Hi @Chompy5, welcome to the Sonos Community!
As you’ve got a fairly large system, including large groups of speakers, it may help to switch to a wired setup. Would it be possible to connect 2 or 3 speakers (that are not surrounds or a Sub) to the network via Ethernet cable?
That should help to reduce the load on any single player in the system. I’d also recommend trying to start groups from a wired speaker, as that will provide a more consistent connect for the group as a whole.
If you’re still having trouble with additional players wired to the network, it may be worth taking a look at our guide on Reducing Wireless Interference - especially handy when there are a lot of wireless devices on the network, and other wireless networks in the area.
if none of this helps though, feel free to get in touch with our Support Team via either phone call or live chat, and they’ll have tools available to perform some live troubleshooting with you :)
Hi @Chompy5, welcome to the Sonos Community!
As you’ve got a fairly large system, including large groups of speakers, it may help to switch to a wired setup. Would it be possible to connect 2 or 3 speakers (that are not surrounds or a Sub) to the network via Ethernet cable?
That should help to reduce the load on any single player in the system. I’d also recommend trying to start groups from a wired speaker, as that will provide a more consistent connect for the group as a whole.
@Xander P, is there an optimal number of speakers to wire for best performance? Or is the answer as many as possible? For example, if there are 12 rooms/zones in a household, and you can easily wire 3 of them, 5 of them with a bit more effort...is 3 enough?
Hi @melvimbe, great question!
In general, the more Sonos speakers/devices you can wire to the network the less likely you are to have connection issues - Ethernet will always be able to provide a more stable connection than WiFi.
Whether you need to have all of those devices wired to the network however is a different question, and how stable your system is on WiFi can be affected by group size, playback content, and local wireless interference - a 12 room system on WiFi might be absolutely fine, if you only listen to a room or two at once, however you might have problems adding more rooms to the group, or playing a high-res music service.
This makes it difficult to recommend an optimal number of wired devices to have in a system, but to bring it back to your example - If you’re having problems in a 12 room system, and you can easily wire 3 of them, then I would say keep things simple and just wire 3 to start with - 1 wired speaker for every 3 or 4 wireless speakers is usually more than sufficient.
Sometimes of course, that won’t be enough, and a bit more effort may be needed to wire some more speakers, but it’s always good to try the “less hassle" approach first.
