I've done EVERYTHING possible. NO MATTER WHAT Sonos Connect keeps interrupting playback

Yes, please. Much if not all of that diagnostic data is for the previous ten to fifteen minutes, it’s thought. You’d be better off catching the error data within 10 minutes of the issue occurrence.

OK. It JUST did it.

As an aside the music JUST halted and restarted about seven seconds later (on the Whole Lotta House Connect - the only unit playing music when this happened). The Subterranean Playground Connect has two songs in its queue but the unit was not playing them when this happened

NOTE: the halted / resumed music fault occurred when my girlfriend attempted a web search on her Samsung Galaxy S9; she’s running S2 on her phone and had loaded “Tumbleweed Connection” from the S2 application on her phone from my .flac library, so to be clear NOT a streaming service.

Anyway, the confirmation number is: 1560385625

When playing from the NAS the players fetch music directly from the NAS. The controllers can be shut down or uninstalled and music play will continue.

I don’t run a NAS. I have a flac volume (and a duplicate connect to another host) that’s connected to a host PC and likewise with the other .flac volume.

I have tried using a) the same volume on different hosts, and b) unique volumes on unique hosts to see if that would stop the temporary halt of playback.

That is, I have tried moving the main .flac volume to a 2nd host (Dell M6500 with 20 GB RAM) host (that’s on the same GS108 switch), clearing the library pointer in S2 and letting S2 re-learn the library attached to a different host. That attempt did not stop the halting / resuming playback.

Likewise, I have tried using the 1:1 copy of the .flac volume connected to a 2nd host (Dell M6500 with 20 GB RAM). This did not fix the issue.

Also, I have tried using the 1:1 copy of the .flac library on the main host (Dell T7500 with 40 GB RAM) and having S2 re-learn the library. This also has not solved the problem.

I’ve reset the gateway numerous times, reset all switches, and have put the two hosts and the two Connect units on the same switch (it was like this pretty much from the start).

I have rebuilt two of the three O.S. on the machines that are typically in use but I’ve not done the T7500 because a) reinstalling the O.S. on the other machines didn’t fix the problem and I’ve so much that I would have to reload on the T7500 that rebuilding the O.S. and doing all the re-installations is going to take considerable time.

I’ve got various anti-virus, I routinely scan for malware etc, and the S2 has been configured to “play nice” with the windows firewall on all machines. I’ve used several variants of malware and spyware removal, tried to clean the registry in the T7500 and so on; that this doesn’t work properly is not for a lack of trying on my part.

I’ve gone into power settings to make sure things stay at max performance etc.

I just don’t know what to do at this point. I’ve no idea what’s in the diagnostics file (but I would like to see) so that’s a shot in the dark for me because it’s nothing I can see and say “OK, what’s changed from a “clean” diagnostic report”. Too bad that there isn’t a means by which the diagnostic file could be written to a local machine and then viewed by the user.

So frustrating.

It almost feels like if S1 / S2 were never installed on her phone and I ran them strictly from a host or a tablet the problem would not exist. I have no hard data to support this BUT it seems to me that after I upgraded the 2nd CONNECT and upgraded to S2 it worked without incident for about 10 days. Then when my girlfriend asked why her phone was pushing her to install S2 I explained why, and she did so. As I recall the temporary halt issue started again shortly after she updated her phone to S2.

Frustrating.

Sorry I started reading but I didn't understand much. Your problems have nothing to do with the app. I suggest you get a NAS and join the rest of us playing our music libraries without a hitch.

You say it’s not related to the application, but is this your opinion or is it a matter of fact? Do you know for a fact that the issue is not due to the application? Personally I think it’s either a fault common to both S1 and S2 OR a fault in BOTH units that causes this? The network connections work fine for everything else in the house and as I mentioned in a prior post I even checked all of my LAN connections for integrity. No problems found.

I never really stated that S1 / S2 were causing the issue, rather I have been reporting that which I have tried and what the results were. I have no idea if the problem was / is within the Connect units OR a function of the app or something else (and I’ve poured way more work into trying to fix this than I should have to).

The product is designed to work with NAS or any discoverable hard drive, which was one of the reasons that I purchased it as I didn’t have a NAS nor did I sense the immediate need for one especially since it was designed to see music on otehr valid shares - it was even marketed as such. The mapped drive has worked for years for me. Years. If the intent was never to allow shared drives’ contents to be mapped and reliably accessed then why do it in the first place? Why not make it NAS only?

Other network players out there support NAS but also shared drives; maybe their code is simply more reliable than that of Sonos.

You see, I’ve already spent money on a 2nd Connect (used) that’s S2-compatible and now I should go out and buy a NAS and populate it with new drives on the odd chance that this might fix things? Is the NAS a guaranteed fix or is this another “try this and see if it works” kind of thing? I mean if someone from Sonos proper were to say “the only way for this to work without ANY incidents is to use a NAS with these specified compatible drives” that would be one thing, but frankly not hearing that directly from Sonos makes me wonder. Honestly were I go to through the time and expense to set up a NAS only to discover that the problem persists that might be just enough to take the Connect units out to the driveway and chock them behind the rear wheels of my car and then put the car into reverse.

If buying a NAS and drives doesn’t fix the issue are the good people at Sonos going to reimburse me for an expensive purchase that I didn’t really need to make? I doubt it.

Again, it worked for years, two units - one S2 compatible and one not (running under S1) pointed to a host on the same switch with a drive attached to it. Is it too much to ask that a product be stable?

If I add it up and especially my time I’m really at the point of diminishing returns. It’s especially frustrating not getting any “Aha!” messages from Sonos based on submitted diagnostics. Instead I sense a sea of shoulder shrugs as to what it might possibly be.

@immersifi,

Just to mention here that it won’t be the Sonos App, or the mobile device if you are playing music from a library share on your PC, as the App is not a ‘player’ it’s just a ‘remote’ for your speakers.. once the music starts you could actually close the App and switch off the mobile device altogether. 

The issue therefore lies with/between the library share (source volume) on the PC & the actual Sonos Player and of course the wired network in-between those two. 

Admittedly I initially thought it might have been the Netgear GS108 switch, as the earlier model is shown on the Sonos ‘incompatible hardware’ list, but as you’ve ruled that out and the wired connection, I would perhaps now look closer at the method you are using to host the library and perhaps try a NAS box, that’s if you can get a mate, colleague, or other family member, to maybe lend you theirs for a day or two, to test.. I would also bypass the ‘switch’ too (just for good measure).

Using an unrelated music playing App installed on one computer, try playing music stored on the other computer.

Personally, I never wanted my computer to be involved in playing music. I avoided attempting to play music with consumer grade kit because it was under powered and unreliable. If the computer was tasked with playing music, it would slow. Consumer operating systems are not very good at real time tasks. Also, I tend to get into software development and if the computer goes down the music would stop. In 2005 SONOS introduced a system that did not require any real time involvement with my computer and I got on board. I have not experienced the chronic issues that you are struggling with. There is some issue unique to your setup.

When in diagnostic mode if one assumes that the issue must be [...] or cannot be [...] one is likely to be blindsided. I’m suspicious of both your network and your computers. And, we haven’t ruled out hardware failure.

Have you investigated the PING times to your computers and SONOS players? Do they vary from time to time?

@immersifi,
The issue with any PC hosting the local music library is often all the scheduled background tasks for OS updates, file search-indexes, disk checking read/writes, defragmentation, power saving features, screen savers, antivirus, malware scanning, background installs, firewalls etc; to name but a few things that could be causing this type of intermittent issue.

So a wired NAS box has to be worth a try here, IMHO, just to eliminate those sort of issues that can clearly come with such a library-hosting device.

I certainly choose to use NAS boxes here for my local SMB library shares and often have music playing all day with no interruptions. 

Anyhow it’s just a suggestion for you to maybe think about.

Again, I have tried moving the library volume to another host. I have managed updates to be at very, very late hours of the morning.

I can’t see buying a NAS just to see if it works; this already feels a lot like good money after bad. After all, as I have stated many times, I have rebuilt O.S. on the machines so they are squeaky-clean save for the T7500, but as I mentioned, setting up the share on a different machine with a brand new and updates O.S. doesn’t fix the problem either..

Again, I ask the question...if it worked all this time (years) why does it not work now?