Playbar with a mind of its own

Due to it playing a single track from your NAS, that suggests that there is a potential ‘alarm’ set up on your system, and the alarm is normally stored on the speaker, and not technically in your controller. 

There’s occasionally other reasons, but as it’s playing from your NAS (you’re sure about that, correct?), it boils down to an alarm. The more frequent case is actually an open connection with another user to Spotify Direct on your system, but that would play a source from Spotify, and not your NAS.

Since you have other Sonos components in your system that store data about your setup, there is no reason why you couldn’t do a complete factory reset of just the PLAYBAR and re-add it to your system.

However, I’d recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.

Factory reset will cause more work and not solve this.

Offhand I cannot think of a reason why Apocalyptica will play if it is not in the Queue. Is it possible that an alarm was set or that the track was played from an App, not from your SONOS controller?

As a test, you could leave a different track in each player’s queue. You could leave the NAS shut down. Another test would be to disable PLAYBAR’s Autoplay.

Wouldn’t AutoPlay imply the signal is coming in to the PLAYBAR from the TV?

Check for any Line-In Autoplays targeting the Playbar.

Ah, hadn’t thought about other devices pointing at the PLAYBAR, excellent catch, thank you. I was thinking of the PLAYBAR in isolation. 

I have been using Sonos since 2010 and have four different players ZP90, ZP120, Play 1 and Playbar.  It runs, obviously under Sonos 1. Over the years it has all worked very well indeed although the CR 200 control unit, which was miles ahead of the phone app that I now have to use, has stopped charging which is unfortunate but Sonos had abandoned this excellent piece of kit years ago, I suppose, because it was regarded as too costly when an app was no extra cost.

I now have a problem that I am in the process of trying to solve.

The problem is that at random or irregular intervals the Playbar (and only the Playbar), which is attached to the TV and set to play the TV sound, suddenly and without warning plays music. This can happen three time a day or it might not happen for several days.  It is always one particular recording from my Music Library (Apocalyptica plays Metallica, since you asked, something of an acquir­­ed taste and not greatly appreciated by the OH), although not always the same track. Sonos shows no queue.  I can override the problem by reassigning the Playbar to TV, if I am there. As far as I know, this has never happened when the TV is being played.

As an aside, I have tried looking on a forum or two but this situation is not, in my view, amenable to concise and unambiguous search terms so I have not found anything although there may be something there somewhere.

Why this occurs I do not yet understand but it may be relevant that I recently retired my old Netgear Stora NAS that had given over 10 years of good service with one disc replacement which went perfectly.  I now have a Synology DS220+ which seems a fine device which offers abundant facilities beyond my dreams and my abilities to use.  This uses DS 6.2, as I think that to change to DS 7 would eliminate SMB 1 and thus be useless for Sonos. (Why  they do not update the software to use SMB 3 I do not know).  I think that I could get round that by using a container under Docker but I dare not try it as I do not think that I can return to 6.2 if I fail, the most likely outcome of my first brush with Linux.

The NAS, and my phone, has DS Audio installed and I have used this with the phone and can connect directly to any of the Sonos components (and a Chromecast Audio which would then play through a ZP 120). Interestingly the phone shows the IP addresses of all the Sonos components and there are no duplications.

I am fairly sure that I last did this, as an experiment, with that same recording of Apocalyptica.

I am about to set out on some steps that, hopefully, resolve this problem and allow me to diagnose where the problem actually lies bit as I start these, I would like to know if anyone has had this issue and been able to solve it.

The steps that I intend to try are as follows:

1      Reboot router and phone – already done, several time, to no avail.

2      Disconnect the Playbar and reconnect after a short period of time – again already done, to no avail.

3      Shut down the NAS and restart – yet to do.

4      Shut down all Sonos components and then restart – yet to do

5      Shut down NAS and all Sonos and restart, NAS first

6      Shut down everything and restart in Router, NAS Sonos order.

7      Wait for it to occur and leave it (at little or no volume) until the end of the recording is reached.

I would appreciate any comment on these steps. Also, I do not, at this stage, intend to try a factory reset.

Should I carry these steps  out and succeed, or fail, I will document the process on this thread. Please understand that my IT abilities are somewhat limited and I would thus appreciate any advice at all that can help

Thanks

Airgetlam

Thanks for your very clear and prompt response.

Initial points in reply:

1      I do not think that it is playing a single track.  It is playing different tracks from a single folder (CD originally)

2      Certainty about NAS. Having just checked, Spotify does have the album but I am certain that I have never played it from Spotify.  I have assumed that it is from the NAS but cannot be absolutely certain that is actually the case.  I know of no way of determining where the music is played from; there is  no queue.

3          Alarms.  I cannot remember having used the facility although there is a stored alarm (7.00am) on the ZP 90. When it last operated I have no idea – years not months., if ever.

4          “The more frequent case is actually an open connection with another user to Spotify Direct on your system, but that would play a source from Spotify, and not your NAS.”  I am not sure that I understand this, particularly the reference to another user on my system; I am the only user on my system. I am also unsure what you mean by Spotify Direct. Googling this suggests that is something to do with uploading to Spotify.

5          I will obtain a System Diagnostic after the next event and then, as you suggest, contact Sonos support for further help

Many thanks for you suggestions

A few more points:

Line In:  The ZP90 and Zp120 have line-in facilities.  These are both used, one by another TV and the other from my Meridian preamp which allows use of a radio receiver or Chromecast Audio.

Queues on other devices:  Other devices usually but perhaps  not always, have tracks on them from past plays.

I am not quite sure what a Line-In Autoplay is but given what the Line Ins are used for, it seems to me unlikely but obviously I could be wrong.

It remains my view/guess, albeit unaffected by either knowledge or expertise, that in some way there is some ‘invisible’ link, not necessarily within Sonos but perhaps in my phone or in the NAS that allows random plays by my Playbar.

Over the next few days I will take the steps I have mentioned.  It will inevitably take time because there is no time limit for me to assume that the problem has been solved.

Shut down any services on the Synology box which you don’t need. 

Spotify Direct allows a user to access your system, using the Spotify client, and not the Sonos controller.

 The initial connection is when they are connected to your WiFi, as a visitor would be. Then the Sonos devices would show up as targets using the Spotify client. However, once that ‘direct’ connection is made, it is not broken when they leave your local WiFi system, Spotify remembers the connection. In order to break that connection that Spotify is holding on to, you have to stream something that is not Spotify.  If you don’t do that, whoever had a pointer in their Spotify client maintains that pointer, even though they are no longer in your local wifi. Which allows them to, often unwittingly, play music on your system. 

Thanks for these replies.

Since I last posted, things have moved on a little. I had not seen either of the last two posts when the following occurred.

As I was preparing to go to bed last night, Apocalyptica started up again and instead of shutting it off by reassigning the Playbar to TV, I left it running with Volume = 0.  I awoke at about 6.00 and decided to look at what the situation was. Apocalyptica was still playing - and there was a queue!!.  Wonderful, I thought. I will clear the queue and all will be well - not so, unfortunately.  The queue was cleared but  Apocalyptica played on.

I then decided to group the Playbar with the Play 1. This worked perfectly well and Apocalyptica played on both.  I degrouped with the choice of Apocalyptica  playing only on the Play 1.  This worked and the Playbar was clear – for about 4  seconds when Apocalyptica started up again. I gave up at that point but at about 8.00 went back to Sonos to find that Apocalyptica  was still playing but that the Play 1 was playing a different album (Tincian: 9Bach) again without queue.  It is some weeks/months since I last selected this album and I seem to remember that this too was an album that I had selected via DS Audio, although I could be wrong.

As I write, 9Bach are showing on the Play 1 but the album has played through; there is no queue. It will retsrat to play quite happily with no queue.

The Television is in use and has thus overridden Apocalyptica on the Playbar.  Next time the problem occurs I will submit diagnostics.  As I am in UK it is the middle of the night in the US so to try to contact Sonos at this time of day 9.30 UK and 5 – 8 hours earlier in the US will probably be futile. I will try this afternoon, if I have time.

I will also stream something from Bandcamp to both the Playbar and the Play 1 separately, to see if there is an effect, although it will be some time before I would know if all is solved.

One point that I should have made in response to Airgetlam’s last post is that nobody outside myself and household - the OH - has ever accessed my WiFi with my knowledge. My log-on details are known only to me (OH has no interest in that sort of thing).  My WiFi may be visible to others outside the house but it is secured and I have always though it was safe - could be wrong though.

It sounds as though a UPnP control point could be targeting Sonos players, sending music from a UPnP (DLNA) server on the NAS. It could be that DS Audio is such a control point; I haven’t looked.

As recommended above, go into the NAS config and shut down such services. See if the problem goes away.

Hi @nyaliman1,

If you are able to catch the behaviour happening again, and are able to submit a diagnostic as suggested earlier, I would like to take a look at that for you to see where the playback is originating from.

Feel free to post the confirmation number in this thread and I’ll give it a look over.

James L

I have just caught it happening again and submitted diagnostics with a conf number of 366162550

If you can help I would be grateful.

James L

Many thanks.

Audio Station is indeed an App on Synology. It organises music  files and can play them on phone, computer or any Sonos component that it can find.  I suspect that it uses UPNP to do this but please do not infer from that that I know what I am talking about.  There are no alarms available in Audiostation.

Any way, after a bit of digging I found a queue which assigned the Apocalyptica tracks to the Playbar and I have cleared it.

While I do not understand (and quite likely never will) why this should have started playing at random, I feel pretty sure that the matter will now be resolved although I will wait a day or two before being absolutely certain.

I am very grateful for the help that you and all those who also posted have given me. 

I hope that should anyone else have the same issue, which I would have though is quite possible, they will be able to find the answer from this thread, although how they will search for it I don’t know but that is a much wider issue for us all.