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Sonos Alarm doesn't always play specified radio station

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I've a Sonos ONE SL pair using the Sonos S2 app with a weekday alarm. I have "Virgin Radio UK" set to come on at 07:27 Mon-Fri which is set through the Sonos Radio Station service.

However, one or two days in the week, a completely different (random?) radio station plays instead. Or, the Sonos chime. Today, I had Radio X, another time I had the BBC World service. The app incorrectly reports that I am playing my chosen station. It is not a particular day it happens. It always seems to be one or two days in the week it happens, or the whole week passes through playing my chosen station as expected.

Is there a known issue/bug as to why a different station to the one defined is played at the set alarm time? It appears that this is a long running issue that is now probably ignored as an agravation to many others.

Also, this issue appears to be repeated across your community channels for the past 2 years! Network interference has been cited as a cause. My system is fully ethernet wired back to my router. Plus, if there was a network issue/outage I would expect no music at all rather than a random staton that does play/stream successfully. A lack of understanding of the app and connections has also been offered by Sonos as a cause as well. I'm sure someone having the ability to set radio alarms would show an adept level of usage.

I do think you have a real issue here in that the Radio Alarm feature is not functioning as expected. Please can this be investigated?

 

Diagnostic information: 352464017

Best answer by Corry P

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Any time that your speakers chime instead of play for an alarm, that means the speaker was unable to establish communications with the streaming server. As you are not using WiFi and no ethernet faults are reported, this can only be due to your network health. To remedy this, I first recommend you switch your WiFi router off for at least 30 seconds. Once you have WiFi again, please reboot your Sonos devices too.

Regarding Radio X - I can see that play on one morning. I can also see that your alarm is indeed for Virgin Radio. The only way I can conceive of Sonos playing the wrong station is if something else told it to at the same time as the alarm. Do you have any alarms set on Alexa or Google? I realise this won’t be on the speakers themselves as they are SLs, but perhaps set on your phone to play on your speakers?

If the wrong station plays again, please immediately submit a diagnostic and record the number given (if taken soon after, the diagnostics will show us the source of the command to play Radio X which the diagnostics you included did not). I recommend you then get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what is occurring.

 

 

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12 replies

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • Answer
  • April 16, 2021

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Any time that your speakers chime instead of play for an alarm, that means the speaker was unable to establish communications with the streaming server. As you are not using WiFi and no ethernet faults are reported, this can only be due to your network health. To remedy this, I first recommend you switch your WiFi router off for at least 30 seconds. Once you have WiFi again, please reboot your Sonos devices too.

Regarding Radio X - I can see that play on one morning. I can also see that your alarm is indeed for Virgin Radio. The only way I can conceive of Sonos playing the wrong station is if something else told it to at the same time as the alarm. Do you have any alarms set on Alexa or Google? I realise this won’t be on the speakers themselves as they are SLs, but perhaps set on your phone to play on your speakers?

If the wrong station plays again, please immediately submit a diagnostic and record the number given (if taken soon after, the diagnostics will show us the source of the command to play Radio X which the diagnostics you included did not). I recommend you then get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what is occurring.

 

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Airgetlam
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  • Airgetlam
    Airgetlam
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  • Monkey501
  • Contributor I
  • 2 replies
  • April 21, 2021

Same here. A lot of occurrences this week after being good for a few months. It used to happen on Sonos Radio Stations so I switched to TuneIn. Now that is playing the wrong station on different days with TuneIn.

The weird thing is the apps shows the correct station. It’s very annoying that it’s been doing this on and off for a year I’d say. Sometimes it plays a station that may have last been played in a different room, sometimes it plays a completely random station that I’ve never listened to.

A fix would be appreciated.

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • April 21, 2021

Hi @Monkey501 

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and circumstance.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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  • pinnpoinnt
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  • Contributor I
  • 5 replies
  • April 23, 2021

Hi @Corry P 

 

Thanks for coming back to me. This week the correct station played each morning! But, as soon as it plays the wrong one again, I’ll make sure to hit the diagnostics button before I change back to the preferred station. I’m sure the issue is still there, just one of those intermittent type of ones.

 

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • April 23, 2021

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

Hey - that’s good news! Thanks for updating. 

Yes - the best way to utilise diagnostics is to submit them straight after you notice an issue (unless it’s a missing room, in which case submit them when it comes back), record the number and then get in touch and let us know (we aren’t notified when diagnostics are submitted).

Fingers crossed!

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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  • pinnpoinnt
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 5 replies
  • April 29, 2021

Hi @Corry P 

This morning the Sonos Chime made an appearance.

Diagnostics 1570454113 has been submitted whilst chime was chiming.

 

Thanks

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • April 30, 2021

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

Your speaker’s attempt to play at 7:30 was halted by a HTTP 500 error - this is usually due to the website (service) server being connected to.

However, I also notice that your DNS resolutions are being handled by a local Synology device - can you try changing your router’s DNS servers to that of Google’s (IPs 8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4), reboot the router and speakers then test again test? Thanks.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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  • pinnpoinnt
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 5 replies
  • May 14, 2021

Hi @Corry P 

Yes, there is a Synology device handling DNS but forwards onto OpenDNS servers. A recent firmware update required all devices to reboot recently. The household streams TV and music fine otherwise.

It’s just odd that often it would be at alarm start time that the connection to the radio station fails to connect. The chime kicked in again yesterday and today.

I’ve submitted diagnostics 271150631 and 2073896350

 

Thanks

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • May 17, 2021

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

Could you please install the myTuner music service? Like TuneIn, this service is a collection of radio stations, and needs no account. (Settings » Services & Voice » Add a Service » [type mytuner] » myTuner » Add to Sonos)

Once done, please change your morning alarm to still play Virgin Radio, but via myTuner instead of TuneIn, and test.

Thanks.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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  • pinnpoinnt
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 5 replies
  • May 26, 2021

Hi @Corry P 

The tuner app I'm using is Sonos Radio. This morning it started a station other than the one defined. When this happens, the app display still shows the imagery of my chosen station, Virgin Radio UK, yet the sound is from a different station. It is by continuing to listen that I can find out what station is playing. This morning, my mystery station was BBC Radio 1. 

As additional information, in the Sonos app, tapping stop and play continues with the same station. Only by tapping on the favourite square for Virgin Radio UK does the sound actually change to Virgin Radio UK.

I would think my DNS settings are fine as the application did reach the correct radio server. Once at the server and passing the station details to play, then something misses the mark. I'm sure if this was happening with another app, such as 'myTuner', I would be directed to their support desk to identify why their service is not acting as expected. 

As Sonos is invested in Sonos Radio to promote HD and other features, it would be in Sonos own interest to identify why in some weeks you have a 60% chance of accurately playing the chosen station at the alarm time. Is there anything at your radio server and the app controller software that isn't lining up?

Yesterday I had the chime, today I had a different radio station.

I’ve submitted diagnostics 1972293357 for further analysis. 


Thanks

Corry P
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  • Corry P
  • Sonos Staff
  • 8516 replies
  • May 26, 2021

Hi @pinnpoinnt 

The first - and most important - step when troubleshooting issues on a particular service is to see if they also happen on another service. Until we do this, we can’t tell if the issue is with the service or something local to your network/system.

pinnpoinnt wrote:

As Sonos is invested in Sonos Radio to promote HD and other features, it would be in Sonos own interest to identify why in some weeks you have a 60% chance of accurately playing the chosen station at the alarm time.

 

Of course, but we need to confirm that it is only Sonos Radio that is affected before we can start looking at it as the problem. Hence trying another service. Please try myTuner.

pinnpoinnt wrote:

Is there anything at your radio server and the app controller software that isn't lining up?

This would result in thousands of reports from our users that just isn’t being seen. The radio servers are hosted by the companies that produce the radio channel - they are not ours - and Sonos Radio takes it’s list of URLs to access third-party stations from TuneIn. As myTuner maintains it’s own, separate list of stations, it’s good to try it as a way to isolate the source of the problem.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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  • pinnpoinnt
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • 5 replies
  • May 26, 2021

Hi @Corry P 

Thanks for the response. 

I’ll try myTuner and feedback on experience. 

Corry P
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  • Corry P
    Corry P
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