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Hello, I have 4 x Sonos Play 1s in different rooms.

 

When playing music from my music library on the laptop, the music typically cuts out after 3-4 tracks. there is no error message - it just stops playing. I've tried changing the wifi frequency (as per some community advice) but this only worked briefly - it’s gone back to being incredibly unreliable. 

 

Intriguingly, if I play Sonos radio from the laptop it’s fine and will just keep playing until I turn it off - the cutting out is only when playing tracks from my Sonos music library.

 

I'm now wondering it is something to do with my laptop going to sleep because….

 

My other big problem is this: I have the Sonos app on my phone. If the laptop is on in the house somewhere, then I can control the Sonos and play music from my phone. If the laptop is off or asleep, the phone app will only play radio on the Sonos - if I try to select some of my music, it shows it on the phone screen but then I get the spiral of ‘trying to connect’ and it ultimately won’t play the music. The error message I get is very brief, saying it cannot connect to my music files.

 

Surely I don’t need to have the laptop turned on (and active) in order to have the Sonos working properly?

 

Would really appreciate some help here - I know the Sonos system is “old” in many people’s eyes, but surely it should do these basics (or maybe it’s just user error??)

 

thanks

Angela

The general rule with laptops is that, when they are asleep, they don’t do anything at all. They can’t serve up files that are on their hard disk, because they have just the absolute minimum of processes running. In this respect, a mobile phone is different - even when the screen is off and it appears to be inactive, its internal processes are still running (not least so that it can detect if you have an incoming phone call!).

So to answer your question: if your music library is on the laptop, it does need to be turned on and active.

There are several possible solutions - some simple and some not so much so. One would be to have the laptop plugged into a power source and active at all times, but with a screensaver set so that the screen goes off after a timeout.

A better, more power-saving way is to set up “Wake on LAN” in the BIOS, so that any network activity will cause it to wake from standby and serve up the necessary data.

Sonos doesn’t use/send a WOL packet, so the laptop has to be on.  As to the best solution, that would be an NAS drive to house the library.  

Agreed - if WOL is not an option then another way needs to be found. A NAS drive might be the best and most elegant technical solution, but keeping the laptop powered on all the time will probably be cheaper!

Raspberry Pi, Openmediavault and repurpose an old hard drive and you have a decent NAS under £50 that draws very little power even when on 24/7. Or if your router Has a USB port you may be able to add a decent thumb drive to house all your music files. 

Or if your router Has a USB port you may be able to add a decent thumb drive to house all your music files. 

I’d never thought of that! (just checked and my router does actually have a USB port). Is there a standard way that a router typically presents a pendrive on you network? Sounds like a very cheap alternative to a NAS, if you can fit your library onto a pendrive.

Apologies to the OP for the slight thread hijack!

You need to check the set up/admin page for your router. Google the router name then use the IP address to log in. Log in password will probably be on the base of the router itself. 
 

You can get a big music library on a cheap 128Gb pen drive!
 

Hi All,

Thanks for all the responses - much appreciated! Going to give the pen drive solution a go.

 

Thanks, Angela.

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