Please look at my article: https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/tips-tricks-resolving-random-issues-impacting-sonos-devices-6845346

Good advice; but one question: Would IP address conflicts not affect all music services, not only Amazon?

Please advise before I reboot everything. 

PS: Again, Pandora works flawlessly, my internet speed is at >200Mbps, but when I tried to play some random Amazon Prime Music stations/playlists I get different stations  phasing in/out, but never all of them playing at once. The error log says:

Sunday, October 31, 2021 - 8:00 AM Central Time
Unable to play 'Serenade To Spring' - network connection speed insufficient to maintain playback buffer.

Sunday, October 31, 2021 - 8:13 AM Central Time
Unable to play 'Song From A Secret Garden' - network connection speed insufficient to maintain playback buffer.

Very weird; any ideas?

Finally called support, who insisted I reboot everything from scratch, in the order Router->Sonos->other devices. I told support that the colliding-IP-addresses hypothesis cannot possibly hold true, because the problem ONLY happened with Amazon Music, not with Pandora and when streaming directly from my music server. Still, today I did this, and of course nothing is any different…

I really hate it when I spend 2 hours + so far to trouble shoot a problem with SONOS’s systems, and support gives me advice that is obviously and at face value nonsense (and when I pointed that out 3 times, the support person never answered my question or concern).

So basically, SONOS broken and they either don’t care or cannot fix it! Or both!

As a side note, the last time I tried this I received a strange error about “corrupted/unrecognized music encoding”. Probably something changed at Amazon, who doesn’t want their music to stream over other companys’ systems and hardware. Really sick to have thousands of dollars tied up in a big system, to then get cheated out of that investment by anonymous creeps who want to line their pocket with money, regardless of who they hurt how. Disgusting!

Ignoring the rant.....

As an experiment that will only take a few minutes, try playing from the Amazon Music app, if you have been using the Sonos app so far. Does the same issue occur?

Apologies for rant; you know…

Re the test: Not entirely sure what you intend me to try; for reference and what I have tried:

• I can play Amazon music to all nodes/rooms without problems from my local music server/computer; I can play from Pandora any station to all nodes/rooms without problems
• I can play Amazon music -- any station -- to a single node/room without problems
• But if I try to play the same music to all nodes/rooms, the music “travels” from station to station, as if I had an IP conflict -- but I don’t, since everything else is working.
• I have 11 nodes/rooms (S1 system) in total; when I play Amazon music (any station) to one node/room, it works fine; I then toggle more nodes/rooms in one at a time; at about  7 nodes/rooms, the problems occurs: nodes/rooms randomly fade in and out; it seems (so far) that removing nodes/rooms back to 5 then fixes the problem again; to reiterate, everything works fine with Pandora; everything used to work fine with Amazon up until a few weeks ago. I have >100Mbps internet, and Amazon music on/through my laptops play just fine; also, my S1 software is up to date.

What can possibly be the root cause. It feels like the computing power of the S1 system cannot support the sync across many stations?

Hi. I can understand the frustration. The S1 system has been coping with bigger systems than yours for years so I don't think it's that. Although can you confirm you have at least one Sonos device wired to your router i.e.you are in SonosNet mode?

You can play Amazon Music on Sonos from the Amazon Music app. There have been recent posts on here where that has been stable while playing from the Sonos app hasn't been.  

Do you have Amazon Alexa installed on Sonos?

John: First, thank you for your thoughtful feedback!! Really appreciate it.

I have the Amazon Music App on my Android phone, and my Windows 10 laptops. I will investigate if/how I can directly stream from there to Sonos. It has occurred to me to stream from one of those devices to one of the S1 nodes/rooms that has an external input, using Bluetooth (works fine the other way around, to support a portable outside speaker). 

Yes, one of the nodes/rooms is hardwired to the Router; actually to the main Node of a 3-node Linksys VELOP Mesh that is itself wired to a Cox modem. 

I do not have Alexa (sort of old-fashioned I suppose; not comfortable with microphones in my home and familiar with real-time listening technologies). 

But I will investigate the Amazon Music App route. 

What I just don’t get: Why does everything work except Amazon? Why did Amazon work fine until a few weeks ago? Why does this work well with up to 5 stations/rooms? From a functional perspective, it feels like the across-room-sync happens on the client side (on my devices), and that somehow the Amazon format is too rich to be processed/sync’ed in real time…. 

As you are using a Linksys Velop mesh setup around the Home, you might perhaps find this post (linked below) helpful too, if you haven’t seen it already:

Sonos on WiFi Mesh

Thank you Ken; before going down this route and reconfiguring my Linksys VELOP Mesh (which has been remarkably reliable for years….), let me ask once more: Why would this only affect Amazon music? That is really what I don’t get. Whatever the cause must relate and be consistent with this observation: Everything works fine, except Amazon Music via the Internet, when played on more than 5 stations/rooms…..

I only scanned quickly the reference you provided, and I don’t see how it would explain that observation (perhaps I missed something?)

If you are playing a lossless (HD) stream from Amazon Music then this might be a factor. It seems to have been for a few other users. Using Alexa or playing from the AM app doesn't use lossless. Hence my curiosity about those possibilities. 

You mentioned HD in your original post. Do you know if you have this? If so can you go back to playing a standard stream?

so this is interesting: I am currently subscribed to Amazon limitless; just googled if I can remove HD from it, and while it says you can on an amazon FAQ site, I don’t see that option.

So if I cancel Unlimited (which includes Amazon HD), can I still get Amazon stations on Sonos (which only lists “Amazon Music Service”!) as a regular Amazon Prime member? Is Sonos using Amazon Unlimited HD, or just Amazon Standard Music Service, by default...

That might be it….

I subscribe to Amazon Music HD/UltraHD, but I’m over in the U.K. so not sure I can really comment or compare with the service in the area where you are, but it’s been okay here in recent weeks - I have quite a few devices about the Home, but I rarely play to more than 3 physical rooms, which usually equates to 4, or occasionally 5, Sonos Rooms and that plays okay here.

The ISP speed from my ISP is 200MB/s download and 20MB/s upload. 

I do have the choice to either run my devices on SonosNet, or on the WiFi signal and both have been okay, but these are the things I just choose to do FWIW. The detail below may not help as you have a Velop mesh setup, so I post this mainly just for info only:

• If running on WiFi, I set the routers 2.4Ghz band at ‘fixed’ channel 11 (the second least used non-overlapping channel) and the channel-width to 20MHz only.
• When running on SonosNet, I only ever wire one device (Sonos Port) direct to the main router and that is more that 1.5 metres away from the router on SonosNet Channel 1 (The least used channel here). In this setup, I do remove my 2.4Ghz Wifi band from the Sonos App Network settings, but leave the 5Ghz band in place as I need that for use with my Move/Roam speakers. If I didn’t have those then all the WiFi credentials would be removed.
• I also reserve all the Sonos IP addresses in my routers DHCP reservation table. I prefer to set them high up in the subnet, starting at 192.xx.xx.150 —> and higher, but that’s mostly my own preference.

In wired SonosNet mode, I do my level-best to keep my Sonos matrix ‘green’.. by not having anything too close to my speakers that might otherwise cause interference.

So I have no ‘other’ access points, or hubs and keep my channels ‘fixed’ so that as little as possible changes, but review the chosen wireless channels every now and again due to the closest neighbour sometimes changing their router channels from time to time.

I’m not sure if any of that may help, but post it in case it may help to provide some inspiration to check/change a few things in your own environment.

Really appreciate your comments and details. Seems like the options for Amazon are a bit different than what I see in the US. Also, I have the “oldest” S1 system, and understand that the newer S2 systems has more options and likely improvements (.e.g, more memory for sure, to deal with HD I understand). 

Anyway, it’s all stable with 5 stations for now, which is good enough (the others are in rooms that we are usually not occupying simultaneously). 

I think I may try to cancel my Amazon unlimited subscription and see what happens, using just Amazon Prime. I now suspect that is the problem, because Amazon Unlimited defaults to HD (something I can configure on my Windows Amazon Music Client APP, but not in Sonos), or so it looks to me at this point..

.

In the UK it is possible to have Amazon Unlimited without going HD (lossless). At least it was last time I looked.  Amazon Prime is a very limited streaming service.  As has been mentioned already, things may differ between countries, but make sure you know what you would be losing before you cancel Unlimited.

The problems that some people have recently had with Amazon Music HD do seem to have been associated with older Sonos speakers, especially Play:1s.

FWIW, I am also playing Amazon Music HD without a hitch on my system, but I don’t have any Play:1s (except as surround speakers) and rarely group large numbers of rooms.

Thanks again John; my subscription was going to run out tomorrow; so I just cancelled to see if I can get to the limited music services without a hitch. If I can, then I think that is the root cause. 

In Sonos S1 I see no option to disable HD quality. I can do this on my laptop, but assume that this is client-side-only configuration, not account-wide (any client) configuration (I tried to disable it on my laptop, and it made no difference). As a side note, I was a very early adopter, so practically all my equipment (including a speaker from Ikea, and two integrated speakers from Sonos, Sonos) are S1 and “old” (but with system software updated). 

 At some point I may contact Sonos support again by phone or chat -- but last time that wasn’t useful (hence the earlier rant; they take me through a check list of turning stuff off/on and resetting things, even though I have done all that and told them so; so it takes a long time to get anything useful out of them if at all). 

Will follow up in a week or two once my Amazon Unlimited subscription has lapsed...

I don’t think this is an S1 vs S2 issue at all.  Sonos has been capable of playing lossless files from the very start.  

Speakers are not S1 or S2.  They are compatible with S1 only, with S2 only, or with both S1 and S2.  Ikea speakers are compatible with S1 and S2, as are Play:1s and Play:3s.

I have S1 and S2 systems, and both can play lossless tracks from Amazon Music Unlimited HD.

I know I have a number of components that are not S2 compatible: I tried to update to S2 and a number of my components failed the compatibility check.

But I come back to the key symptom: “Traveling music”, that moves from room/station to room/station, but only when I simultaneously stream to all or most rooms/stations from Amazon Music (a music station, play list, ...) only, sometimes accompanied by different error messages on my Windows-based controller (indicating that the internet connection is too slow, or that the file format is corrupted, or just “cannot play”/”something went wrong”). Everything else works fine, and my Wifi has download speeds typically better than 100Mbps++ (in my previous home I had <50Mbps with identical hardware, including the Velop Mesch Wifi, and it worked fine, including Amazon Music….). 

This strongly indicates to me that something changed with Amazon music, how it is delivered to my system, or the format in which it is delivered. 

As I wrote, my Amazon Unlimited music expires today. I’ll try again in a week to see if that made a difference. It said on the Amazon website that Unlimited delivers music in HD format, while regular Amazon Prime music does not. So that is an unambiguous test of the root cause, if that is it (and if not I’ll re-subscribe, because it is a great service while travelling/driving).

PS: I am also surprised that nobody else is reporting exactly this problem, although I have read many threads which appear to describe similar issues, sometimes traced to HD music.

PS 2: At some point I may need to find a few hours during the week to call back Sonos support to see if I cannot ask them to search deeper into their issues-database that they must maintain internally...

@THill182,

As mentioned earlier I’m in the U.K. (so that’s already a difference perhaps by itself), but I too subscribe to the Amazon HD/Ultra HD unlimited service (and Prime) and it’s been okay here the last couple of days running on S2, but I have setup a Play:1 speaker to run on the S1 Sonos App and so will try that here for you for a few hours and let you know how that goes and report back.

Anyhow, to try to assist with this reported issue,  I selected an Amazon Playlist called ‘Chilled Hits’, just at random, as it had 50 assorted tracks by various artists  …and I set that playing around 12.50 hrs local time (or thereabouts) on the S1 Play:1 and it’s still playing as we speak (15.05 hours)

I grabbed  a screenshot after approx. 2 hours playback and a diagnostic report from the S1 setup; 572545676 just for good measure.

None of the tracks have stopped playing and no interruptions or error (network or encoding) messages seen so far.

All seems to be ok with Amazon Music on the S1 system here in the U.K., but I will keep things playing and will go onto try other playlists/tracks. (Let me have suggestions of a playlist/tracks to try, perhaps?)

I obviously cannot rule out that the issue might be a local issue with the AM service of course.

@THill182,
Update: I played an assortment of tracks and playlists from Amazon Music on the S1/Play:1 till shortly before 7pm local time (non-stop) but didn’t encounter the issue. So that hasn’t revealed anything, but I did see this report in the community. See link:

But that is slightly different (I think ?) and relates to saved Amazon playlists/tracks as Sonos favourites etc. So just wondering if this is perhaps also the issue reported here in this thread?

Ken: Really appreciate the investigations. Frankly, still a total mystery. Perhaps it is the combination of specific equipment? As I wrote, I will try again this weekend, after my Amazon Unlimited as expired. If the problem persists, I will inventory the specific equipment/stations/rooms. Also will figure out how to record extended log-info.

Will definitely keep you posted! 

Thanks again!

There was a Sonos S1 App/Firmware update this evening - so if you haven’t done that update yet, that might be worth checking out and seeing if that might fix the issue for you.

Well, what do you know: I applied the latest S1 Firmware update this morning -- and now it works. Unfortunately, at the same time my Amazon Unlimited lapsed as of yesterday, so I still have two possible root causes -- but I am a happy guy. 

I wonder if there is anyone from SONOS monitoring this forum and conversation, and could confirm that the latest Firmware update fixed an issue that would have enabled continuous streaming on the S1 system with many rooms? Would be good to know so I can get Amazon Unlimited back….

Thank you Ken!!

Bummer, the exact same symptoms are back, BUT:

• Everything was working great, then I went for a short trip for a week last week, and when I came back it returned to the same problems
• Turns out that Amazon extended my “Unlimited” (with Ultra hid HD or something like that) for 30 days for free, and with that the same symptoms returned (skipping songs, going only to a few of the speakers at a time, shifting across them; everything works fine with Pandora, was working fine with Amazon before unlimited, and is also working great with my music library)

So at this point I am 95% certain that the problem has to do with Amazon’s “high-HD encoding”; I looked at the error logs and saw today: 

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 4:55 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Take Five' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 4:55 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Take Five' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:01 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'America' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:06 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Kind & Generous' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:16 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'River' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:19 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Highwayman' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:19 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Highwayman' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:24 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'Feeling Good' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Saturday, November 27, 2021 - 5:25 PM Central Time
Unable to play 'King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1' - the song is not encoded correctly.

Anyone from Sonos paying attention to this conversation?