Connect (Not Connect Amp) with local speakers out of sync with rest of Sonus network..

This is why I would like to delay the Connect's driving of the audio signals to the audio out ports to compensate for the processing needed by the Sonos system. The simple answer I am gleaning is there is no way to do this (delay the local audio a few hundred milliseconds or so) to align the sound. The fact that the sound is out of sync is real, though...



There is no way for you to do the above simply because it has already been done by Sonos! In your case, if the AEX was a device as some are, that could also parallely feed a stereo amp+speaker pair directly, this delay in the Connect's line out - for it to be in sync with every other Sonos unit - would cause the directly fed stereo amp to play ahead of all Sonos kit, including the Connect. Because the directly fed kit would see no such delay as what is seen at the line out of the Connect.

So, as others have suggested, if you are seeing sound out of sync across Connect and other Sonos units, something is wrong and submitting diagnostics and quoting the number here is the thing to do.

Looking at the diagram posted by RaleighJim the Sonos Connect (receiving the line-in 'Airplay' source) should definitely be outputting the audio in sync with the 'grouped' other Sonos products, Play1, Play 3 and presumably the Sonos Playbar... the only issue I can envisage is a delay in output by the active Amp/Soundbar at the bottom of the drawing ... are we sure the output is coming out of that soundbar ahead of everything else and is not lagging behind the Sonos products?

Otherwise I am at a loss as to why things are not in sync. I'm certainly baffled if it is outputting its audio ahead, meaning the normal sync delay buffering appears to not be happening in the case of the Sonos Connect as though it was faulty.

The culprit to me initially looks like it is a delay by the third party 'active' Soundbar, but submitting a diagnostic may help Sonos staff resolve your issue.

Unless the soundbar features a flux capacitor.
Lol, I just noticed this:D...where we are going, we don't need roads!!
For the OP: in a correctly working system, any downstream of Connect units that are wired to its outputs can only play with or after all other Sonos units that are grouped with the Connect. Playing before is either a defect, or being wrongly heard to be so. Or the presence of the said capacitor of course!
Since we are ruling out all possibilities - your findings are on the basis of grouped play, correct?!

I have a theory. It's quirky, but easily tested.

Since the CONNECT is receiving analog input (from the RCA inputs from the back from the Airplay) that analog signal source is somehow "skipping" the ordinary sonos latency added to all signals WHEN IT IS OUTPUTTING TO THE OPTICAL DIGITAL OUTPUT. This is not unusual for digital receivers, which compartmentalize the analog signals from digital ones. Maybe the CONNECT is the same.

Easy enough to test, disconnect the optical line to your soundbar and connect it instead via RCA cables just like the input is. Hopefully, the CONNECT really does process the signal through the corresponding analog system.

My theory is that the internal sonos delay that would ordinarily occur inside the CONNECT is being skipped because Ethernet is connected. So the CONNECT is passing raw audio to the router and on to the other sonos speakers. Those speakers are then individually decoding and delaying the signal, which is not happening in the CONNECT and its digital-out feed.

If the CONNECT is playing an "internal" source, it's all digital all the time. So it processes the signal for the regular sonos delay.

I guess this leads to another possible solution. Disconnect the Ethernet cable running out of the CONNECT so that the CONNECT and all the other speakers are on wifi. If the Ethernet-out connection is defeating the internal DSP of the CONNECT, it will be restored once the CONNECT and all the other sonos speakers are all working off the sonos mesh network at the same time.

Lastly, I think APPLE TV has Ethernet, and it does Airplay. So if the analog cable thing doesn't work, you might need to connect to the CONNECT digitally thru Ethernet. So run the Apple TV into the CONNECT (or, actually, any of the sonos speakers) so that you can sling iTunes music. I personally ran Ethernet into a Mac mini to have direct access to my music.

Tell us if one of these work. The CONNECT is a great device, but a bit obscure too. We'd learn a lot about its innards if the cable switch solved the issue.

I'm not sure whether I've read so much incorrect pseudo-science in one place before...

Since the CONNECT is receiving analog input (from the RCA inputs from the back from the Airplay) that analog signal source is somehow "skipping" the ordinary sonos latency added to all signals WHEN IT IS OUTPUTTING TO THE OPTICAL DIGITAL OUTPUT.
No. It's digitised on input, and packetised for network transport. No 'skipping', no bypass.

My theory is that the internal sonos delay that would ordinarily occur inside the CONNECT is being skipped because Ethernet is connected. So the CONNECT is passing raw audio to the router and on to the other sonos speakers.

Raw audio? No. It's a network connection, carrying packetised data -- just the same as wireless.

If the CONNECT is playing an "internal" source, it's all digital all the time. So it processes the signal for the regular sonos delay.

It's always processed digitally, after any initial Line-In AD conversion. The delay is nothing to do with processing. It's a data buffer, to absorb variations in network transit time.

If the Ethernet-out connection is defeating the internal DSP of the CONNECT, it will be restored once the CONNECT and all the other sonos speakers are all working off the sonos mesh network at the same time.

Nonsense I'm afraid. Ethernet -- or SonosNet or WiFi -- delivers data. Any DSP is totally unrelated.

Lastly, I think APPLE TV has Ethernet, and it does Airplay. So if the analog cable thing doesn't work, you might need to connect to the CONNECT digitally thru Ethernet.

No, because the Apple TV doesn't output audio over an Ethernet data connection. There really is a complete confusion about what a network connection is, and what an audio connection is.

The CONNECT is a great device, but a bit obscure too.

Obscure? No, unless you start from a series of fallacious premises, such as analog audio somehow having a bypass path, Ethernet somehow being able to carry raw audio, and DSP being in some way related to the network link layer technology.

Agree entirely with @ratty.. The OP was either misdescribing his setup or suffering from a rare but known hardware fault. There must be thousands of users doing what the OP said he was doing, with perfect sync. I have done so myself.

@ricdaw. Your theory is nonsense not least because it tries to explain a problem that doesn't actually exist.