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Songs stop playing at end of songs

  • 16 February 2022
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Strange problem.  I have a pair of Fives.  If I’m playing ripped music from the Apple music app on my iPad or iPhone, or from the Amazon Prime app on either, it will play a handful of songs, and then stop.  It’s always at the end of a song, never in the middle, and happens pretty much every time I use it.  It might be after two, three, four, five, etc.  No consistency.  I use my iPhone daily in my car with CarPlay, and it’s never happened.  I also have a HomePod in my office that I stream to from my iPhone (also AirPlay), and it’s never happened there either.  So it’s two different music sources, two different devices, and only with the Sonos speakers.  I also have the Sonos skill setup and can stream from an Echo, and that never stops.  Anyone else experience this?

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Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 19 February 2022, 18:59

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27 replies

Ken_Griffiths

I have quite a few suggestions that you can give some thought to and perhaps try…

Whenever you Airplay to a Sonos (or other 3rd party) speaker the audio stream from the online service passes to the speaker via the mobile device - So I suggest to perhaps first try disabling the iOS MAC Spoofing feature on your iOS device WiFi connection settings. The feature is called ‘Private Address’ - Also if there are any security features on the phone try temporarily disabling those.

Consider switching off WiFi Assist.

If no joy after that, then try the mobile device connected to your routers 2.4Ghz band.

On the router itself, fix the 2.4Ghz band to a non-overlapping channel 1, 6 or 11 and try a channel-width of 20MHz only.

If using SonosNet, then set its channel in the Sonos App Network Settings so it is at least 5 channels away from your chosen router channel and see if these suggestions will perhaps fix your Apple Airplay issues on the local network.

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Good suggestions (I’m an IT Director and know the settings), and I will try them.  But I’m guessing you haven’t experienced this problem before?

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I guess I’m still thinking this is some sort of application issue since it only happens at the end of songs. I’ve never had a song stop in the middle or had any issues that seemed to indicate packet loss.

Ken_Griffiths

Good suggestions (I’m an IT Director and know the settings), and I will try them.  But I’m guessing you haven’t experienced this problem before?

I am an iOS user, but I’ve not personally encountered the Airplay issue mentioned, so those suggestions are just ones I would have maybe considered trying myself.

I don’t think it’s a software/firmware issue with the Airplay beacon on the Sonos speakers, as I think perhaps ‘others’ here  might have complained about the issue in the community and I haven’t seen that, not yet at least. 

So it seemed sensible (at this stage) to highlight those few things to try to just see if any may solve the problem.

Airgetlam

In the over 10 years I’ve been in this forum, I don’t recall a single instance of this type of thing. 

The challenge here is AirPlay 2 is not in the Sonos domain, so we don’t really know if the failure is for the content to get to the Sonos, hence stopping playback, or if there’s some other software issue on Apple’s sid, or your network, that’s dropping the connection to the Sonos speaker. It feels like Ken’s suggestions are all ways of making sure that the AirPlay 2 signal is reaching the Sonos device where the application is running (on a Linux kernel, inside the speaker) . None of this addresses why it would be only occurring after a song, and not in the middle, but as we’ve not seen this behaviour before, he’s suggesting, and I second, a more general approach. Although I do often wonder about the timeout that Apple has implemented when sending a stream to a non-Apple device, which seems, based on common reports, to be shorter than average. If you browse these forums, you’ll see occasional mentions of “disconnects” that frequently occur when someone pauses the music being sent by AirPlay 2 for a relatively short amount of time.

However, if you feel it may be an issue with the content being stopped after transit to the Sonos application running on the speaker, you could choose to submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it. Sonos would be aware of only the data once it’s received by Sonos, and any information in the submitted diagnostic would be restricted by that….it would not be able to suss out issues on your iPhone, for instance, since that’s before it enters Sonos’ world.

It’s possible 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.

Bruce
Ken_Griffiths

I guess I’m still thinking this is some sort of application issue since it only happens at the end of songs. I’ve never had a song stop in the middle or had any issues that seemed to indicate packet loss.

Well I can’t disagree with these thoughts, for sure, but it’s not an issue I’ve come across (yet), or seen others complain about here. However, I don’t think anything can be ruled out (or in) at this stage. I’m just suggesting a few things to maybe try, just to see if it perhaps does solve the matter.. it’s still early days.

If the problem does persist, there is still the option to submit a Sonos system diagnostic report and to follow that up with chatting to Sonos Support Staff via this LINK at some later point.

Ken_Griffiths

Ah Bruce beat me to it, but his post explains my thinking, that it’s perhaps worth trying the things suggested and then maybe move onto the Sonos Support Staff option afterwards, that’s if the problem isn’t resolved.

Airgetlam

We often agree, Ken :)

Bruce
Ken_Griffiths

We often agree, Ken :)

I’ve been found out.. That will teach me to copy, adjust and post your replies elsewhere here in the community. ha 😂

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Thanks, both of you.  I’ll try these (one at a time) and update results.  Just disabled MAC spoofing.

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Update:  I disabled MAC address spoofing.  No change.  Before I moved on to the next suggestion, I noticed something else likely related.  When it gets to the point where it stops playing at the end of a song (Fixing a Hole from Sgt. Pepper in this case), when I look at the Apple Music app and at the Sonos app, both are showing it still playing in the middle of the previous song (Getting Better in this case).  If I tap the skip to the next song arrow, it starts playing Fixing a Hole again.  While I haven’t confirmed this exact same oddity with the Amazon Prime app, I do experience the same issue with stopping at the end of a song with it, so I don’t think this is an Apple Music app bug.  It also is not device specific since I have the same issue with my iPhone 13 Pro and my iPad Pro, both running 15.3.1.  Seems to be some sort of AirPlay feedback issue maybe?

Airgetlam

I’d suggest it’s some sort of wifi interference issue, where the speaker is losing connection to the network, and playing the rest of its buffer before dropping. The fact that it’s not showing the correct playback information in the controller certainly suggests some sort of interruption between the speaker and your router, or your router and the controller device. The controller should be reflecting what is happening at the moment on your speaker. If it’s not “current”, it suggests some sort of disconnect. 

Bruce
Airgetlam

Just as a random thought, and looking back on Ken and my responses, I don’t see a simple network refresh being suggested. Unplug all your Sonos devices from power, then reboot the router. Once the router comes back up, plug back in all the Sonos devices. This forces them to get new IP addresses from the router’s refreshed DHCP table….it’s possible that duplicate IP addresses could be at the root of this issue, unless you’ve got reserved IP addresses, in which case this process wouldn’t help. 

Bruce
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Good suggestion.  I may go ahead and assign them static IPs just to eliminate this possibility.

Airgetlam

Eliminating that as a possibility is an excellent step. Could be the issue, may not be, but knocking down those potentials one at a time should help the honing in process :)

Would that networking was not so complex…. 

Bruce
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No love.  Got them both and static IPs and stopped after the second song.  The frustrating thing is I’ll work on my home office 3-4 days a week with it streaming to my HomePod all day long and have never had so much as a hiccup.

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 Meant to say “got them both on static IPs”.

Airgetlam

At least we’ve removed that as a possibility. So, the next time it happens, I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

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

Unfortunately, none of us unwashed outsiders from Sonos have access to that hard data….I’m assuming there’s liable to be personally identifiable information in it, and for legal reasons, they don’t want us to see. 

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.

Bruce
Ken_Griffiths

Update:  I disabled MAC address spoofing.  No change.  Before I moved on to the next suggestion, I noticed something else likely related.  When it gets to the point where it stops playing at the end of a song (Fixing a Hole from Sgt. Pepper in this case), when I look at the Apple Music app and at the Sonos app, both are showing it still playing in the middle of the previous song (Getting Better in this case).  If I tap the skip to the next song arrow, it starts playing Fixing a Hole again.  While I haven’t confirmed this exact same oddity with the Amazon Prime app, I do experience the same issue with stopping at the end of a song with it, so I don’t think this is an Apple Music app bug.  It also is not device specific since I have the same issue with my iPhone 13 Pro and my iPad Pro, both running 15.3.1.  Seems to be some sort of AirPlay feedback issue maybe?

Admittedly, I find what you describe here with the playing track ‘progress bar’ in both mobile Apps as showing something isn’t quite right - it is almost like the playing mobile device has lost its connection halfway through the playing track. Is there any type of security software or VPN running on your mobile devices?

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Nope.  No VPN, adblock, adguard, or any other security apps on either on either device.

I went ahead and submitted a diagnostic to Sonos (I can reproduce the problem very easily - not sure I’ve ever played an entire CD uninterrupted).  Contacted support, and they were of no use whatsoever.  They said there was nothing abnormal in the diagnostic report, and no indication of wireless interference.  They best they came up with was “maybe it’s a limitation of AirPlay, and we can’t control that”.  I let them know that 1) I’ve been streaming from the same devices to my HomePod on the same WiFi network for two years and never had an issue, and 2) if it’s an AirPlay limitation, and Sonos only allows AirPlay and not BlueTooth, that makes it a Sonos limitation and the devices therefore useless to me.  Obviously, I’m not buying that theory.  In the end, they gave me nothing to go on except suggesting a factory reset.  And given they saw no reason to indicate that was going to fix anything, that’s not a solution.  That’s just shotgunning it.  These may be going back to Best Buy.  I'm pretty frustrated as there are no other AirPlay speaker options out there with the sound quality of the Fives.

Ken_Griffiths

Nope.  No VPN, adblock, adguard, or any other security apps on either on either device.

I went ahead and submitted a diagnostic to Sonos (I can reproduce the problem very easily - not sure I’ve ever played an entire CD uninterrupted).  Contacted support, and they were of no use whatsoever.  They said there was nothing abnormal in the diagnostic report, and no indication of wireless interference.  They best they came up with was “maybe it’s a limitation of AirPlay, and we can’t control that”.  I let them know that 1) I’ve been streaming from the same devices to my HomePod on the same WiFi network for two years and never had an issue, and 2) if it’s an AirPlay limitation, and Sonos only allows AirPlay and not BlueTooth, that makes it a Sonos limitation and the devices therefore useless to me.  Obviously, I’m not buying that theory.  In the end, they gave me nothing to go on except suggesting a factory reset.  And given they saw no reason to indicate that was going to fix anything, that’s not a solution.  That’s just shotgunning it.  These may be going back to Best Buy.  I'm pretty frustrated as there are no other AirPlay speaker options out there with the sound quality of the Fives.

As you also use Amazon Prime, what happens if ..

  • You use Amazon ‘Connect’ to the Sonos Speakers instead of Airplay?
  • You play Amazon Music tracks from a streaming playlist from within the Sonos App?

Note it’s a little unfair to compare the ‘Airplay-to-HomePod’ to ‘Airplay-to-Sonos’ playback, as the stream in the latter goes through the mobile device… playing music from the Sonos App-to-Sonos would be a fairer comparison as they each then are playing from the source direct to the speaker without going through the mobile device.

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I would be able to do that for the Prime app.  But I don’t use the Apple Music service.  All my music is ripped from CDs to iTunes and synced to my iOS devices and I play it from the Apple Music app.  There’s no way I’ve found to add that to the Sonos app.  I asked the support tech that as well and he had no solution.  So I have to way to stream my ripped music from Sonos app-to-Sonos.

Ken_Griffiths

@pyoung62 

I’ve recently started an Amazon Music playlist here (3 Ed Sheeran albums) streaming through an iPhone XR to play over Airplay to a stereo pair of Sonos Ones (called Utility).

I’ve let the AM App goto background and left the iPhone with its screen off and will see what happens. It’s just playing the 6th track in the playlist - so I’ll see how that goes. How long do your playlist tracks usually play for (approx. time?) before they stop?

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Ken_Griffiths

Just to add the iPhone XR is running iOS v15.3.1 so that’s as close as I can get to try to replicate things. It’s just completed airplaying the whole of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Equals’ Album and is now continuing with the ‘Divide’ Album … The ‘Plus’ Album will then follow that, (that’s assuming the music continues playing).

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So I did a factory reset on both of my Fives.  Despite the fact that as an IT professional, nothing bothers me more than a support tech “troubleshooting” a problem by saying “have you tried rebooting”, I figured I had nothing to lose.  If I decided to punt (and I really didn’t want to - they sound so good), I was going to want to reset them anyway.  I set them back up into a new stereo pair, and I just listened to Sgt. Pepper from start to finish with no interrupts.  One sample doesn’t prove anything, but I’m pretty certain I’ve never had an entire CD play without interruption before.  So I just started Abbey Road.  Stopped after track 3, and both the Apple Music app and the Sonos app show it still playing track 2, but the elapsed time isn’t advancing, which is odd since it does not show it as paused.

To answer your question about how long it would take before it would stop, it really varies.  I was doing my troubleshooting for this post (and with the support case) with Sgt. Pepper.  Until this last play where it played through, it would pause anywhere from the end of track 2 (~3 min) to track 5 (~13 min).

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