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Calvin995
Contributor I
November 21, 2016
Question

Music/zones dropping

  • 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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    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 22, 2016
    The house is both long and thin, quite large and has very thick walls. But the players are effectively next to each other. Geography is:

    Ground floor (6 zones pretty much all in a line from start to finish): Study - Dining Room - Drawing Room - Kitchen - Garden (unit in same room as Kitchen) - Bar (furthest point)
    Basement (2 zones): TV Room (under Dining Room) - Playroom (under Drawing Room)
    1st Floor (2 zones): Mimi's Bedroom (above Study) - Master bedroom (above Drawing Room)

    This should mean that there is better linkage than is showing on the matrix, which i agree looks bad. Powerline adaptors are in Study, Kitchen, Master Bedroom and TV RooM (effectively the 4 corner of the house).

    So, 2 further questions: where to site the new BOOST i have ordered which is arriving tonight and which units to plug into powerline? My thought on the latter was to plug the kitchen powerline into one of the Kitchen Play 1s or the Garden ZP100, and then plug the TV room powerline into the TV Room ZP80. Advice on BOOST placement appreciated!
    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 22, 2016
    Kitchen interference not a microwave but could be a cordless phone or bluetooth Fitbits etc. Strange that the Garden is not affected given that the unit is in the kitchen
    ratty
    ratty
    November 22, 2016
    A DECT phone should normally be on 1.9GHz, at least in EU. Bluetooth could produce the high ANI level.
    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 22, 2016
    OK, so have connected up a new BOOST (pretty much in the centre of the house) and wired the Garden zone into the powerline. New matrix is attached (i blacked out the ones that don't count). Also switched my powerline wireless to channel 1 and checked that the channel most free from the neighbours' wireless signals is channel 6 which the SonosNet is on.
    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 22, 2016
    Just looked at the matrix though (as i begin to understand how this stuff works!) and it seems the Garden zone is now the root, presumably due to being wired into the powerline?
    ratty
    ratty
    November 22, 2016
    Just looked at the matrix though (as i begin to understand how this stuff works!) and it seems the Garden zone is now the root, presumably due to being wired into the powerline?
    Yes, due to having a MAC address smaller in value than the Study node. It doesn't matter. Garden has picked up the Kitchen pair and Bar.

    The BOOST is not doing anything useful. It's talking wirelessly to Study, and that's it.

    Playroom could struggle, but apart from that things look improved. Playroom is trying to connect directly to Study rather than via Dining Room as before. It could revert to its original topology.

    It'll be interesting to see how it all performs.
    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 23, 2016
    Doesn't seem like £79 well spent if the BOOST is not doing anything useful . . . . how can i remedy that?
    ratty
    ratty
    November 23, 2016
    Doesn't seem like £79 well spent if the BOOST is not doing anything useful . . . . how can i remedy that?
    You can see from the matrix that the BOOST only has a single coloured cell (apart from the left column), connecting to Study. It's not wired, so at the moment it's basically just hanging off Study doing nothing but warm the room.

    Either put it somewhere it can be of more use or wire it, perhaps to a Powerline adapter.

    SonosNet will try to minimise the number of wireless hops and therefore will, perhaps frustratingly, often bypass 'helpful' intermediate wireless relays. It's pretty smart, though, so if it needs to use a 2-hop path instead of 1-hop it will exploit the relay. As case in point is Playroom, which at one time chose to use Dining Room as a relay, but later connected to Study directly.
    Calvin995Author
    Contributor I
    November 29, 2016
    I'm please to report that the system is behaving much better. I wired the BOOST into the powerline in the TV room as well, and that now links to several of the other units. Performance seems much more stable and response times on the controller apps (which had been terrible) are virtually instant now. Still the odd issue where songs off Napster will skip or drop, and occasional issues finding queues when looking through Sonos playlists or favourites but generally much better.

    Thanks for all the support - any further suggestions on system optimisation welcomed!
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