Sonos is forcing people to buy new hardware as they've broken the Connect:Amp and they refuse to fix it

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Ken_Griffiths

I would not ever suspect Sonos of doing anything like this deliberately, that’s bordering on paranoia. The following is certainly far more likely the issue here…

Particularly if the device referred to here is an early/older Connect:Amp (gen1 or 2), then I would suspect that over the years the Connect:Amp memory modules are simply incurring more and more bad cells, which the OS is likely marking as ‘unusable’ and the device is perhaps slowly running out of steam… these things do not last forever.

If the Connect:Amp is acting as the root-bridge for a SonosNet network then, if practicable, swap it out for a newer more-modern product and maybe try not to use it as a group co-ordinator. Remove any unnecessary services, playlists, favourites etc. and see if that might improves things. It maybe worth replacing any network cables too (just in case).

M

At this moment I’m having mixed feelings about this. 
on the one hand, I’m happy that I found fellow sufferers in this topic, because indeed I’m having the same problems with my CA since more then a year. In my setup it is coupled with a Sub, and when the music stops playing on the amp, you still can hear the sub continuing to blow the deep basses of that particular song around. 
On the other hand I think it’s a bit scandalous that Sonos is forcing users to renew their devices. You can’t tell me that they weren’t aware in advance of that memory shortage…. What I did notice is that the audio drops away more often when I’m using radio streams iso Spotify for example. 

buzz

Just to update on this, I have 4 CA’s which are only 6 years old so no I don’t expect them to last forever but I do expect more than 6 years of life out of them! All 4 exhibit dropout problems, I replaced as advised one of them with the newer Amp and guess what this one has been working fine for weeks!! The problem as I see it is that Sonos have issued multiple software updates that have eaten up the memory space causing dropouts! A lot of these updates are providing system enhancements which quite frankly I’m not interested in as all I want to do is stream live radio programs! As a result I have to scrap 4 CA’s which would normally work perfectly well and replace with the newer Amp’s which won’t do anymore than my 4 older CA’s for what I want.🙁🙁🙁🙁

Consider the possibility that a certain part, probably a section of RAM in this case, tends to fail at a certain age. In a perfect design/manufacturing environment all units would fail at exactly the same time. But there are variables, such as production batch, operating environment, etc. that introduce variability. Large service centers become familiar with the typical failures and can often tell the customer what is wrong, once a model number is given. In many cases it is not necessary to power up the unit before making the repair and the unit will be fine when powered up. This does not necessarily mean that all units will fail, but the units that have failed, are typically for the same reason in a high percentage of cases. And the reason may change over time as parts age.

Mother Nature is never fair.

If there is an intermittent area in RAM, firmware updates are risky because the memory footprint moves around during the update. Think, changing socks while running. It is possible that a routine or two end up in the bad section of RAM or the data cache is involved. The next firmware update may result in the bad area being mapped out of daily use. Also, the failure could be intermittent. This can result in some firmware updates being successful, while others fail.

In your specific case I don’t think that we can generalize that all CONNECT:AMP’s are having your issue, but your’s might all be from the same batch. This Community is similar to a hospital. After a quick tour, even during a pandemic, it’s easy to conclude that “everyone” is sick, but if you look out the window you’ll see most people are well and going about their business as usual.

Manufacturers are reluctant to share failure data with the public because there is high risk of a misunderstanding. I’m aware of a speaker model (not a SONOS product) where there was 100% failure of new speakers and replacement parts would fail in shipment. After some research it was determined that a single person on the assembly line was not following procedures over a three day period. This is a decades old incident and speakers manufactured before and after this incident are still functional. An early news release about this incident could have crippled the company. When the public gets wind of this sort of incident, only the failures are noted.

If you pay close attention in this Community you'll notice a few cases where SONOS was aware of a production issue for a batch and out of warranty failed units were replaced. There was no indication of the batch size. It might have been only a couple dozen units.

K

 

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

 

Good luck; I think that S1 is the way to use older kit, but I was not sure - and am still not - that reverting to S1 will work, but all the best.

And of course, if you just have one unit under S1, that may be inconvenient at times. All my 12 units remain on S1, though some could have moved to S2, for a price I was not willing to pay.

Corry P
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Hi @britcowboy 

I appreciate that you are frustrated by this issue, so when/if I have something that I can share, I will share it here. It is unlikely, however, that I will have anything further to share until a fix is made available.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
A
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We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house.   It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago.  We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes.    I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem.  That did not solve  the problem.  I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port.  I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support.  Nothing has solved the problem.   I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades.  Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems?  We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

I’ve reverted my two connect amps back to S1. The procedure for doing this is documented here

Although it seems simple, it isn’t foolproof and it took a few goes to re-establish the amps on the network via the S1 app (it took some time for my iPhone to establish the necessary wifi connection to the connect amps).

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

A word of caution - you’ll lose all settings associated with your account such as streaming services and music library paths. These will all need to be re-established again.

And once you’ve reverted to S1, you’ll have to tell all the users in your house to avoid the constant Sonos reminder to upgrade to S2 (there’s no way to remove this reminder if you only have S2 compatible devices in your network)

Happy for you if it fixes it for you, but imo this isn't the solution. I have 7 Sonos devices, all on S2, and don't want the rest of the network hobbled because of this device, plus I did have plans to buy an Arc this year, which won't work on S1, although I'm not in a rush to buy it until this issue is resolved.

I appreciate that it’s of limited practical use to you if the reversion to S1 fixes the problem but at least it will prove that the problem is software related rather than network or hardware related.

As it stands, I haven’t noticed any loss of functionality going back to S1. In fact, functionality has improved as the network has been streaming for five hours with no glitches and the app control is much more responsive!

B
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We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house.   It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago.  We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes.    I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem.  That did not solve  the problem.  I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port.  I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support.  Nothing has solved the problem.   I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades.  Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems?  We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

I’ve reverted my two connect amps back to S1. The procedure for doing this is documented here

Although it seems simple, it isn’t foolproof and it took a few goes to re-establish the amps on the network via the S1 app (it took some time for my iPhone to establish the necessary wifi connection to the connect amps).

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

A word of caution - you’ll lose all settings associated with your account such as streaming services and music library paths. These will all need to be re-established again.

And once you’ve reverted to S1, you’ll have to tell all the users in your house to avoid the constant Sonos reminder to upgrade to S2 (there’s no way to remove this reminder if you only have S2 compatible devices in your network)

Happy for you if it fixes it for you, but imo this isn't the solution. I have 7 Sonos devices, all on S2, and don't want the rest of the network hobbled because of this device, plus I did have plans to buy an Arc this year, which won't work on S1, although I'm not in a rush to buy it until this issue is resolved.

I appreciate that it’s of limited practical use to you if the reversion to S1 fixes the problem but at least it will prove that the problem is software related rather than network or hardware related.

As it stands, I haven’t noticed any loss of functionality going back to S1. In fact, functionality has improved as the network has been streaming for five hours with no glitches and the app control is much more responsive!

Oh yeah I totally agree, sorry I wasn't being funny with you, it's a very helpful data point, but just want to make sure we don't let Sonos off the hook

B
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I don’t think that Sonos is deliberately setting out to sabotage devices but the careless coding of new firmware updates is having the same effect. 
 

You have not a shred of evidence for this assertion.  The facts simply do not support it.  In particular, the tiny number of users who have supported this claim.  On the very rare occasions that an update has introduce a bug, even one affecting a tiny proportion of users, there have been dozens, even hundreds, of users posting within days.

Hello again, I've been going through the top 3 or 4 pages of this forum, and I already found these issues with either symptoms identical to this issue, or, mention being told memory is a problem on the connect amp. Most of them are told its an issue with their environment.

 

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/connect-amp-interference-6888559?postid=16697899

 

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/trouble-with-sonos-port-and-app-6888579 memory done and gone on connect (not amp)

 

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/amp-port-or-used-connect-amp-6888542?postid=16697902#post16697902


https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/audio-dropouts-connect-amp-6886487

 

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/connect-2-amp-losing-network-6887862

 

So can we stop with people claiming hardly anyone has reported this issue?

 

Interestingly the last post, Sonos acknowledged there is an issue with memory on the connect amp they are investigating. Can someone from Sonos weigh in here?

A
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Has it been 5 years since Sonos last sold connect amp? If so, that’s all the software update support they promise unfortunately if they can’t fix it. 
 

Almost 4 years.

And while I don’t care about a lack of active support, I don’t expect the company to accidentally make my product obsolete too which is what has happened. 
 

At least I’m not so heavily invested in Sonos that the S1 rollback isn’t possible for me. People who have invested more than me over the years and have a mix of S1/S2 capable and S2 only devices have been left high and dry at the moment. 

Ken_Griffiths

If the Connect:Amp works and then after a while it doesn’t on S2 and the current fix suggested is to simply restart the device and it then works again for a while, that sounds more like a memory-leak with the software, rather than a hardware issue and it’s affecting the old (limited memory) devices like the Connect:Amp, early PlayBar etc. I’m guessing once the leak is found and plugged, everything will likely work fine again. However we can only guess at these things as outsiders looking in, but it sure sounds like that type of issue to me.

A
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Nearly 300 hours on the S1 rollback. 
 

Totally stable and responsive across all devices with no pauses or dropouts on any amp.
 

Loving it. 
 

It’s definitely S2 which has broken the connect amps.

A
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I used to think that it was a network issue but the surefire way to temporarily fix the problem is to reboot the connect amps and to use Spotify instead of Qobuz, all of which supports the memory buffering theory.

The obvious conclusion is that Sonos, like Apple, has rendered its older hardware obsolete through unnecessary software upgrades.

So the choice as I see it is to;

  1. roll back to S1
  2. buy the new Amp
  3. jump ship to bluesound

But let’s be clear about this - this is definitely a problem which has been created  by Sonos 

 

 

Out of curiosity, have you tried a system restart? By that I mean:

shut down Sonos devices and router, wait a few minutes, and then restart the router;

when it’s fully running and wifi is running, restart Sonos devices one at a time;

set fixed ip addresses for Sonos devices. 
 

There are numerous cases on these forums where this has resolved issues where the app can’t connect to system/devices. 

I’m just asking/suggesting trying this as the drop-outs might be network/ip issues rather than memory issues in the devices. 
 

Either way, I can’t believe that Sonos would risk deliberately sabotaging customers’ devices, whatever you might think to the contrary. The legal ramifications would be disastrous to them, if found out. 

Thank you for the suggestions. I have followed them all and to no avail. 
 

I don’t think that Sonos is deliberately setting out to sabotage devices but the careless coding of new firmware updates is having the same effect. 
 

 

A
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My vote is a hardware issue.

You’re correct. It’s a hardware issue caused by Sonos writing code which the hardware can no longer keep up with. 
Sonos themselves are telling us this when we call them with this issue ‘your hardware is overloaded. Buy new hardware’. 
 

Like @britcowboy , I don’t understand why many posters are so keen to ignore the obvious. Surely Occam’s razor applies? Perhaps you’re all android users but my parallels with iOS updates rendering equipment obsolete hasn’t elicited a response but seems to be a decent analogy to the situation that connect amp users are facing today.

I shall revert to S1 and report back. 

 

M

We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house.   It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago.  We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes.    I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem.  That did not solve  the problem.  I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port.  I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support.  Nothing has solved the problem.   I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades.  Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems?  We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

K


 

At least I’m not so heavily invested in Sonos that the S1 rollback isn’t possible for me. People who have invested more than me over the years and have a mix of S1/S2 capable and S2 only devices have been left high and dry at the moment. 

For such people too, is not a rollback to S1 better than their present situation? How many times do they play the same music on all their speakers at the same time such that a split system will come in the way of doing this? And even for such cases, some may be resolved by some rearranging of the kit to allow such play. 

The only downer then would be having to use two apps, S1 and S2.

I am merely suggesting that there may be workarounds that do not need all such people to reach for their wallets if Sonos does not address this issue soon enough for their needs.

On the Sonos side, the whole logic for hiving off S1 was for their software folk to not be bounded in future by memory constraints of old kit. Like people and cars, software also bloats with time, so it seems that more older speakers are now/will now be in the orbit of this logic.

PS: there is also then the philosophical question of what this bloat has delivered to users. I have five zones served by excellent sounding Connects/Connect Amps/Play 1s/Sub, running on S1. I don’t think there is anything that S2 has in it that would elevate this listening experience further. Even if I was to replace working kit with the latest/greatest Sonos hardware, I doubt that this will be the case because in home audio, the law of diminishing returns applies as much to Sonos as it does to legacy HiFi kit whose makers have been living on this delivered illusion for decades.

melvimbe

Joined the community to add another customer to the “was working perfectly until summer 23 and having to face reality of unnecessary and expensive upgrade.”

Hosted a large holiday party and guests kept asking me why the music kept coming on and off.  :( 

 

  If you haven’t already done so, I’d contact Sonos support to eliminate the possibility that it’s a network issue.  If it is hardware, that Sonos will be aware of another person with this issue.

Danny
A
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4 week report on the rollback to S1. The amps have been powered up constantly for the entire four weeks. 
 

Everything is hunky dory and working exactly as it should. 
 

I had become so used to the delays and unresponsiveness of S2 that the lightning speed and playback stability of S1 is awesome. And it really shouldn’t be! It shows how broken S2 has become and yet I don’t feel that I’m missing out in any way by using S1. Which begs the question; why did Sonos forcibly encourage users onto S2? The only additional functionality that I could find from S2 was room grouping (big deal - and I’m sure S1 could’ve handled that) and Dolby Atmos support. 
 

 

K

Which begs the question; why did Sonos forcibly encourage users onto S2? The only additional functionality that I could find from S2 was room grouping (big deal - and I’m sure S1 could’ve handled that) and Dolby Atmos support. 
 

 

Room grouping is there in S1 and it works well enough - Sonos just solved some first world problems with grouping with what it may have done in S2. And don’t forget the Hi Res music red herring that Sonos succumbed to in S2 after years of principled resistance to it that, as Sonos themselves said, was based on science. 

Perhaps Sonos software engineers revolted against the discipline imposed by having to deal with memory constraints in the hardware? 

People here keep saying something that I don’t agree with - Sonos sells networked computers that happen to make music. I however see Sonos as making home audio kit using computers and many other things and I have no desire to have to deal with one more piece of equipment with computers inside that has to be babied through upgrades that do not add meaningful value to me in the domain of listening to music. For instance , I don’t have to do this with my fridge, or my car. Both contain computers. It is enough to have to do this with my phone!

Sonos of course did not forcibly encourage anyone to S2 unless you call their marketing drive and threatening of obsolescence to the gullible as “forcing”. Many did not buy into that spiel, I am not unique.

 

B
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I’m beginning to think this entire thread is a bit of over the top theatrics trying to get Sonos to replace a couple units for free just to get a few posters to shut up.  It’s certainly been tried before. 

Quite an accusation against me… This appears to be a problem, and I want to see it fixed, for everyone.

I don't get your hostility

B
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And here come the “me too” register and post once “accounts”.  Yeah, that’s never been seen before either. 🙄

I’m beginning to think this entire thread is a bit of over the top theatrics trying to get Sonos to replace a couple units for free just to get a few posters to shut up.  It’s certainly been tried before. 

Your cynicism knows no bounds. You probably think the moon landings were faked too.🤣

Just because we’re at 20 posters and counting when you earlier claimed only two reported instances of this problem 😎

You’ll be checking IP addresses next 😉

 

I 100% know we landed on the moon.  Several times, in fact.  I've even seen the laser reflector we left up there reflecting back a signal.  I also 100% know forums are rife with manipulation, sock puppets, and jury rigged polls.  It's how Windows phone threads dominated this forum while never cracking 2% of the market, or how we are constantly getting brand new posters who know the entire history of this forum, and have the exact same posting style as an oft banned poster going back decades.

And I don't need to check IP addresses.  The mods do that

I don't understand why you feel the need to be Sonos’ defender.. They've notably been absent in this thread so far, let them speak for themselves. It just comes across as brown nosing. We're all Sonos customers here, I don't want Sonos to fail, as I've spent a lot of money with them, I want them to succeed. I don't understand your cynicism. This is the sort of toxic behaviour that puts people off forums. I was only lurking in that other thread, I only became involved when I saw it had been closed, despite no resolution. Maybe you should try being more welcoming, or maybe take a break from the Internet, it's not healthy for you being so invested in an issue you're not even having, and defending a multi million pound corporation.

 

Also the mods are welcome to check IP addresses, these other accounts aren't me, if that's what you're implying.

B
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For the doubters that doubt this is a real problem, I found this thread with this response by Sonos.

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/connect-amp-zp120-spotify-connect-pauses-and-restarts-6886060?postid=16682180#post16682180

Thanks for the diagnostics. It appears your Connect:AMP is having problems with playing Spotify - this can happen with some of our older products as they run out of internal resources. There are some mitigation steps that can be taken, but as they generally consist of getting other products to perform certain tasks, these are not available to you on your one unit system. You also already have Crossfade disabled, which is another mitigation step (if your Spotify app has Crossfade enabled, please disable it) and have tried ethernet without success.  Therefore, I can only suggest that you avoid using Spotify, iHeart Radio or NRK Radio from now on, with that particular unit, or replace the unit with a more modern alternative (an Amp); Spotify seems to be one of the more difficult services for these affected units to play. As you have only just obtained your Connect:AMP, I have to assume this is the reason it’s previous owner sold it in the first place.  However, if playback is more reliable when using the Sonos app rather than the Spotify app, I recommend you do so, though I rather suspect you will find it behaves roughly the same once you use it more often.  If you have an old phone/tablet that has a 3.5mm headphone jack, you could connect it to the Line-in of your Connect:AMP and use it as a Spotify source in the meantime, though this will mean you’d have to go to that device to change/control the music in any way. You’d need a stereo RCA to stereo 3.5mm stereo jack cable to do so.  I hope this helps, though I realise it’s not the answer you were looking for.

 

Personally I don't think this response is good enough. If these devices are no longer able to playback common services, then this is a major regression. These devices used to be able to do this, and downgrading to S1 seems to fix the issue, so it seems to be a software issue which Sonos are refusing to fix. Telling customers to just buy a new device is not good enough.

 

Sonos defenders, how can you defend this? This is indefensible. This product isn't being sold, but it's not marked as EOL unlike earlier Connect AMPs which didn't survive the S2 upgrade. Sonos needs to undo the changes it made to memory in the summer update so we can use our existing hardware. If you defend this, the time will come when Sonos does something that bites you, and we won't be here to support you..

A
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The only people who claim that Sonos is networked computers that happen to make music are people involved in the IT industry and mostly, it seems, programmers. 
 

Their whole way of life is based on fixing things which aren’t broken so it’s no surprise that they find it perfectly reasonable to junk an entire system which is less than five years old in the name of ‘progress’. 

K

Passed the 200 hour mark of the S1 rollback and the software and connect amps are still super responsive and stable. 

Good for you; as I recall your entire system can run on S1 and this solution does not need you to run a split system. For such users that are not in this boat, this may not be a good solution.

8
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Adding myself to this list of users with issues on the new firmware.  I use Roon to send music to Sonos players throughout my house and am having issues similar to everyone here.  Roon loses connection with each of the Sonos players after 29 seconds.

Using Wireshark I was able to confirm the issue with my Play 3. From the Sonos Play 3 to Windows, I am getting [TCP ZeroWindow] and [TCP Window Update] and from the Sever to the Device I am getting [TCP Window Full], to which the device then drops off the connection.  It seems when Roon sends the song data it is too much for the allocated buffer of the device.

This firmware bug is impacting Play1, 3, 5, Connect and Connect Amps that were originally on S1 and upgraded to S2.

Using Plex, Sonos library I can get more playtime out of it, but it will eventually cutout.  Similar to some of the old Play 1’s will work if I reduce quality to 16 bit on Roon, I can get them to play a bit longer.  But the Play 3, even a 96kbps AAC file through Roon it will cut out at 29 seconds saying that the allocated data through TCP is full and the device closes the connection and stops playback.

A
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S1 rollback update - 

The amps have been continuously powered up now for over 550 hours and the system, connections and associated control apps have all remained rock solid stable and responsive. 

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