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

B
Userlevel 4
Badge +5

Hi,

 

I'm recreating this thread, as the discussion wasn't finished, but it was locked. I also wanted to make it obvious this is a Sonos issue, not a client environment issue.

 

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/connect-amp-keeps-dropping-out-audio-6885634/index2.html

 

I've been following this for a while because I've been having the same issues, and when I spoke to support they said the connect amp can't cope with modern software and that I should upgrade to the amp, which is clearly unacceptable.

 

This has been confirmed by people in that original thread who have been told the same thing.

 

BillJanzen

“FWIW, these issues seem to have occured after the June 2023 software update to S2 version 15.5. Interestingly, there is an alert posted in the release notes of the 15.6 update released July 25, 2023 about adjusting how older Sonos products use their internal memory. See below (copied from https://support.sonos.com/en-ca/article/release-notes-for-sonos-s2):  Alerts:      With this update, we’ve adjusted how some of our older Sonos products are using their internal memory. Because of this change, updates for Play:1, Play:3, Boost, Connect, Connect:Amp, and Sub (Gen 1 and 2) will take longer to complete than before. The reset process for these products will also take more time to complete after this update.”

 

BillJanzen

“We continue to have intermittent drop-outs on all 4 of our Connect:Amp devices, so here’s my update after 1.5 hours on the phone with Sonos today. They said the diagnostics for one of the Connect:Amp devices the chose to investigate showed multiple major alerts, including:      Cannot allocate memory to full status     Write failed     Player crashed: out of memory     OOM Killer  These items all sound like they are related to memory issues with the older Connect:Amp product, as Big Bull mentioned in his previous post.”

 

Big Bull:

“Ok latest is I powered down 3 of my 4 units and just had the one I use most running hard wired to the router through my switch and it still gave dropouts so I sent 2 diagnostics to Sonos and they said : 

------------------ 

Thanks, so on this one in specific I can see the audio interruptions are caused because the product basically is old, and it is reaching its capabilities, there are some things that can be done to try to reduce the impact of this, but if it continues this product will need to be replaced with the upgrade program. 

------------------- 

I am being advised to replace any affected units with the Sonos Amp which can be costly.”

 

Birchan

“  Same problem, 4 AMP of which two lose sound...  SONOS did a wrong analysis and accidentally said that there were memory failures in some of the units. But since they only give a 2-year warranty, mine was 2.5 years too old. How can SONOS sell products that obviously have manufacturing problems and then say that they can replace them with a 30% discount on new ones? Wonder if Tesla would sell cars that stop working after 2 years and say, sorry you have to buy a new car every two years because the warranty has expired. So bad from SONOS so I will be discontinuing my SONOS system and switching to BOSE...  “

 

For context, in my situation I have a connect amp, connected via ethernet with WiFi off, and I started to get regular drop outs around June. It's incredibly annoying, the audio will drop out for a few seconds before continuing, if other speakers are grouped they will carry on fine.

 

It's absolutely 100% not a network issue. When I was debugging it, I briefly made the connect amp the only wired device and turned on WiFi, and other speakers in my house worked perfectly at all times. I've also reserved IP addresses, and I ran a ping monitor on it to check for any network dropouts. There were none. I've put the system back now, so the connect amp has its WiFi off.

 

So it seems to me that Sonos have released a firmware update that the connect amp cannot handle, and rather than take responsibility for it, they're just fobbing people off telling them to buy expensive new hardware to solve the problem, not even with any substantial discount. It's unacceptable. This connect amp worked perfectly before June.

 

Sonos needs to release a new update that solves the issue, or give people affected substantial discounts on replacement amps, and formally announce that the connect amp is end of life. Currently people with issues on this forum are being unintentionally gaslighted by well meaning people who don't know that this issue exists. Sonos cannot say the connect amp is supported when they've released a broken update.

 

People need to know about this issue, I've seen loads of topics about this issue and people get fobbed off with network issues, which is absolutely not the case, at all. Big Bull proved this by doing a replacement to amps which solved his issue.

Corry P 3 months ago

Hi @britcowboy et al,

Thank you all for your information both in this topic and the other one mentioned (which we have reopened as it was automatically closed by mistake).

Our engineers are currently investigating this with the highest priority.

We thank you for your patience while we work through this, we'll keep you updated with any news that we can share.

Thank you.

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244 replies

8
Badge

I just updated to 16.1 and the issue is still there.

A
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

I just updated to 16.1 and the issue is still there.

Sorry to hear that 16.1 isn’t working. 
The S1 rollback remains utterly stable (devices and app) after more than 10 weeks of continuous up-time. 

J
Userlevel 1
Badge +2

I just updated to 16.1 and the issue is still there.

Sorry to hear that 16.1 isn’t working. 
The S1 rollback remains utterly stable (devices and app) after more than 10 weeks of continuous up-time. 

Yup still an issue.   Like others rolling back is not an issue due to mix with other newer kit.  (Relying on nightly power downs on a smart power strip.)

O

Is there a procedure to roll back the entire system of connects & connect amps to S1?  If that fixes it, that would work for me.  

A
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

Is there a procedure to roll back the entire system of connects & connect amps to S1?  If that fixes it, that would work for me.  

Yes. You’ll find the procedure on the Sonos website. 
Be patient - sometimes the devices will hang on the roll-back and you have to wait and if that doesn’t work, restart the process for that particular device. 
 

I’m nearly 11 weeks into the rollback and even the latest S1 app is stable. 

O

Is there a procedure to roll back the entire system of connects & connect amps to S1?  If that fixes it, that would work for me.  

Yes. You’ll find the procedure on the Sonos website. 
Be patient - sometimes the devices will hang on the roll-back and you have to wait and if that doesn’t work, restart the process for that particular device. 
 

I’m nearly 11 weeks into the rollback and even the latest S1 app is stable. 

I just completed the rollback.  Appears to be working great.  

K

I’m nearly 11 weeks into the rollback and even the latest S1 app is stable. 

How did you decide to risk that update? Fingers crossed basis?!

Bumper
Userlevel 6
Badge +12

I’m nearly 11 weeks into the rollback and even the latest S1 app is stable. 

How did you decide to risk that update? Fingers crossed basis?!

Asked the magic 8 ball, but it didn’t predict the Alexa bug 🤣

K

Unless Sonos speaks on the subject, I am not budging beyond 11.12. All to lose and little to gain.

A
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

I’m nearly 11 weeks into the rollback and even the latest S1 app is stable. 

How did you decide to risk that update? Fingers crossed basis?!

I didn’t spot it until it was too late 🙈

I generally ‘update all’ on my iPhone and didn’t notice the S1 update until it was too late so I had to cross my fingers and hope. 
 

No other devices were updated and there doesn’t seem to be a MacOS update so worst case my phone would’ve been out of the loop but everything else would have been okay. 
 

But for the faint of heart, 11.14 has been working fine so far… 🤞

B
Userlevel 4
Badge +5

Still getting the issue. An occasional reboot will stop the issue for a week or two. It's gone very quiet here, waiting for an update from Sonos…

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. 

J

I have been having the same issue with my connect amps as well . Very annoying! My wifi is also off and have them hard wired, my devices are also about 6 years old . 
extremely frustrated 

A
Userlevel 3
Badge +1

This topic (and similar ones) keep bouncing back to  the top of the forum list.  
 

while Sonos have acknowledged the issue, there has been no resolution.  

 

Sonos, can you please provide an update on this issue.  Please be aware that many of us have multiple devices plagued with this problem.  As these are the older devices, you might call us your most loyal customers.  Leaving us in the dark is not good enough.  
 

Andrew S. 
 

 

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Sonos very rarely tells anyone anything early. 

I’d bet users notice most changes before the forum staff are even told about them.

A
Userlevel 4
Badge +1

I’m sorry to hear that the problem is still unresolved for S2 users. 
 

For what it’s worth, today marks the 100th day of my rollback to S1. The system has remained constantly powered up during that period and I have had only one small (and previously documented) glitch during this time when attempting to restart multiple streams to different rooms after an overnight pause (more likely caused by the streaming service than Sonos). 
 

For anyone new to the thread or who is contemplating the hassle of a roll-back to S1, all I can say is - just do it!

A
Userlevel 2
Badge

Well I spoke too soon (which is why I asked if any of my optimism was backed up by release notes).

My CA is as bad as ever. 

Ho hum. Whatever the solution is it won’t be a Sonos product. I will buy a cheap Bluetooth amp and simply connect to that from my phone when I need to. Not as seamless as the CA but, as my phone will be about 1 metre from the amp, I am fairly sure I won’t get drop outs. 

And had been tempted by Sonos’s double discount on their upgrade program but I simply refuse to spend any more with them whatever the deal ☹️

 


Same here.  Even with a nightly shut down my CAs start ok but break up & stop working later in the day.  Ready irritating.

 

 

 

I thought maybe a nightly restart might help. I automated it with a smart power plug. Slight nuisance is Sonos devices forget what they were playing after a restart but I could have lived with that had it rectified the drop out problem. 
It didn’t solve the problem. 
 

Tried changing the SonosNet channel - my CA is not the bridging device. No improvement. 
 

Have seen the other suggestion is a downgrade to S1 but would need to think that through as I have multiple Sonos devices and so need to ensure I don’t fix the CA problem and end up with problems on other devices (or simply that they don’t work with S1).

 

The idea of staying on an older version of S2 app feels impractical given my apps auto update. And if I update them I don’t do them one by one.


 

 

M
Userlevel 2

Is there a way to roll back to S1 11.12?  I’ve searched through a lot of threads and don’t see that option?  

buzz

SONOS does not offer any means to rollback.

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