continue to have intermittent drop-outs on all 4 of our Connect:Amp devices, so here’s my update after 1.5 hours on the phone with Sonos today. They said the diagnostics for one of the Connect:Amp devices the chose to investigate showed multiple major alerts, including:

  • Cannot allocate memory to full status
  • Write failed
  • Player crashed: out of memory
  • OOM Killer

These items all sound like they are related to memory issues with the older Connect:Amp product, as Big Bull mentioned in his previous post.

All 4 of our Connect:Amp devices are wired directly to the network switch and they all have their WiFi radios disabled. I would have thought this would prevent a SonosNet network from being created. We do have some wireless speakers (three Play:1 speakers and two One:SL speakers in a stereo link), however, without WiFi turned on for any of the devices that are wired directly to the network I didn’t think a SonosNet network could be formed.

However, the tech on the phone told me to change my SonosNet channel from Channel 1 to Channel 6, and after waiting a few minutes for this to take effect he did a diagnostic on the same Connect:Amp device that had all the memory errors previously and said that it was coming up clean without errors.

This doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m not sure if it is related yet or not, and it is difficult to tell if this has “solved” anything until we run the system for a while and see if anyone reports intermittent drop-out issues.

The tech also mentioned a “stream underflow” error that is caused when we use the same account from the same services (ie. Apple Music) to play two different songs in two different rooms. I don’t know why this should be an issue since it is a “family” account that has permission to play on up to 5 devices simultaneously and our Internet is plenty fast enough to handle it. Has any one ever come across an issues like this?

Finally, after 1.5 hours the tech asked if I would like to be escalated to a Level 2 tech to answer some of my more “technical” questions, so I said yes. However, there were no Level 2 techs available so they will email me to setup an appointment. Fingers crossed.

 

Airgetlam

I’d really be curious what is meant by ‘OOM killer’. 

Bruce
B
Badge +3

Hi just to update on my Connect Amp problem, it's over 2 weeks now and since replacing the CA with the newer Amp I have not had any problems! I still have problems with dropouts with the other CA and find that if I power it down and up again it seems to fix the problem albeit for a day and I suspect that powering down and up is clearing the memory buffers and so more and more suspect that the problem is lack of memory caused by multiple updates over the years taken up more and more memory! Will be interested to see if Bill’s problem has been fixed!

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

I’d really be curious what is meant by ‘OOM killer’. 

See: https://www.kernel.org/doc/gorman/html/understand/understand016.html

That falls under “should never happen” on an embedded system like Sonos. Someone may have created a memory leak or allocation error when tweaking update coding.

Many tears have been shed by embedded developers over this kind of glitch that can be difficult to find. I’d put them right after “loads and instantly crashes” in programmer pain.

Airgetlam

More evidence that ‘jargon’ shouldn’t be used, a contractions that are unlikely to be known by the general public should be spelled out, the first use. 

Bruce
B

Bad news, we are still having continual drop outs and faults on all 4 of our Connect:Amp products. I spoke with a Level 2 tech at Sonos for an hour today, and the bottom line is that they don’t have an answer, other than these products are reaching the “limits of their capabilities”. 

This sure sounds like tech-speak for “Connect:Amp products don’t have enough memory to support the memory requirements of the S2 software update we rolled out in June 2023”. They really didn’t have any solution, other than to suggest disconnecting all 4 Connect:Amp devices from the network and plug in a different device instead. I will try this, just to say that I did, but I obviously don’t expect it to make any difference. They also suggested ensuring that the “crossfade” and “shuffle” features aren’t used, as this will reduce the load on the devices, but we rarely use those features anyways.

They wouldn’t give me any information on how much memory is being used or how much memory is free on these devices. I asked about downgrading to S1 and they said that is possible but they couldn’t guarantee any improvements. Also, this would involve completely settting up our system from scratch again, since the configuration from the S2 system would not be transferred over to the S1 system. With over 40 users of our current system with 25 different music services, this is not a reasonable option.

I told him as much and he mentioned that some products are eligible for a 15% - 30% discount if buying new replacement products through their upgrade program. I told him I would need a much bigger discount than that (ie. 50%). He put me on hold for 20 minutes and came back to tell me that I was only eligible for a 15% discount. Absolutely infuriating.

I might downgrade one of the Connect:Amps to S1 for a few days to try it and see how it performs. If it works okay, then perhaps I’ll just bit the bullet and roll everything back to S1 and re-setup the system from scratch. Ugh.

B

Same problem, 4 AMP of which two lose sound...

SONOS did a wrong analysis and accidentally said that there were memory failures in some of the units. But since they only give a 2-year warranty, mine was 2.5 years too old.
How can SONOS sell products that obviously have manufacturing problems and then say that they can replace them with a 30% discount on new ones? Wonder if Tesla would sell cars that stop working after 2 years and say, sorry you have to buy a new car every two years because the warranty has expired.
So bad from SONOS so I will be discontinuing my SONOS system and switching to BOSE...

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +2

Hi there.  So I have similar issues as above with 2 connect amps.  (Have posted here eventually the other day,  but haven’t really got anywhere further as I’ve tried all the usual restarts, moving other devices, rewiring, setting fixed IPs, WiFi vs Sonosnet etc.)  These units were fine for years until about summer 23 so very very interested to read about new ‘incompatible’ system software above - as this had occurred to me.  Do others here still have the same problems potentially with memory?

Is it right that hardware can be made unusable because of a software update?  I wonder if this problem is widespread.

D

Exact same issues as described above. Started in June 2023 and have followed all the suggestions with no fix other than buying two new amps to replace the Connect Amp. Historical dealings with Sonos help are similarly frustrating - KPI seems to be how quickly they can get you off the call. Answer to everything is - upgrade to a new product with 15% discount - they must not get much training on any of the products. 
 

 

A

Hello, I have been having similar issues with 2 of my 3 Connect Amps dropping out when playing music, the ones that we use the most are the Kitchen and Garden which I have the issue with but I can have the kitchen and the lesser used lounge one playing together and the kitchen drops out and the lounge continues to play, oddly I never seem to have issues when using the line in from my HDMI matrix for Firestick and Sky audio. Anyway, frustrated at the problem last week I decided to factory reset my Kitchen CA and re-add it to my system, so far I have only had a couple of drop outs and I use the system virtually every day for a couple of hours and most of the day on weekend's fingers crossed this will be a fix for the short term. 
 

I just have a couple of questions, 

Does anyone know if Sonos are going to roll a fix out for this? 
 

I would also like to know if anyone knows where I can find the detailed firmware build release notes, as I have just applied another update today and it’s moved from 76.2-47270 up to 76.2-49050 it would be interesting to know if they are trying to fix the issue.  
 
Thanks

Edit, just to confirm I have disabled the WiFi on all CA’s as they are all wired directly to my network switch. 

Airgetlam

I wouldn’t think it’s really on their radar to roll out a fix, unless you’ve been in communication with them, and provided them diagnostic data that they could hand over to their engineers. 
 

Most unfortunately, Sonos doesn’t post notes for firmware updates. I, too just updated my speakers, and went to look in the release notes, the last entry was back in December, so I think no one outside of Sonos knows what was in this firmware update. But I also am of the impression that when someone does post release notes, it’s only sometimes, and only when they update the controller. Which irks me, too. 

Bruce
M
Badge

Hello all, same issue here, I have 4 connect amps and they keep dropping out, I went away on vacation but before I left I went through an entire day of trouble shooting with support and at the end was told that my product is at the end of its cycle and I need to upgrade…of course they offered me the same BS 15% to upgrade but the more I think about it the more it doesn’t make sense.

Sonos sold products which they rendered useless by upgrading the software without consent…I’m no genius but I believe that this kind of behaviour is liable!? 
 

I noticed that there was another software upgrade in Dec, they worked fine for a few days but are now on the fritz again.

Airgetlam

Sonos did not force any upgrades to operating system software, and in fact went out of their way to continue to support older devices with S1. It remains the consumer’s choice to upgrade to S2 or not. 

It sounds like there are other network issues your system is dealing with, you may want to call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

Bruce
S
Userlevel 1

This same problem has been reported on other threads and Sonos have confirmed the older speakers/devices such as the Connect:Amp and Play3 do run out of memory after a period of continuous running. Apparently the newer speakers/amp have twice the memory. Only fix is to periodically reboot the speakers/Connect:Amp or upgrade 😫

Sonos staff on another thread have said they’re work g on a fix with ‘high priority’ but can give no timelines or realistic likelihood that a fix will eventually be released. My thinking is the longer this goes on the less likely they are to invest time/effort in coding fixes for older kit. Memory leaks to me suggest some resign may be necessary if they’re going to accommodate S2 functionality in older devices with constrained memory.

M
Badge

Sonos did not force any upgrades to operating system software, and in fact went out of their way to continue to support older devices with S1. It remains the consumer’s choice to upgrade to S2 or not. 

It sounds like there are other network issues your system is dealing with, you may want to call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

Not exactly sure what you mean by « sounds like other network issues your system is dealing with » there aren’t and I’ve done the troubleshooting thing with Sonos for several days and tried everything mentioned in all the posts only to be told at the end that the simplest thing is to get new hardware.

also my system has been running fine with no issues up until last June/July and only got worse from there. 
It was at some point that an update created the problem and they are fully responsible. Apple was doing the same thing until they got sued and now you have to specifically accept that your devices performance can decrease with an update. 
 

I can accept evolution but not at a rate of 5 years, and if that’s the case just let me know in advance so that I can chose in advance so I can make an educated decision on which system to dump over 5K$ into. 

A

Just an FYI , I have this exact same problem, its been going on for about a year now. I always play with 2 zones grouped and every now and then one of the zones just stops for a few seconds and then starts again. both zones are Sonos AMPs gen 1 . 1 is hardwired the other is near a boost which is hardwired. At first i thought one of the ams must be getting old and faulty so i swapped it with another one that has had very little use. and same problem still happens.  its annoying but i have learned to live with it.  I thought it was Spotify at first but it also happens with local music on my server. and only 2 the zone that is hardwired. 

A
Userlevel 3
Badge +1

Same problem here.  I have a mix of old connect:amps and newer amps.  I’ve been plagued with recent drop outs whereas the system had been solid and stable for years.  Only recently had it occurred to me that the dropouts are with the older generation amps only.  So it looks like I will have to replace the 3 amps, with a total layout of £2100 minus 15% upgrade.  Not really happy about this.  
 

Based on comments here an earlier firmware upgrade has rendered the older kit less reliable.  The onus really is  on them to acknowledge the issue and provide guidance for their users.  Has there been no official communication on this, or have they let their poor support staff take the flack ?

 

andrew 

K

@Andrew-s : More colour on this issue in the link below:

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/sonos-is-forcing-people-to-buy-new-hardware-as-they-ve-broken-the-connect-amp-and-they-refuse-to-fix-it-6888610?postid=16703518#post16703518

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