Skip to main content
Contributor I
March 31, 2022
Answered

Sonos chime instead of radio

  • March 31, 2022
  • 24 replies
  • 2043 views

As reported by others, my Sonos occasionally plays the chime instead of the configured radio station when my alarm goes off. I’ve run a diagnostics and my confirmation number is 1670237215.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.
Best answer by Corry P

Hi @liddellj 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

It looks to me like at the exact time your alarm was set to go off, your Bedroom speaker had momentarily lost it’s connection due to nearby interference - I see regular physical transmission errors.

I recommend you isolate your bedroom speaker by keeping it at least 1m away from any other WiFi-enabled devices or wireless access points. Please keep in mind anything that might be on the other side of the wall from your speaker.

I hope this helps.

24 replies

Corry P
Corry PAnswer
Sonos Staff
April 1, 2022

Hi @liddellj 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

It looks to me like at the exact time your alarm was set to go off, your Bedroom speaker had momentarily lost it’s connection due to nearby interference - I see regular physical transmission errors.

I recommend you isolate your bedroom speaker by keeping it at least 1m away from any other WiFi-enabled devices or wireless access points. Please keep in mind anything that might be on the other side of the wall from your speaker.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Lyricist I
April 21, 2022

Hi,

I'm having the same issue. I have 2 alarms set one for kitchen and one for bedroom. Ive been using this for many years. I historically got chime if my Internet has dropped out this is rare. 

 

Now the chime is going off every morning instead of the radio. I've tried deleting the alarm and redoing. Its very frustrating as the chime us a horrid sound to wake up to! 

I'm playing Virgin Radio via TuneIn. Diagnostic number is 1504169301. 

Thanks. Soozy :) 

Enthusiast II
April 23, 2022

After years of zero problems, I too am having occasional alarm failures resulting in chimes. Been happening on and off for about 2 months now, in two *different* houses, different configs and routers etc, which leads me to believe Sonos has introduced some sort of intermittent bug in a recent update. I’m running Sonos 2.

When it fails, I immediately grab my phone (controller) and press play (for the same TuneIn station) and it always works fine. There seems to be something about the *first* connection attempt that is resolved by a second attempt.

Corry P
Sonos Staff
April 25, 2022

Hi @SoozyMagoozy 

In each case, the speakers report being unable to reach the server hosting the Virgin Radio stream. In the case of the Kitchen, I would put this down to what looks like the use of an unsupported extender. In Bedroom’s case, however, this doesn’t apply.

I’d first recommend a reboot of your router by switching it off for at least 30 seconds and to repeat this several times a year.

Try setting an alarm on those rooms for in 2-3 minutes time - does it play? If you change the radio to another station, does that improve matters at all?

If not, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team for some real-time troubleshooting.

I hope this helps.

 

Hi ​​​@ings 

Thanks for reporting this here, but in this case it would be very helpful to us if you could also get in touch with our technical support team so some details and diagnostics can be gathered for evidence. I’d recommend a phone call. Thanks.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
Enthusiast II
April 27, 2022

Thanks Cory for the reply. I’ll try some simple things first (like recreating my alarms) before I reach out to technical support.

Contributor I
May 4, 2022

Same thing happens to me. It didn’t use to, but now it happens most days! I ran a diagnostics now: 1836993249.

106rallye
May 4, 2022

@Juliewf Did you contact Sonos as advised above?

Enthusiast II
May 4, 2022

In case it helps someone, prior to contacting support, I’ve tried three things:

  1. Deleted and recreated all alarms. This did not solve my chime problem.
  2. Powered off and on all Sonos devices.
  3. Changed my alarms from on the hour (i.e. 8:00 AM) to five minutes before (i.e. 7:55 AM).

I did (2) and (3) simultaneously. I haven’t had a failure in 4 days but that’s too early to judge, as my failures have been intermittent. 

I did (3) on a hunch that some TuneIn related server was getting slammed by alarms on the hour and so was refusing or dropping connections, leading to the chimes … just a theory.

(BTW my routers already rebooted daily, which is why I didn’t need to try that.)

 

Contributor III
May 5, 2022

I am getting the same. I have 2 alarms on the same speaker, one for 05:30 and a second for 06:45. They are both set to play Virgin Radio UK. The first alarm always uses the chime, the second always plays the radio. 
 

I have deleted and recreated the alarm many times, with no success. 
 

looks to be a common issue. Any ideas?

Airgetlam
May 5, 2022

I’d be looking at some sort of network issue. The first alarm is trying to reach out to the Virgin Radio website to get the stream, and is failing to reach it, so it plays the chime. The network issue is being cleared up at the time the second alarm is going off, so the speaker is successful in reaching out to Virgin Radio UK. 

 

Bruce