Spotify unstable when starting tracks

  • 22 September 2021
  • 29 replies
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When starting playback on Spotify, speakers randomly cut in and out, it can take up to a minute to settle down. Once playing it will generally be fine for as long as you like, until you change something. Skipping a track on a playlist will produce the same issue, (while just playing the next track that's already lined up and buffered is fine) when pausing sometimes you can hear some of the speakers still going for a few seconds. Often tracks or changes to the queue will be ignored when the current track finishes.

This does not seem to happen with Sonos radio or the local music library on our NAS (when I can get sonos to find it, but that's for another day) 

A day and a half on the phone and live chat support with both Sonos and Linksys has not fixed things alas.

System is connected by a boost to the router, and after support suggested it yesterday, also one of the Play:1s. (like 3 feet away) Sonosnet is set to channel 11, the WiFi (2.4GHz) to channel 1. (although it seems to occupy up to 6 on occasions watching on WiFi scanner app) We are rural so no WiFi interference that we don't generate ourselves.

WiFi is Linksys Velop dual band mesh with two child nodes, fed from a TP-Link Archer MR600 AC1200 Mbps 4G router. (see previous about rural, the land line broadband gives 3meg max, and this issue used to happen when on that too) The WiFi on the TP link is disabled. 

Diagnostic 171739937

 

Any assistance gratefully received. I feel like support are running out of ideas and haven't actually said what would cause this issue. 

 

Ta like. 

 

 

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29 replies

UKMedia
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Do you have any other hubs? e.g. Phillips Hue

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
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No. To the best of my knowledge the only WiFi being broadcast is from the mesh nodes.

 

(we have a printer that broadcasts a direct connection network but this has been switched off for weeks while we try and resolve this issue) 

(the only other potential suspect might be the Roku+ stick which I understand uses wifi to connect to the remote, but should be on the same channel as the WiFi not Sonosnet... I guess given its location the issue we're having would need to be with "Fire Room" Connect) 

UKMedia
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There is a problem with mesh networks in that they regularly change frequencies if they detect interference.  As a test, can you disconnect the boost and wait a few mins and retry.  If the problem persists, can you connect one of your Sonos players to your router via an ethernet cable and retest.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
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I have tried using the Sonos without the Boost a couple of times now, once before I tweaked the Mesh channels* and once after, neither made any difference as far as I could tell.

I currently have the boost and one Play:1 both connected via ethernet. They are about 3 feet apart, this was suggested by Support yesterday to boost the Sonosnet broadcast. It seemed to fix things for a while but a couple of hours later and again this morning we seem to be back to square 1 🤦🏻‍♂️🤷🏻‍♂️

 

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Sorry, forgot the footnote

*the Velop mesh was occupying all channels 1-11 in varying quantities, yes as you said, changing as it saw fit. A deep dive into the WebUI with linksys support and the 2.4mhz channel is now set at 1 with a 20mhz width limit. Scanning with WiFi analyser app shows it occupying primarily 1 but some up to 5&6, but nowt anywhere near 11, which is what the Sonosnet is now set to. 

UKMedia
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Sorry, forgot the footnote

*the Velop mesh was occupying all channels 1-11 in varying quantities, yes as you said, changing as it saw fit. A deep dive into the WebUI with linksys support and the 2.4mhz channel is now set at 1 with a 20mhz width limit. Scanning with WiFi analyser app shows it occupying primarily 1 but some up to 5&6, but nowt anywhere near 11, which is what the Sonosnet is now set to. 

Probably best to monitor for 24hrs and let us know if it improves or persists.

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)
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The WiFi channel change was yesterday morning prior to an afternoon on  the phone to support, fault persists all this morning wish is pretty much 24hours.

Waiting for someone to tell me something more specific, like which speakers are acting up and causing the problem rather than broad strokes Wifi channel settings. 😩

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’m seeing some conflicting information in the diagnostics that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, regarding which units are wired to ethernet.

Please unplug all Sonos devices, including the Boost, and your router from power. Wait 1 minute, then turn the router back on. Once you have WiFi, please turn on any ethernet-wired Sonos devices and wait for solid white lights on them before turning on the rest of Sonos. Please then play to one room and group-in the other rooms. Be aware that the room first selected before grouping can be an important choice. Please select a room that is wired, if any are, or a room close to the Boost if only the Boost is wired.

If there are any issues with grouping (or playback while grouping), please immediately submit a diagnostic and reply here with the number given when it’s convenient. Thanks. 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Hi @Corry P

Any router rebooting is gonna have to wait alas for the missus to finish work... She was more than understanding all yesterday with the multiple outages and spent half the day hotspotting from her phone, so I'll give her a break!!

It's also not really very practical to have to reboot the sonos in any kind of sequence, there are 9 units including the boost dotted around the place, many with the plugs behind furniture which is always the way right? We also get quite a lot of power cuts (#ruralbliss) so we really need the system ok to run from being all turned on at the same time. Indeed rebooting the system usually consists of turning the main breaker for the house off and on again!

You said the diagnostic was conflicting regarding what was plugged in - only the boost and one Play:1 (Floater) were plugged in, and were about 3 feet apart. (this on advice of support yesterday) What did it suggest was wired? 

UPDATE: before I saw your reply I was playing around with the boost on a long ethernet cable to see if a different placement helped, (it didn't) but then just for giggles left it disconnected, so now only that Play:1 was wired. All seems to be working at the moment, so will keep an eye. I am not going to celebrate just yet, as this happened yesterday too when first adding that speaker but then a few hours later the issue returned.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I haven't just ignored your reply, thank you for it 👍 

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@Corry P ahhh there we are, I've broken it again. It had been working faultlessly all afternoon as "Back Bedroom +4" (Back Bedroom is above the dining room where the wired Play:1 "Floater" is... But then I changed the grouping around and that did it.

Diagnostic 1719409231 - grouping "Dining Room +4" but it was acting up regardless of which room I started from. Clearly changing it upset something.

(only wired product now is Play:1 “Floater“)

 

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

So the last diagnostic said that only the Boost was wired, but Floater and Outbuilding were showing signs of being connected too. Now, it only shows Floater as wired.

If you’re going to create a group that includes Floater, I highly recommend you select Floater first, then group the other rooms in. This will minimise the path that the data flows through the network, and could be the difference between getting dropouts and normal playback.

My advice to reboot everything in sequence was more of an ideal than a requirement - just trying to give your system the best chance. Just rebooting at all will probably do fine.

If you are in the habit of playing with a large group, I’d ideally want to see a second unit wired too, like the Boost. Just keep it 1m away from your router or other sources of interference. 

Do all your rooms play individually, without grouping, successfully? If any rooms have trouble playing by themselves, this will certainly get worse with grouping. Please ensure all the rooms are able to play individually.

Also, it looks like your WiFi is split across 3 channels - 1, 4 and 7. These overlap, and it may be better for you to have them all on one channel, or on non-overlapping channels (1 and 6, seeing as Sonos is on 11). Please note that any channel above 6 will overlap with Sonos on channel 11 and could cause additional problems. Admittedly, my information could be out of date if it’s been a while since Sonos scanned the WiFi environment.

Finally, I’m seeing the Dining Room receive some multicast flooding. A router reboot should sort that out, when you have the chance.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Ok that’s interesting, clearly the diagnostics aren’t a completely up to date snapshot of the system and have some out of date info in them - the first diagnostic in this thread was clearly out of date as when I submitted it both the Boost and “Floater” were wired. It is interesting that it showed signs of “Outbuilding” being wired - I had tried that very briefly the day before! (More on that later)

Sorry but what is multicast flooding? (I’m no expert at things router)

The individual rooms generally work ok, but the Front and Back Bedrooms which are made up of 2 x Play:1 speakers in a stereo pair will often act up and one or both speakers drop in and out, but usually when the system has been idle for a while. 

Re: large groupings - this is our preferred use of the system - we generally want everything playing at once. However the options for hardwiring further speakers are limited. The only real option for most locations would be via Powerline adapters which I’ve had excellent results with for other purposes in the past like streaming TV etc, but I understand Sonos do not support and have been told previously they cause issues. If it was an option then I could in theory connect pretty much every speaker.

The other option is the outbuilding could be wired to the Child Node for the Router which is nearby. Given all the comments about Mesh WiFi not being ideal for Sonos I assume you’ll tell me this won’t work!

Given we need to use Mesh here to cover the whole property (Especially for the outbuilding) is there a type that causes less of an issue?

Still getting problems this morning as before but it is noticeably better since I took the Boost out of the equation and connected “Floater” instead (Pretty much the same location!) Weird.

 

 

 

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

Ok that’s interesting, clearly the diagnostics aren’t a completely up to date snapshot of the system and have some out of date info in them - the first diagnostic in this thread was clearly out of date as when I submitted it both the Boost and “Floater” were wired. It is interesting that it showed signs of “Outbuilding” being wired - I had tried that very briefly the day before! (More on that later)

This explains what I saw, to be sure. 

Sorry but what is multicast flooding? (I’m no expert at things router)

There are 3 ways to send data packets across a network - unicast, to one destination, broadcast, to all destinations, or multicast, to multiple specific destinations. Something on your network is erroneously sending Sonos devices multicast packets, which they will ignore but first have to receive, and this can soak up available bandwidth. Router reboots tend to clear this up, but if it is excessive a IGMP switch between Sonos and your router can help. I don’t think yours is excessive.

The individual rooms generally work ok, but the Front and Back Bedrooms which are made up of 2 x Play:1 speakers in a stereo pair will often act up and one or both speakers drop in and out, but usually when the system has been idle for a while.

If you group all the speakers but leave out one bedroom (try leaving out each), how do the rest behave?

Re: large groupings - this is our preferred use of the system - we generally want everything playing at once. However the options for hardwiring further speakers are limited. The only real option for most locations would be via Powerline adapters which I’ve had excellent results with for other purposes in the past like streaming TV etc, but I understand Sonos do not support and have been told previously they cause issues. If it was an option then I could in theory connect pretty much every speaker.

We don’t support Powerline but that isn’t to say it won’t work, just that it can introduce a lot of variables that can make matters worse. Not always though, so feel free to experiment. I would recommend keeping one Sonos unit wired directly to the router, however.

The other option is the outbuilding could be wired to the Child Node for the Router which is nearby. Given all the comments about Mesh WiFi not being ideal for Sonos I assume you’ll tell me this won’t work!

Assuming Outbuilding is distant from the rest, this will probably only help this one speaker (the other speakers are likely to find a stronger connection elsewhere). We generally don’t recommend wiring to mesh nodes as we don’t know how good the node’s signal is (and a cable to a router is always better), but there’s a chance it can help matters. In you case, however, I doubt that it would.

Given we need to use Mesh here to cover the whole property (Especially for the outbuilding) is there a type that causes less of an issue?

When you have Sonos units wired, one mesh is as good as another. 

Still getting problems this morning as before but it is noticeably better since I took the Boost out of the equation and connected “Floater” instead (Pretty much the same location!) Weird.

 

That is weird. Do you have the option of wiring two speakers and leaving the Boost out of it?

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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There are 3 ways to send data packets across a network - unicast, to one destination, broadcast, to all destinations, or multicast, to multiple specific destinations. Something on your network is erroneously sending Sonos devices multicast packets, which they will ignore but first have to receive, and this can soak up available bandwidth. Router reboots tend to clear this up, but if it is excessive a IGMP switch between Sonos and your router can help. I don’t think yours is excessive.

 

Thanks! :-) 

Like I said, I’m a complete novice at Routers and the like. Something that came up when I was on to LinkSys was that it is far from ideal that we are feeding the Velop Mesh Router from another Router rather than direct from a 4G modem as this could be causing conflicts. IP addresses were mentioned, but since on the whole it all seems to be quietly working we didn’t go too deeply into it. 

Could this be contributing? I had a look around and discovered that alas my TPLink 4G router doesn’t have a bridge mode, but there are work arounds apparently. Should I investigate or is it unlikely to be an issue? 

 

If you group all the speakers but leave out one bedroom (try leaving out each), how do the rest behave? 

 

You’ll have to bear with me. It’s the Missus’ birthday so I think it prudent to leave investigating that until tomorrow ;-)

We don’t support Powerline but that isn’t to say it won’t work, just that it can introduce a lot of variables that can make matters worse. Not always though, so feel free to experiment. I would recommend keeping one Sonos unit wired directly to the router, however.

Will do, as above, maybe later! When I connect a speaker with a cable do I need to reboot it to use it or will it just notice?

Assuming Outbuilding is distant from the rest, this will probably only help this one speaker (the other speakers are likely to find a stronger connection elsewhere). We generally don’t recommend wiring to mesh nodes as we don’t know how good the node’s signal is (and a cable to a router is always better), but there’s a chance it can help matters. In you case, however, I doubt that it would.

If the Outbuilding is struggling to connect will it muck up playback in the other speakers though?

 

Still getting problems this morning as before but it is noticeably better since I took the Boost out of the equation and connected “Floater” instead (Pretty much the same location!) Weird.

That is weird. Do you have the option of wiring two speakers and leaving the Boost out of it?

Only using Child Nodes on the Mesh or Powerline alas. Will have a play around later. 

Thanks for the continuing input. 

 

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

Thanks! :-) 

Like I said, I’m a complete novice at Routers and the like. Something that came up when I was on to LinkSys was that it is far from ideal that we are feeding the Velop Mesh Router from another Router rather than direct from a 4G modem as this could be causing conflicts. IP addresses were mentioned, but since on the whole it all seems to be quietly working we didn’t go too deeply into it. 

Could this be contributing? I had a look around and discovered that alas my TPLink 4G router doesn’t have a bridge mode, but there are work arounds apparently. Should I investigate or is it unlikely to be an issue? 

Having two routers on your network can cause a host of problems. Your Velop mesh will count as a second.

As the 4G router is the point of internet ingress to your home, it should run your network - if for no other reason than it’s easier than disabling all it’s routing functions. Your Velop mesh should be put into Bridge mode, instructions for which can be found here: https://www.linksys.com/ua/support-article?articleNum=316730

After putting Velop into Bridge mode, please reboot your 4G router. This will ensure all devices get IPs from the router, and not the Velop system.

To be honest, I don’t think this will help with the reported issue, but it’s very good practice.

You may find my Troubleshooting Sonos on WiFi article has some additional information for you to peruse:

 

 

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Hello once again

Further to the above - this morning it was acting up as described even just in single rooms. The two bedroom pairs in particular were being very reluctant to play straight away from both speakers.

I captured another diagnostic to see if that shed any light… 1493651065

Any further insights gratefully received

Ta

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

If you have a spare ethernet cable, please try replacing the one connecting “Floater” to the router.

If that doesn’t help, I really recommend you get in touch with our technical support team for some in-depth and real-time troubleshooting.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Hi @Corry P

 

Thanks for your continued assistance. Did the diagnostic suggest an issue with that cable then?

Thanks for the link to the FAQs will do some more fettling at the weekend Wetherby the missus isn't using the network.

And again, thanks for the input. To be honest I was trying on here because two mammoth sessions with support, one via chat and one on the phone got me basically back to where I started and I hoped throwing it open here would at the very least get some different ideas…

 

Cheers though

John

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

Thanks for your continued assistance. Did the diagnostic suggest an issue with that cable then?

You are most welcome!

Yes - “Floater” reported 4 disconnects over 12 hours. If this was you, you can ignore it, but if you haven’t adjusted anything then most likely the cable has one of those annoying works-but-only-in-a-certain-position or works-but-not-when-it-moves issues. I assumed I was seeing these reports because you’ve been troubleshooting, but if you haven’t touched the cable since connecting it, then I think we’ve found the main problem.

My over-all thinking is that if lower-bitrate Spotify behaves itself just like the other sources, then we just need to clean up transmission issues. The ethernet cable replacement may be the key - it may be serving to reduce, but not cut off, bandwidth and if the Boost was using the same cable, then presumably it was having the same issue. In fact, I just now found an older diagnostic of yours where the Boost was reporting the same ethernet disconnections - again, this was presumed to be seen due to troubleshooting steps taken. It’s always easier to figure all this out in an actual conversation.

Regarding getting in touch, for a persistent issue like this a chat agent should really transfer you to phones, so I recommend you start/resume there, not on chat. You should definitely refer any agents you speak to to this thread, just to cut down on the time spent explaining things, and repeating things you’ve already tried.

I hope this helps. I really hope it’s just a case of replace the cable and the job’s done.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Right then... 

A bit of a reshuffle over the weekend. 

The velop is now in bridge mode, so the TPlink Router is doing the heavy lifting. 

The Boost is back, now plugged into the TPlink. 

This generally seemed to work ok, especially if playback started from one of the bedrooms or Fire Room... 

However, if started from floater, it would still act up. For a giggle that is now plugged into a child node of the velop to see if that helped. 

(the outbuilding is also plugged into the other child node)

All seems well, (although I wouldn't want to swear it won't act up later) with one notable exception. When editing the playlist (say removing the next track) when it gets to it, it jumps a few tracks and the controller says connection to Spotify lost.

Sigh. One more diagnostic 396500956

(oh and the cables changed even though the suspect one last time was almost brand new 🤷🏻‍♂️) 

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Update : nope, the upstairs jump in and out if playback started from floater. I guess we're never going to fix that and will just have to use the better rooms to start the group. It's a shame it's so temperamental... 

Corry P
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Hi @Standforhats 

My guess is that you experienced two dropouts - one 1m before the diagnostic, and one 6m before that? If so, that exactly coincides with multicast flooding reaching the Boost, which your IGMP switch should be filtering - if the Boost is wired to it, that is. I’m assuming it is, and that means I don’t understand why the Boost is still getting them.

Red is multicast not destined for Sonos, but received nonetheless

The dropouts experienced when Floater is in charge make sense. As it is now relying on a wireless connection between the Velop nodes, it’s no longer necessarily the best choice of Group Coordinator (selected first when creating the group).

Your connection map should help you visualise this. The solid lines are wires, dotted lines are WiFi/SonosNet/mesh-backhaul.

A Spotify stream comes in at the top, and travels over WiFi to the Velop node, then over cable to the Floater. Floater then buffers it and sends it back to the Boost - two cables and one more WiFi jump. Boost sends it to the other speakers in the group, apart from Outbuilding, who gets it over one more WiFi connection and a cable. 

If, however, a unit connecting to the Boost was the GC, then things go smoother. Front Bedroom has the strongest connection to Boost, so is now the best choice. Spotify again comes in from the top, goes to the Boost and wirelessly to Front Bedroom. Front Bedroom buffers it, and then sends it to the Boost, which then sends directly to the other speakers. Outbuilding and Floater depend on the Velop backhaul as before. The key difference here I think is that when it’s a Sonos-to-Sonos connection, there is no third-party bandwidth.

I should say that it does look like at least one of the speakers (Dining Room) will actually prefer connecting to Floater, which it may do when rebooted. This could conceivably take some load off the Boost and make things more stable. Please reboot the Dining Room speaker. Please be aware of the need for the backhaul on the Velop system to be of good quality - I take it that’s what the Velop app reports about the nodes’ connections?

Shown below are the various signal strengths between your Sonos devices:

Red is only bad if it’s not ENET, and even then only if it’s the only connection available

As you can see, Dining Room would likely connect to Floater rather than to Boost (63 vs 43). Sonos devices will only actively look for a better source of connection when the RSSI (signal strength) gets below 19, which is why the reboot would be needed. The secondary speaker of a pair will always get it’s stream from it’s partner, but it looks like Back Bedroom will connect to Floater too. Please reboot them to spread the load too.

When rebooting the entire system, it will be best to turn on the wired devices first and to wait for solid white lights before continuing.

So, with the speakers getting their connections from the 2 closer ethernet-wired units (Outbuilding isn’t an improvement for any of the speakers), stability should improve. It may make Floater the best choice of GC again - we’ll have to see.

Did you have any success in discovering the source of the multicast packets?

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Hi

Thank you for such a comprehensive reply. Sorry I didn’t respond for a bit, some family stuff took me away from home for a few days.

So,

  • The Velop backhaul is good insomuch as one can tell from the status lights, which all show blue. (good connection) 
  • I tried rebooting the dining room as suggested, and things got a lot worse. Which seems odd. 
  • Given the tortuous route the stream has to take from your description, I have disconnected floater and outbuilding from their respective Velop nodes, so it should all be via the boost now? It doesn’t appear to have made any real difference.
  • I haven’t found the source of the multicast packets, given I don’t really know anything about them and indeed this thread is the first time I have heard of such a thing. I don’t know what an IGMP Switch is, but rooting around (sigh, no pun intended sorry!) in the settings of the TPLink Archer router which is now controlling everything, I have tried switching on the “snooping” option which seemed to suggest it might help. It doesn’t appear to have done so. 

Today’s diagnostic, taken just after the stream dropped out a couple of times but then continued playing (not the usual issue) 109893824… this is using Fire Room as the starting point as that seems to be the most stable. (Not oddly Front Bedroom which is where the boost is, I wonder if that is because it’s a pair?) 

I do feel like I’m just randomly trying things now. I clearly need to do some research on multicast packets…

Thanks again

John

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@Corry P I don't know if this thread is still active but here's today's diagnostic 972940648 🙄

Using Fire Room as the group controller it's been reasonably OK the last couple of days but just now the upstairs pairs started mucking around again.

Also, it's still doing this thing where if you change the queue (like, start a playlist then select shuffle) it will almost certainly skip to the song after next when it finishes the one you started with.

Having spent forever mucking around with wifi interference and things like that and getting nowhere, could we be barking up the wrong tree? Could it be the router settings? I don't know much about the technical side of that but it's the only real bit that I haven't been asked to look at.

Does the diagnostic show multicast issues? I'm lead to believe the snooping thing on the router being enabled should have fixed that..

H

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So, removing the boost, wiring (long cable) the Front Bedroom R speaker, figuring it’s pretty much the most central I can get wired directly from the router…

Fault persists. Sigh.

224599629.

Seriously, it has to be something else - like do I need to do something with IP addresses or something? 

H

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