Contributor I

Question

Music/zones dropping

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
November 21, 2016
29 replies
814 views

So, I spent an hour and 40m on Saturday morning on the phone to Sonos customer service and nothing was resolved before he hung up on me. I have just about calmed down 48 hours later but and extremely unhappy with this. I wonder if this is an easier and less unpleasant way to try to fix my system. I have had Sonos for 8 years now, have 4 old ZP100s, 2 ZP80s, 4 Play 1s and 1 Play 5. One of my ZP100s is wired into my router. I did have 2 bridges as well but the only thing that the hour and 40m did do on Saturday was remove these from my system as they seemed to be causing problems. However, my system is still dropping music (and not only music off the internet but music stored locally) and zones. I have had virtually no trouble until 4 or 5 months ago when my system has basically not been working at all. The one sensible thing the rude Sonos customer service man did tell me was that I may have an issue because the wireless signal in my house is distributed via a Powerline system of 4 plugs and apparently Sonos and Powerline don't get on well. Is this right? Please can someone help me as I am extremely unhappy?

thanks

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C

Calvin995Author

Contributor I

Come to think of it, could the undefined items be 'ghosts' of the two Bridges I disconnected from the system on Saturday while on the phone to Sonos Support? Would they still show up even though they have been disconnected for 3 days?

Multiple powerline adaptors because walls of house are very thick (and there are a few rooms!) and wireless simply will not get around the house unless i have them . . .

ratty

The Undefined items are the BRIDGEs. The system won't forget about them entirely until the other units are rebooted.

If WiFi has such a struggle with the thick walls (hence necessitating the powerline adapters) then Sonos will have a tough time too. Indeed the kitchen players are on the edge which, combined with some intense local interference when the matrix snapshot was taken, could potentially knock them sideways.

What I don't fully understand is how things have worked okay historically.

Although it's not an officially supported arrangement, some users in situations such as yours find that running Sonos via the powerline adapters is the only option. Is it convenient to wire a few units to their nearby powerline APs? Most usually have an Ethernet jack as well as their own WiFi. Worth a try anyhow. Alternatively you could wire the two spare BRIDGEs to the powerline points, in order to provide a connection to wireless players in the vicinity.

C

Calvin995Author

Contributor I

The two bridges caused chaos when I tried to add them back onto the system with the Sonos Support man. They needed to be wired into the router to be found at all - every time i took them off the ethernet cable, they disappeared off the system and couldn't be found. I think it might be an idea to invest a in a couple of new BOOSTs to improve coverage - sound sensible? My bridges were pretty old (c7 years) and may have been supporting my system fine. They must have gone wrong given how hard it was to find them, and the loss of them has caused the system to fall over in the past few months.

I'm not sure i understand how/why you think I should wire into the powerline - should set Sonos up over the powerline rather than SonosNet (i.e via WM:1)?

ratty

The BRIDGEs could conceivably have been suffering from age-related voltage drop in their power supplies. This produces the kind of intermittent behaviour you report. Perhaps we'd better ignore them for now.

As for the powerline adapters, no I'm not talking about using their wireless. Don't they also have an Ethernet jack? My suggestion was to wire a Sonos unit to that, allowing the data to flow over the powerline connection. It's not officially supported but could be the magic bullet.

C

Calvin995Author

Contributor I

Great - let me wire in a unit or two to the power line adaptors and see if that helps. Will wiring the NAS into the first wired ZP also be a longer term help?

ratty

Will wiring the NAS into the first wired ZP also be a longer term help?

It should make no difference whatsoever, so long as the router is behaving itself.....

C

Calvin995Author

Contributor I

Thanks. All incredibly useful - really appreciate your help. I have also ordered a BOOST to try to improve the SonosNet, Will monitor performance and let you know how is goes.

J

John B

Great suggestion from @ratty to wire some Sonos units to the powerline adapters. Potentially could give you strong SonosNet signals throughout your home. It would be interesting to see another network matrix with that configuration.

It might also be worth experimenting a little with the channels to see if it helps with the interference. Maybe try the router on 1 instead of 11, or Sonos on 1 instead of 6. See if some of those reds and oranges disappear.

ratty

The orange cells in the left column are 'OFDM Weak signal level: 3'. For reasons I've not fathomed it seems that early SonosNet 2.0 radios which used to register a figure of 5 (green) seem not to progress beyond 3 (orange).

The orange cells in the matrix body are due to borderline tunnel signal strengths.

I doubt that fiddling with the SonosNet channel will have much effect.

The kitchen players were however being hammered by something or other. A microwave? Someone using a Bluetooth device in the room?

ratty

Further comment: It's a very sparse matrix, with some extended branches. Presumably the house is either long and thin, or it's the thick walls. Or both.

For instance there is one branch:
Study (root) -> Dining Room -> Playroom

And another:
Study (root) -> TV Room -> Drawing Room -> Kitchen (L) -> Bar

In fact the network diameter -- the number of devices along the longest path across it -- is seven. This is the recommended limit and may be starting to cause occasional topology instability.

Wiring the odd Sonos unit to a nearby powerline adapter may help, but injecting the slightly unpredictable latency of the EoP connection into the equation could in fact worsen things. Worth a try anyhow.

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