Spotify unstable when starting tracks

  • 22 September 2021
  • 29 replies
  • 700 views


Show first post
This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

29 replies

Badge

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... 

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

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?

Badge

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

Badge

This seems about as good as I have ever seen it, yet the cutting in and out when starting tracks still happens, indeed it is worse than the last setup, so surely it has to be something else