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

Ping times are normal.

I can play the files just fine from another non Sonos app across the network (windows media player). There’s never a glitch.

As far as computers being slow I’m not sure why you say that. I have several machines all of which have DAW software on them which I use to mix and render music / recordings; these tasks are FAR more CUP and memory intensive than a simple file stream, especially audio which is a fraction of the size of a video stream.

I’ve checked the anti-virus / malware setting and they are set for very early morning updates rather than when the machine(s) is / are likely to be in use. Again, this HAD worked for years, with two players, with the same library on the same host serving files to two connect units running under S1. I’ve checked the RAM on all machines, rebuilt the O.S. on two of three.

I’ve done everything that I can think of but if I am going to buy a NAS and drives only to find out that it doesn’t fix the issue I’m not going to be happy, but I guess the bright side is that should it come to that at least the NAS can be used with a more modern device that is better engineered. I would be willing to buy the NAS and try it if I could take everything back should it not work.

I find it odd...Clunky old windows media player...32-bit at that...can play files without any such issues whether the music being accessed is internal, local, or network. No issues whatsoever. That requires no NAS.

I never assumed that the app was the “player”. What I was driving at was that something might be happening when the control of the connect units gets handed off to a mobile (with Android O.S.) device - or some other app on said mobile device causes the S2 app on said mobile device to go wonky.  I say that because after the S2 update things did work OK for about ten days, until my girlfriend loaded the S2 app on her phone (becauseS1 was no longer viable). Shortly after she installed S2 and started using it the system did the whole interruption thing. However, this could most certainly be coincidence.

That said, I have seen it happen at least three times where (either with S1 or S2 installed on her phone) she picked up her phone, or attempted a web search that the interruption happened. It’s never happened with my phone. Maybe there’s something in the way the app handles requests via wifi (i.e. Android devices) that an issue occurs. I have tried staying logged on and logged out (of S1 and later, S2), but that seems to make no difference.

Also, I have no Sonos speakers; the Connect units merely act as playback units that feed either the whole-house analog distribution system or a separate audio system downstairs. That’s their sole function. Once the signal is back in the analog domain it goes about its way to other amplifiers / self-amplified speakers. In other words the I/O “overhead” for the Connects is minimal - no wireless network being used, no Sonos speakers to which the connect units speak. There are no “bridge” units and so on - strictly wired-only.

Re the switches...I even replaced one of the GS108’s with a Netgear gigabit switch and the malady persists. The switch that I replaced (more money down the drain) was the one that had both main hosts and both Connect units connected to it.

The gateway has four ports; one is tied to the DVR leaving three open; to make the Connect units work w.o switches would mean having all other wired gear hanging off of one port on the gateway and rewiring all of the switches. I suppose that’s worth trying (I suppose) but really, should I have to? I mean...nothing has changed in the network all these years. Nothing. The Connect units have always been wired through switches and they worked for years.

I suppose that I could try moving the Connect units to different switches; I would have thought that having them all on the same switch would be the optimal solution, but perhaps not. The otehr devices on said switch are not used for heavy I/O stuff like on-line gaming and such; the biggest CPU tasks they do are processing audio files in a DAW (reaper and CuBase) but almost never am I running those DAW packages while I am playing music to the house.

So exasperating. It worked for years...everything was just fine.

OK. It just did it again on The Subterranean Playground unit.

Playing a playlist, in random. Whole Lotta House Sonos was inactive.

Anyway, here’s more grist for the mill:diagnostics confirmation number is: 998872726

BTW just checked both hosts for corrupt windows files. Both are squeaky clean. This time I was running The Subterranean Playground Connect via S2 on the M6500 that’s downstairs.

I think this makes the third diagnostics session that I have submitted immediately after the fault occurred. Is there any insight from Sonos yet?

Is there any commonality between the previously submitted two diagnostics report and this one?

I’d REALLY like to know if the diagnostics are at all useful in any way, or if I’m merely doing this with the idea that someone is checking.

@immersifi,
To get your diagnostic report feedback, you can in fact speak/chat online with Sonos Support Staff via this link here below and refer them to thread here (and your earlier thread) so they can see the complete picture…

https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

HTH

Yeah, I chatted with them via chat window and have a case number so that I can call later once my phone gets some charge. I did this once before a few months ago as I recall; nothing positive came from it. I’m going to pour myself a drink before I call. This time in chat I gave them all three submission numbers so that they could reference them as well as the URL for this thread. How I HOPE that I don’t get “Pull-Down Menu Pete” who suggest that I do everything that I have already done and documented in the thread.

I had hoped to be able to use this (CONNECT) with client files (recordings), that is, have them audition their finished work in the critical listening area of The Subterranean Playground but I can’t risk it; if a client’s work starts and stops it will kill the mood not to mention making me look like an idiot. I’ll just have to be at the laptop and run either VLC or Windows Media Player (32-bit no less) when I have clients in to hear their work. It’s 1995 again!

WOW.

I simply can’t believe it. No, I’m not writing to express my thanks (though we’ll get to that) but to relay what happened via phone diagnostics (took two hours and being put on hold six times). I’ll cut to the chase:

Flavia (the rep, who was super helpful) had me check a few things but said there was an error being shown repeatedly in the log. HOORAY!

As it happens while I pinged the IPs of the connects early on there appears to have been an issue with the MAIN host PC to which the drive is connected insofar as S2 is concerned. Long story short the Sonos app was looking for 192.168.1.76 while in reality the IP of the machine had .85 for its last octet. Mind you I hadn’t pinged the IP for this machine in a while BUT when I did it WAS .85 and I had zero issues (I pinged .85 successfully, so the network and O.S. knew it was .85 but S2 thought it should bn .76). Also, just to front load this every device showing a valid IP via the gateway’s home page could be pinged with 0% loss.

I mentioned to Flavia that if there was a DNS type issue that would explain a lot but as an end user I can’t see that in the diagnostics file (users should be able to see its contents IMO) and truthfully that sort of thing WOULD have jumped off the page at me weeks ago, but we lowly consumers (we just fund the Company, we don’t deserve access to the diagnostics apparently).

PARTIAL RESOLUTION:

Flavia suggested that I rename the host PC and reboot, and then un-learn the library (more on THAT later on), reboot the machine, point to the library on the drive (where it had always lived) and let S2 relearn the library. I was overjoyed because during the reboot and generation of a new diagnostics file that I sent the diagnostics file NO LONGER SHOWED THAT ERROR! FANTASTIC! My problems were over! Or...were they?

RESULT: For a short while it seemed that the system was stable and yes, even fast at displaying album art and so forth. This lasted approximately a day or so. So what started happening? Well, here we go:

NEW PROBLEMS:

After renaming the host I noticed that all of the sudden the Android app was basically unresponsive (yes, I had a solid wi fi connection to my phone). Nothing that I could do would make the S2 app work. So I uninstalled S2 from my phone and reinstalled it. Things looked normal for about a few hours but then I noticed that NONE of the album art was loading. Not. One.

So, I go back into S2 on the renamed machine and look at the path for the library and within Sonos the directory name was DIFFERENT than the drive name and path on the operating system (I had selected the path via mouse - this was not an errant keystroke on my part). In other words I pointed to the FLAC_Public directory on the M drive of this machine after I had renamed it BUT when I looked again I noticed that the path for the music library was now shown as FLACPublic (the underscore separating FLAC and Public was not shown as the directory name). Despite this it still worked. Kind of.

The REAL FUN STARTS:

So I have some people over for a welcome home party for a friend of mine. During the night the S2 app, whether on Android phone or tablet became unresponsive. So much so that a) first the upstairs CONNECT disappeared (the one that we had been using) but then - hold onto your hat, a few minutes later b) a 2nd Connect appeared but was named “Garage”. Not “Whole Lotta House” (the original name) but instead “:Garage”. The Subterranean Playground Connect was there but “Whole Lotta House” was gone and “Garage” was there in its place.

NOTE: I did NOT rename that Connect unit. I can offer no explanation whatsoever for what had happened.

One. Two. Three. Four. times the unit locked up during the night and the only way to fix it in EACH instance was to unplug the Connect and reconnect to AC mains. Oddly the “Garage” unit went away and its alias (Whole Lotta House) showed up again while the other Connect that was not being used just sat there.

Basically, it ruined yet another party due to all of the interruptions in the music.

THE LATEST:

The music library has disappeared from my music source list twice. That’s right, just vanished.

Whole Lotta House has become unstable several times and ironically right after being very cooperative. That is after populating album art, the next instance shows maybe ½ the art, and each subsequent access shows fewer and fewer bits of album art. It SEEMS that after this progresses a while the Connect becomes unresponsive and I have to shut down the phone etc.

Oh and then there’s the “thinking” clock when I load some tracks only to see ERROR 1002 music could not be loaded. SOMETIMES I see a message stating that the path yadda-yadda-yadda could not be located! Could not be located? IT’s on the freaking PC to which the music library is connected. S2 located it a few minutes prior but now it can’t find the path? RUFKM?

All that I do now with S2 is watch the performance get worse with time.

THE BEST OF THE BEST PART OF THIS?

I thought “well I’ll just go back to S1 and live with “fewer features”. NOPE. Since I installed S2 apparently both Connect units got a sort of firmware update (I guess) and basically after loading S1 I was told that none of my products are compatible.

FUN REMINDER: Once upon a time my 2nd gen S2-compatible worked just fine on S1.

So what do I have?

Two units that are wholly unreliable for playing back my flac library. I’ve purchased a total of three Connect units (one new the others used) and a third unit that I *COULD* use with S1 were I to take the S2 code AND HARDWARE off of my network OR set up a 2nd system with a different wi fi network etc.

NFW I’m doing that.

Thanks, Sonos for building a product that seems to get WORSE with time and revisions.

JUST AWFUL.”Upgrading” to S2 has made things infinitely worse.

So the quest for a new device continues. I’m trying to decide whether to drive over the Connect units or merely send them to the landfill. I hate dong that sort of thing but holy hell, if moving to the new application makes things worse that tells me that the code has some major flaws going unaddressed.

Also before anyone goes off on me about “it’s your network” keep in mind that EVERY OTHER DEVICE on my network (multiple smart TVs, several computers, peripherals etc) EVERY SINGLE DEVICE works just fine on my network; always discoverable. Can be pinged successfully etc. Every. Single. Computer or peripheral...all just work. I should add my network printer is about six years old and has had its driver / software updated countless times. Guess what? It still works like it is supposed to work. My computers are all accessible etc. The ONLY devices that are problematic on my network are the two Connect units running under S2.

Are you using Alexa? If so, check this out.

No. No use of Alexa et al.

Apple will also rename devices.

To downgrade Sonos devices (be reminded this can't be done with the One SL) take a look here: 

OK, first, the downgrade.

I did that which was suggested. However, after doing so I tried to install / set up S1 and I got the message that both devices were incompatible. I ran through the steps again but got the same message, so I gave up.

I’ve reinstalled S2 (but of course with all of my playlists etc gone as a consequence of the reset) and that made things status quo.