Sonos Boost exacerbated speaker dropout issues

Hi @quadband 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

First, please stay aware of the Money Back Guarantee period of the Boost - if we don’t get things working better before that period is up, please get yourself a refund.

What I suspect is happening is that there is third-party interference near either the left speaker, or both the right speaker and the Sub. Another possibility is that all 3, or any 2, of these units in your living room are too close to each other - they all need at least 1m space from each other and other WiFi-enabled devices, as do all WiFi devices, Sonos or not. Qobuz and Amazon HD are likely playing FLAC audio at a much higher bitrate than AirPlay 2, which is why only they are affected.

Please read our Reducing Wireless Interference page for help on identifying possible sources on interference. Please keep in mind sources that may be on the other side of a wall that a speaker is up against.

If this doesn’t help, I recommend you get back in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports about the situation.

If you’re able to fix your playback issue by moving speakers or interfering devices, I recommend you return the Boost to get your money back (but first test on WiFi fully, of course).

I hope this helps.

Edit: edited for technical accuracy

Is direct routing now taking advantage of 5GHz for non-HT bonds and groups, i.e. ‘out-of-band’ from SonosNet’s 2.4GHz? That would surely require two radios, as opposed to a single dual-band radio.

(This is distinct from the case where all in the bond/group happen to be on 5GHz WiFi.)

@quadband & @ratty 

Apologies - I was incorrect. I got Home Theatre and stereo pairing mixed up.

Reducing wireless interference is still the likely fix, however, though it may be best to get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to identify the location of the interference.

Before doing so, however, I recommend a reboot of the 3 speakers, the boost and the router. Switch the router on first. When it’s online switch on the Boost, and when the Boost gets a solid white light, switch on the speakers. Test for a good 20 minutes before calling us so there is plenty of performance logging on the speakers.

I’ll edit my post above to be more technically accurate.

Edit: Edited here too

Surely it’s as you originally sketched out, but simply at 2.4GHz not 5GHz. Direct routing should take care of the stream transmission peer-to-peer from the L unit to the R and the Sub.

Thanks @ratty 

I seem to having a bad day, plus I think I panicked a bit last time! You are correct. The Left speaker feeds the right speaker and the Sub, but over 2.4 GHz direct routing.

I appreciate the responses. My place is certainly radio dense; mostly 5Ghz. I’ve separated my 2.4 channels as far as I can and seem to be getting somewhat better results. Setting my WAP’s 2.4 to use channel 1 and the Boost to channel 11 seems to have eliminated speaker dropouts. The preliminary results are good, even while playing actual masters (big fat wav files) from a NAS. 

Does the system support multiple Boosts? I have a couple other places I intend to stick speakers and I’m not certain a single unit will provide coverage in my environment. 

Yes, you can wire multiple BOOSTs. Or, for that matter, wire other Sonos speakers. They all would reinforce the SonosNet network. But they all would reinforce the SonosNet network anyway, once you’ve wired the first BOOST, as that is the way the SonosNet network functions, each device becomes a receiver and broadcaster of the signal.

Welp, so much for it working fine. The behavior is still exhibiting itself despite the speakers all having green connections to one another in the matrix. If 2.4 interference were the cause then the left speaker should also cut out, and the other speakers would cut out more than the single time they do at the beginning of a song. I want to reiterate that the left speaker never cuts out or hesitates. It only occurs when I am selecting a new song within a playlist.
 

This appears to me to be a throughput/bandwidth problem between the nodes as I am assuming that they use some sort of naive buffering strategy that then associates chunks to a time domain hash map. 
 

I’ve submitted a diagnostic: 174365274

Hi @quadband 

There is some noise near your Boost that I would like to minimise. It’s likely that the Boost and router are too close to each other, but it could also possibly be another source. Please read our guide on Reducing Wireless Interference and isolate the Boost from any possible sources, by at least 1m.

There’s also some multicast flooding on the network. Please switch your router off for at least 30 seconds to refresh things.

Finally, given that your Living Room speakers are closer to the Boost than the Bedroom speakers, I recommend you put that room in charge of the group by selecting it first in the app when grouping. Thanks.

The Boost is indeed currently sitting right under an AP node (though hardwired back to a switch in my office.) I will see about moving it. I didn’t figure that to be an issue as everything else in the matrix is green, and my AP’s employ beam forming.
 

The multicast flooding wasn’t something I was aware of, but I bet my boots it’s the WiFi bulbs on the network. I will track the source down. I can probably even segregate those off (or throw them in the lake as I’ve been threatening to do.)

Again, the thing that confuses me most about the issue is it’s never all of the speakers. Just the children of that left living room speaker. I will move stuff around, clear the air, and report back. Thanks for your help.