S2 system constantly loses connection with my sonos:1 speakers

@ratty: Thanks for the explanation, I did not know this

Btw. I decoupled the PLAY:1s from the beam and made a stereo pair. Of course surround does not work but the connection appears stable. I will wait for a day to see how it evolves. If it remains stable then it indeed has something to do with the 5Ghz communication. Either a beam issue or indeed an interference issue. I will follow the suggestion of @Ken_Griffiths to shift my router's 5GHz channel to the "hidden" channel hoping that the beam will choose another channel. Downside might be that I will then have overlap with the neighbouring 5GHz channel. On the other side, it appears that this is the neighbour claiming 40 MHz width on 2.4GHz, which I just learned to consider as 'anti-social' anyway 😉

If the surrounds are going AWOL when the Beam is idle it’s nothing to do with 5GHz. They’d be on 2.4GHz. Given the evident conflict between the router’s channel 3 and the neighbours I wouldn’t mind betting that there’s substantial packet loss in the idle state.

@ratty: Ok, I will also switch to channel 1 on 2.4GHz, which appears to be the least crowded for my situatio. Thanks

Pfff. Can't get it to work 😞. First moved 2.4GHz channel to 1 (no neighbouring router!) and tried again, no stable connection. Then moved 5GHz channel to 40, still no stable connection. My PLAY:1s keep working as long as I do not install them as surround speakers for the beam…

I see that the Play Store is crowded with complaints that look very similar. Think there is a problem in the recent software version. Guess that I have to sit it out...

Did you consider power-cycling the Beam after making the network changes, just to ‘assist’ it to make any changes to its connection with the surrounds?

Can you perhaps clarify too, that you do not have any Sonos devices at all now wired to the LAN?… if you do, you will need to set the SonosNet channel to either channel 6 or 11 (whichever is least-used locally) in the App’s network settings.

How far away are the two surrounds from the Beam?

Is there anything near the Beam thats also using a WiFi, or Bluetooth, connection? A baby monitor or anything similar, as they are known to create wireless interference?

@FromEhv 

By the way, if the surround-dropout issues continue, I would not wait to see if an update fixes your problem. I have two Beams here with surrounds and I’m not seeing the issues mentioned, so it’s certainly worth submitting a system diagnostic report and speaking to the Sonos Support Staff via this LINK in the next couple of days, just in case it perhaps proves to be a faulty wireless adapter in one of the speakers, just as an example. It’s worth getting it checked and referring the Staff to this thread too, to help show them the things you have tried already.👍

HTH

There’s another possibility: that the router is objecting to IP lease requests/renewal for the surrounds, proxied through the Beam. Some routers misbehave, causing trouble for a system in ‘wireless’ (WiFi) mode. Sonos Support would need a system diagnostic to confirm this, or alternatively to identify packet loss and interference.

Hi,

When I power cycle the router, I also power cycle the beam. They are both connected to the same mains switch. The Sonos setup is done completely wireless. So no direct line to the router. The surrounds are ~3m away from the beam, with a direct line of sight.

The beam is close to a smart tv, router, playstation and dect phone.

How close? Less than ~50cm from a strong RF source can cause problems. 

Can the Beam be wired to the router easily? Putting the system into ‘wired’ (SonosNet) mode might be the answer.