Hi all! 

This is a brief follow up to the above previous thread I started. The previous thread was marked as 'answered' and closed for further comment which is strange as it certainly wasn't answered! But good news, after 10 months of tantrums and frustration I finally cracked it!

I wanted to post how I did because I'd say 95% of what fixed it was from other people's comments and help on the last thread. SO THANK ALL OF YOU SO MUCH!

So my problem was an old house, giant thick walls, and my 11 or so speakers constantly cutting out and freezing. I had a netgear orbi mesh system. Now this mesh system was fantastic, but I couldn't get it to play ball with the speakers and the switch between them. Eventually I gave up on the orbi, and bought an Asus router that just manages to reach all the corners of my house. This helped a lot! But didn't fix it

Someone recommended I got MANAGED switch, but this was actually making it worse (see below..) although the system wouldn't be much better with a dumb switch. Eventually I cracked the settings on the router and the switch, as below. So I did need a managed switch, I just needed to get into its settings and turn off its networking flooding function.

So feel free to delete this or move it if it's in the wrong place or not the done thing, but below is my set up and settings in case anyone ever finds themselves in my position!

My router is an Asus RT-AC88U 

The switch is a TP-LINK TL-SG108E 

On the router, the following turned off:

Beam forwarding

Mu-mimo

Airtime fairness 

And then turn on its:

Igmp snooping

And then the speakers plugged into a MANAGED switch. Not an unmanaged one. And this where the final act was. The switch then needs to have its STP protocols turned on, and disable its function to prevent network looping (this was very difficult to do as I had to reset the switch a few times. I got the impression they aren't designed for the casual user to go sniffing around the settings). Basically between the router and the switch it was stopping the speakers communicating with each other. Identifying it as a flooding of the networking and blocking it. The orbi mesh added to these woes as it essentially seemed to double everything with every access point I had in place. 

Then plug at least 2 speakers into the switch

Separate the speaker's mesh channel so it is a different channel to the router (and next door) 

And set dedicate IP addresses to each individual speaker. And our smart printer. As the printer causes issues.

Honestly it was that easy…

Now hopefully someone who knows more than me doesent come in and say the settings above are dangerous or something...I'm just happy it works! 

Again, thanks for your help everyone!