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I have Sonos throughout the house, including an Amp and surrounds in the living room, Fives upstairs - and Play:1s and One SLs downstairs, across multiple rooms.

Always worked perfectly until a couple of months ago. I’ve switched to Qobuz, so presumably data throughput is higher than when everything was Spotify, Mixcloud, Bandcamp, etc. However - that doesn’t really explain the problem as far as I can tell.

When I join the Kitchen speakers to the Veranda (both stereo pairs), I get massive dropouts. The Veranda is the closest room in the house to the kitchen. Individually, the zones play music absolutely fine. Different albums on Qobuz at the same time in every room, no problem. Same album at the same time when grouped, if Kitchen and Veranda are both in the mix, always results in terrible dropouts.

I bought a Boost in the hopes that might help. We’re on a Google mesh wifi setup, which I understand is problematic unless you connect the Boost directly into the main hub, which I’ve done. I’ve also connected the Kitchen R speaker to the Boost by ethernet - and disabled wifi on that speaker in case that was an issue.

Honestly I have tried everything I can think of including fixed IP addresses for individual Sonos speakers and replacing the speakers themselves with the newer ones I bought to install in an upstairs bedroom when the renovations are done. Keep coming back to the same problem. I’ve tried having the Veranda as the main speakers, and the Kitchen as the main speakers. Makes no difference. 

The only thing left I can think of is that I have IKEA Trådfri lightbulbs connected to a hub and controlled via wifi. There are a bunch of those in the kitchen, reasonably near to the Sonos speakers. Could that possibly be a thing?

The problem could be wireless interference from the IKEA lights/hub or other WiFi devices in your home. It could also be that your network just can’t handle the higher bandwidth audio from Qobuz playing on multiple speakers. Or it could be a combination of both.

Try unplugging the hub for the IKEA lights to see if it makes a difference.

Read this article for other tips on how to reduce wireless interference:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/3286?language=en_US

It is also best to keep WiFi enabled on all of your Sonos devices even though you are using a Boost.

Have you tried wiring the left kitchen speaker directly to the main router and leave the Boost disconnected?

No, I haven’t tried that. If you mean: 1) unplug the Boost from the Google main hub; 2) leave ‘Kitchen R’ plugged into the Boost; and 3) plug ‘Kitchen L’ into the Google hub where the Boost had been, then it seems counterintuitive, but worth a try.

Data streaming around the house seems more than capable of the higher res audio of Qobuz. After all, it can stream multiple albums to multiple speakers simultaneously. We’re on 300Mb internet speeds and the Google mesh network is reporting good connection across the three pucks. I’ve done everything on the wireless interference reference page, including trying every wifi channel on all configurations of this system. The only thing I can’t change is the Google mesh wifi channel because it’s trying to be ‘clever’ by automatically selecting the best one and won’t let you manually override as far as I can tell.

Trying your ‘so crazy it might just work’ approach now. Cheers.

Good lord. Maybe too early to say for sure, but that seems to have done the trick. It hasn’t resulted in me understanding the networking dark arts any better, but my music is currently not peppered with short silences. Will report back if anything changes. Thanks for your help, kind wizard.

Hi

Great suggestions by @GuitarSuperstar 

To help you better understand what improved your Sonos here’s a bit of Sonos 101…

I have a tri-level home using an Asus AiMesh network that consists of a GTX-AX 11000 router as the Main (hub) and two GT AC5300 routers as Nodes. All routers are tri-band (i.e. 2.4Ghz x 1 and 5Ghz x 2) The Nodes are connected to the main by Ethernet cable (backhaul) to facilitate a more stable connection vs. using a 5Ghz wifi channel. The nodes are not DNS capable which means they cannot create/assign an IP address. IP Addresses are assigned by the GTX-AX11000 (main). The later is key to a stable Mesh network.

My home employs multiple Philips Hue smart devices, Arlo security cameras and door bell, AppleTV’s, iPhones, Alexa devices and LG appliances...all on my network. All Sonos is isolated to the SonosNet.

The SonosNet can be created by a dedicated Boost module wired to your main router or by wiring a Sonos speaker to the same. The SonosNet can be strengthen by wiring additional speakers to the Main or to a switch connected to the Main. There is no need to disable wifi on the individual Sonos speakers when using SonosNet. In fact surrounds bonded to a Sonos Arc, Beam, Playbar or Playbase utilize the 5Ghz band supplied by the aforementioned.

In conclusion it appears you have successfully established the SonosNet for Sonos. So there is no unexplained network magic or alchemy in play with your setup. If problems arise again other measures may need to be employed to resolve your issues. 

 

The SonosNet can be created by a dedicated Boost module wired to your main router or by wiring a Sonos speaker to the same. The SonosNet can be strengthen by wiring additional speakers to the Main or to a switch connected to the Main.

 

Everything after ‘main router’ was new information to me. Thanks so much.

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