Hi @Nilsen 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

First, I recommend you reboot your router by switching it off for at least 30 seconds. You may need to repeat this several times a year - this is completely normal. 

It seems likely that the issue could also be due to your choice of Group Coordinator, which is the speaker in charge of fetching the music to play and distributing it to the other devices. Due to the extra work being done, it’s best if the Group Coordinator is the speaker with the best WiFi reception. It looks like Office might be the best choice?

Please disband the current group, then select Office (or whichever room is closest to the router) and group the other rooms to it. Whichever rooms is selected first, before the grouping, will be the unit in charge.

If you continue to have playback issues, you may want to connect the closest speaker to the router with an ethernet cable. Please keep the two devices as far apart as is practical. This will make all your Sonos devices use a private WiFi mesh just for them, and may improve matters (though I recommend you change the SonosNet channel to 6 - Settings » System » Network » Change SonosNet Channel » 6 - several minutes after wiring the speaker and after making sure all rooms are visible in the app).

I hope this helps.

Thank you Corry! That really seemed to work well, I changed to the office and now the songs change and follow without problems.

If anything else comes up, I will repost here, but so far, so good!

Cheers and have a nice day.

Hi @Nilsen 

I’m glad to hear that worked! Thanks for updating here!

@Corry P

Diagnostic: 536393345

Hi,

I a very similar problem as described about, - yet your recommendations do not solve it.

First the setup:

I have 12 Sonos Play 1, in 6 stereo pairs. My plan is to expand this to 22 Sonos Play 1 in 11 stereo pairs, - but the expansion is on standby until I can get what I have to work first.

I have 8 Unifi Access Points throughout the house (its large), all the Access Points are hardwired to the Unifi Switch and all wires are confirmed to be Gigabit capacity. I have a 600 mpbs fiber connection.

I have two WiFi SSID, one on 2,4 Ghz which is only used by Sonos, and a different SSID on 5 Ghz, which is used by my laptops, iPhones etc.

The issues:

Whenever I group and use more 6 or more speakers (i.e. from 3 stereo pairs) and up and start streaming music from Spotify, I get a split second of music on some speakers, then silence, and then slowly one set of speakers will join the chorus over the following 20 seconds. I.e. it takes up to twenty seconds (and never less than 10) for all the speakers to start playing. This happens each time I start a song or playlist. It does NOT happen whenever one song ends and another begins.

What has been tried:

I have been in contact repeatedly with Sonos, who suggest I “wire my wireless speakers”, - which undermines the logic of wireless speakers and of Sonos, - but I have tried that anyway. It makes no difference. I have tried stitching up the speaker groups in different sequences, - no differences. Rebooting and resetting, - no differences. Most Sonos community forums conclude that going all wireless is actually better. I observations are inclusive, - neither solves.

I have tried putting all the Access Point on the same 2,4 GHz Wifi channel and on different channels, it makes no difference. My house is far from neighbors so there is limited radio interference. Also, had that been the issue it would also apply to when I play music on only 4 speakers.

I have been in contact with Unifi customer support, who (super helpful) have guided me through a set of changes on my network and Wifi settings. These changes were also recommended in many Unifi community forums. The changes made no difference.

My brother-in-law suggested I test with another streaming service. I thus signed-up to SoundCloud, - and EUREKA, - now all 12 speakers start within 0,2 seconds of pressing Play, no lags, no delays, no drops. To some extent that exonerates Sonos, - yet… Spotify is my preferred streaming service, it is integrated into the Sonos app. Sonos works perfectly with Spotify up to 4 speakers/ 2 stereo pairs.

My asks:

1). Can you/Sonos confirm that this is the best I can expect from the combination of Sonos and Spotify, - cause then I can stop trying/troubleshooting and just swap my streaming services?

2). Is there anything you would advice me to try across Spotify, Sonos or my Unifi network that is not in the top 10 list of obvious things, and which is not wiring my wireless speakers?

Hi @UserInMadrid 

First, your Office (L) speaker is wired to ethernet. This makes it difficult for me to troubleshoot your system working on WiFi, as right now, it isn’t.

When using WiFi, it’s best to keep all your access points on one channel - Sonos utilises that channel to communicate directly between devices and if they disagree about what that channel should be, it can cause problems.

Please disconnect the Office (L) from ethernet, if you want to use your WiFi. Next, please follow these steps:

• Log into the UniFi controller.
• In the Settings tab, click Wireless Networks.
• Click Edit next to the network SSID.
• Expand Advanced Options.
• Uncheck Block LAN to WLAN Multicast and Broadcast Data.
• In the Settings tab, click Sites.
• Disable Auto-Optimize Network.

In the Networks tab, please also enable IGMP Snooping. Put all your access points on a single channel, as mentioned above.

Your speakers are reporting WiFi deauthorisations, which usually indicates that there are 2.4 GHz and 5GHz WiFis with the same SSID and password. If this is the case, please change the SSID for 5 GHz to prevent your router from trying to force Sonos onto 5Ghz (band steering).

In answer to your questions:

1. It usually depends on the environment, so it’s hard to say for sure. At a quick look, I would perhaps argue that you have too many access points, as most of your speakers can see 6 to 8 of them. Having them all on one channel should mitigate things, but there seems to be a lot of them. That one service works and another doesn’t only suggests to me that there may be a difference in bitrates used by the services. If Spotify uses a higher bitrate than Soundcloud, then what you have experienced would make sense - though I’m not saying it should be accepted.
2. See above. And try unwiring your Office speaker.

Hopefully, some or all of these steps will help. If not, please send more diagnostics after making the changes mentioned. Thanks.

Hi @Corry P ,

Thanks for your reply and suggestions.

Yes, in the diagostic data I sent Office (L) was connected. I had been testing all sorts of different settings through out the day, incl. 1 or 2 being wired. It makes no difference. But happy to disconnect and send new diagnostic data.

All the settings you recommended on the Unifi setup, were already applied. They fall within the Top 10 recommendations you can find googling (which I did a lot of before writing a post and asking for help).

I can try again to put all Access Points on the same channel. My experience is that they cause interference which degrades the overall WIFI experience. The collectively jam the frequency, - but happy to try this again.

The SSID for 2,4 Ghz and 5 Ghz are different, and have different passwords and Bandsteering is disabled. So that is not a source of issues.

Interesting points around Bitrates. How can I observe that, so that I can confirm/reject that as a hypothesis for the performance issue?

Also, interesting point that I might have too many Access Points. Given that there are 8 over 4 floors, I put them on different frequencies so they dont jam each other, - but I can run the experiment of turning of half, and putting the remaining half on same frequency. Trying does not hurt..

I will revert to this post and update with diagnostic data when I have run the different alternatives.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

HI @Corry P ,

Thanks again for your suggestions.

I rechecked each setting and they were already as you had suggest.

I have unplugged the Office (L).

I have disabled 4 of 8 Access Points

I have set the channel on the remaining 4 to Channel 6.

It made no difference! :(

When I play on all groups there is a 25 second delay until the last stereo pair joins the chorus. It totally spoils the experience of blasting a classic like Thunderstruck by AC/DC throughout the house, - the entire guitar solo intro is choppy.

Note, - this does not happen when I only connect to 2 stereo pairs (4 speakers) then the Spotify stream starts immediately! The delay starts when I have the third stereo pair and up.

How do I isolate whether this is a Unifi networking issue, a Sonos issue or a Spotify issue?

As mentioned all speakers play without fail after 25+ seconds from the start of a song or playlist. But it takes 25 seconds when using Spotify. With the same settings on Sonos and the Unifi network, the music starts instantaneously when playing SoundCloud or Sonos Radio. Hmmm? What going on?

As you mentioned the Bitrates could be different. However, I have tried changing the audio compression to Compressed rather than Uncompressed. Makes no difference to performance, - but I can hear the difference. 

Diagnostic data: 1105361748

Hi @UserInMadrid 

I’d like you to please try a test. Please stop playback, then click on this link to your Kitchen East (L) speaker: http://192.168.1.101:1400/setstring

The page will look like this:

Change the Value entry to “low” (no quotes) and click Submit. Spotify will now play at a reduced quality on Kitchen East until either the Left speaker is rebooted, or you revisit the page and set it back to “high” or “auto” (auto is recommended).

Play Spotify to Kitchen East and then group in your other speakers - does Spotify now behave like SoundCloud and group relatively quickly? If so, then we’ve found the reason for the difference, but this change is not permanent - as I mentioned, the setting will reset on a reboot. It will, however, give us some idea on what we need to focus on. Note that if a room other than Kitchen East is told to play Spotify (outside of grouping), it will do so at the normal quality.

I’d also like you to experiment with selecting different individual rooms to play before grouping - whichever room is selected first is in charge of the whole group and has a whole lot of extra work to do. If this room is one with a slower connection, it will cause problems for the entire group. If you can find a room to be in charge that makes grouping slicker, I recommend you always put that room in charge, i.e. select it first, before grouping.

For your information, the Audio Compression levels apply to Line-In inputs only, so doesn’t relate to Spotify or other services.

I hope this helps.

HI @Corry P ,

Thanks for this. Sorry for not responding sooner. If I had my head under water with a bunch of other issues (not related to this) that I needed to deal with. 

Also since we last wrote I have added 2 more Sonos Play 1 speakers to the system. I am now at 14 Play 1, installed. The house was designed around Sonos speakers in all rooms. Latest diagnostic: 858309782

If I understand you correctly there are two different recommendations/ things to test here.

1. Force lower the Bitrate
2. Set the speaker with the better connection to the the “coordinator”.

Re. 1.  I will try and experiment with this, - but the first trial did not suggest any improvement. The speakers still start staggered and drop in/out when playing. 

Re. 2.  I have 8 identical access points (Unifi). All Access Points have 1 Gbps wired connection to the switch. From the Unifi Network Management console I can see that all the Sonos speakers have excellent connection, i.e. good dB coverages, low/no interference, few retries on IP etc. The system itself gives it a 95-99% score for each device. They all have equally good coverage. The Access Point that is most stressed is at 42% utilization. So I doubt this is the source of a solution. Prior colleagues of yours at Sonos have also suggested that I try to hard-wire some of my wireless speakers (despite the fact that wiring would defeating the purpose of them being wireless) I have tried to wire 2 of them, while there were only 8-10 speakers on the system. It made no difference. 

A curious thing is that, once it all up and running, there is NO lag when adjusting the volume. But if change song/start a playlist, the “staggered loading” starts all over again,- up to 45 seconds until all the speakers join in.

Where do we search next? 

Can you confirm that Sonos is indeed designed and can support >14 Sonos Play 1 speakers playing the same song synchronized and starting at time?

Hi @UserInMadrid 

Did you find and activate IGMP Snooping/Filtering? I see quite a lot of multicast flooding on the speakers.

In addition, they are still finding the WiFi environment congested. Finally, at least 2 of your IoT APs are on channel 11 while the rest are on 1.

Given that there is a lot of APs, I think wiring at least 2 speakers to ethernet - at different sides of the house - and keeping them on channel 6 has the best chance of working. Please note that Kitchen West (R) is alone in expecting SonosNet to be on channel 1, so you may have to switch to channel 1 and back to 6 to pick it up. Settings » System » Network » Change SonosNet Channel. I realise that you’ve tried this already, but perhaps which units are wired needs to be experimented with. 

From the speakers’ point of view, they are all reporting a failed physical transmission rate higher that we’d like to see, from the APs they are connected to - with the exception of Office. Office therefore is probably the best choice of group coordinator while the system is using UniFi. Perhaps you could try this and the steps outlined in my last post to reduce the bitrate, but on the Office (Left) speaker?

Yes, you can have up to 32 speakers on a single system and playing in sync, though how long it takes them to do so relies on the health of your network. They would also need multiple pathways back to the router due to the likelihood of their 2.4GHz radios reaching bandwidth saturation.

I also noticed an AP with SSID “ac55-gw-lower” on channel 8. Channel 8 overlaps with channels 6 and 11. I recommend you keep all APs on channels 1, 6 or 11 - these are the only ones that don’t overlap. Though please keep all IoT APs on a single channel, as mentioned previously.

I do see that you have multiple WiFis, and this may be part of the issue. By having a separate WiFi for IoT, you are doubling the amount of interference in every corner of your home. This might not be the best plan.

I hope this helps.

HI @Corry P,

Thanks for your message and analysis. I will try each of them this evening. The IGMP Snooping is activate. But will check again.

Right now the 8 AP are distributed evenly over Channel 1 and Channel 11 (with 2 APs, one on each channel on each floor and placed so the same Channel on other floors is as far from it as possible).  

I have tried wiring on two different floors, thus giving the best physical distribution.

Does it make any difference whether I use a 20Mhz band or 40 Mhz band on the wifi?

The “AC55-gw-upper”/”AC55-gw-lower” are two Bluetooth gateways that pick-up Bluetooth signals. There is nothing/no devices connected by Wifi to them. So they should no be generating noise. I can try to turn-off the WIFI signal on them. Will try

Would you elaborate on this: “From the speakers’ point of view, they are all reporting a failed physical transmission rate higher that we’d like to see, from the APs they are connected to - with the exception of Office. Office therefore is probably the best choice of group coordinator while the system is using UniFi. Perhaps you could try this and the steps outlined in my last post to reduce the bitrate, but on the Office (Left) speaker?” What is it that you can see. When you mention Office, is that the Speaker set called Office or the AP named office?

Thanks

Hi @UserInMadrid 

20MHz is preferred.

I wouldn’t have seen them if they were only Bluetooth, so there must be a WiFi transmission too.

I mean the speakers. The two speakers in the Office are the only speakers on your system not reporting excessive physical reception (RTX) errors - each error results in a re-transmission which in turn results in less bandwidth being available and in increased latency - this is quite likely the source of the delays you experience. What I meant was, regardless of what your UniFi system reports about the health of the connections, the speakers don’t see things the same way.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you read the reducing wireless interference troubleshooting page and check each speaker and AP for other devices in proximity. Separate them all by as much distance as is practical - all WiFi devices like to have at least 1m separation from any others, including APs.

I hope this helps.

HI @Corry P,

Thanks for advice.

I have tried the following:

1. IGMP Snooping is now activated. => Does not seem to make a difference
2. I removed the WIFI signal from the two Bluetooth Gateways => Does not seem to make a difference
3. I have read the “Reducing Wireless Interference” Troubleshooting page. It highlights all the basics, all of which are done. i.e. All devices are minimum 2 meters from each other, the nearest Access Point and other Wifi Devices. However, the dropping out happens on all of the Sonos speakers at random. If I was able to detect a pattern, e.g. Speaker X, - I would be able zoom in on that device. The dropping pattern appears across the full setup.
4. In the first your messages from this morning, you mentions I have multiple WIFI’s. I only have one WIFI SSID on the 2.4Ghz band and on my network, and yes there are 8 Access Points with that SSID, but as per the next point they are on different Channels.
5. Independent of point 3. I have done a radio frequency scan across three of the AP to see which of the Channels 1, 6, or 11 was least congested. I moved those three from Channel 1 to Channel 6. So right now I have
   • 2 x Access Points on Channel 1
   • 3 x Access Points on Channel 6
   • 2 x Access Points on Channel 11
   • NOTE: As the Access Points are on different floors and far from each other they do not interfere with each other
   • YET: As of right now it does not appear to make a difference.
6. I appreciate your point that my “Networks Experience” / Connection Quality could be different from when seen from the Network side vs. from the each speakers. Yet the Signal Strength (dB), Transmission Rate (Mbps) for all 14 speakers seems OK. The Channel Utilization % seems acceptable too. The highest utilization is momentarily at 65%, otherwise its in the low 20-30%. See the two screenshots. With this data I struggle to see whether I have a network issue and if so what it would be. Again, I have no problems when I play on only 6 speakers.
7. I have submitted new diagnostic data: 8257783530. Please see if you can see any difference in the data set now vs. yesterday. Is there better RTX performance now on the speakers vs. yesterday and vs. the Office speaker set.
8. You mentioned “they are all reporting a failed physical transmission rate higher”. How can I observe that, and experiment with solutions. Curiously the speakers in the Office, do not exhibit different performance than the other speakers. The drop the same amount of time. 
9. I have tried wiring before. I can try again, - but all the speakers are now wall-mounted and with the cables hidden. So doing the test, will require me to unmount quite a few, buy an additional switch (as my 16 port switch is full) and about 5x 25m ethernet cables. And “IF” the test was positive, i.e. solved the issues (in other words I need to wire my wireless speakers to make them work), - then I have a major project getting the new ethernet cables through the wiring tubes hidden in the wall, and 4 floors down to my rack. So, - I will go to great great lengths to avoid that and figure out why my system is not working properly - when fully wireless.

Thanks for your support, - lets keep at it.

HI @Corry P ,

I hope you are well.

I still waiting to hear from you on what try test next.

In parallel I have been troubleshooting my network with Unifi, and tried implementing all of the known tweaks, - non-make any difference. But in that process we did observe/learn that some call to NTP servers (to get date/time) do not get answers, this impacted several times of devices, e.g. my Philips Hue and my Unifi CloudKey. However, the issue is not “my network” but in the ISP’s network. Do you know if that can have any impact, i.e. the speakers “inability to get the time” delays them in getting into synch?

I have read all of these posts and others, and what I don’t understand is why this is ONLY an issue with Spotify.  Every other streaming service works perfectly fine just as everything is setup.  It makes no sense that I should have to go through all of these system configuration and setting changes when it is clearly a streaming service specific issue.  Furthermore, Spotify has worked without issues for years - literally 5 years - but only in the last year have I had the same issue as everyone else where various Sonos speakers turn off and on randomly when trying to stream Spotify.  I have lost all respect for Sonos and have stopped recommending it to friends because the don’t seem to take the issue seriously nor are they seeming to do anything about it with Spotify.

I am not yet convinced that it is a Spotify only issue. I got the same issue (worse actually) when using Tidal, as Tidal has higher bit-rate it drop-outs were more pronounced. When using SoundCloud - which has much lower bit-rate the issue did not present itself.

I am still struggling to pin-point whether the issue is my Internet Service Provider (ISP), my streaming service, my home network or SONOS.

The evidence - which is still inconclusive - points towards SONOS