Sonos CONNECT unit(s) keep pausing - incredibly annoying

Are you able to play your library tracks without going through any ‘network switch’ and simply have the library host connected/wired direct to your router?

You mentioned a ‘drive’ as the host, but what device are you using to host your music library? It’s not currently clear if you are presently accessing your library over SMB, or http?

Sorry. Long day.

I’ve never used a NAS with this system; I have several PCs and I had a drive that was (is) on my main workstation - tons of memory (40 GB) T-7500 desktop. So the T7500 was the host machine with the drive connected to it via USB.

The switches have been in place since day one, so in that sense the system was unchanged. The gateway has four ports but three of the ports are connected to gigabit switches that feed the drops around the house. The fourth port was (is) directly wired to a DVR.

I should add that the two sonos connect units and the T-7500 were all on the same switch; it made sense to me that the machine (T7500 acting as host for the drive) and the two sonos connect units should all be on the same switch (even if the gateway should be able to resolve them being on different switches, I figured why make it more complicated than it needed to be?).

Because there are two units in very different locations the switch seemed like the best way to go, and I could not tie up two of the three available gateway ports with each connect being directly connected to the gateway due to the other computers and computer appliances on the network.

Please keep in mind that none of these issues happened for a long time with the system connected as they are.

I suppose that I could directly connect the two units to the gateway and then fan-out the switches off of one port (they’s sensing switches - Netgear GS108) as one option.

What’s really weird is that I’m 99.9% certain that when I ran either unit from a PC on the network, they never paused. WHat I noticed is that if a queue was playing and then either of us tried to adjust volume, skip a track etc, after that the pause issues would start. I did several tests just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind and queued up short and insanely long playists to see if THAT might be the issue, and interfacing with the PC-based controller. Long story longer IF I only controlled the Sonos with the PC sonos S1 app the pauses didn’t happen.

I’ve uninstalled Sonos controller from the PCs and reinstalled it, likewise on my phone and that of my girlfriend (both Android), but the problem poersists.

If you store a few .flac tracks from your library on your actual PC hard-drive and index that library, rather than using a separate USB drive, does that have the same problem? Also what happens when you switch off the Firewall and reboot the PC, does that get rid of the problem. Is the PC wired to the switch?

Also just double-check the version of the Netgear GS108 switch, as some versions of that switch are listed on the Sonos incompatible hardware page shown here:

https://support.sonos.com/s/article/41

Hmmm…

I have several GS108 so it’s logical to assume that I have both v1 and v2 variants.

EDIT: I just checked the GS108 variants. The oldest is v3 and the newest is v4, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue. I’m tempted to replace the switch into which the Sonos units and PCs are connected just to try; perhaps the v3 and v4 variants are likewise incompatible but Sonos simply hasn’t checked them to see if the v3 and v4 units are STILL incompatible.

That said, why did it work flawlessly for years? If those switches are indeed truly incompatible would they not have caused this problem from the get-go? I didn’t have this issue for years, but there is one other variable - the size of the library is ever increasing as I am constantly buying CDs and ripping them to flac (north of 48,000). Metadata brings the limit down (I had read - somewhere - that the limit was 2^15 (65,536) but that more metadata means fewer than 65,536 can be handled)..

If a ‘fully compatible’ switch would solve the problem I would be thrilled. I am assuming that replacing ONLY the switch to which the T7500 and both wired units are connected would be enough to get around that switch compatibility issue, that is, I’d only need to replace the one GS108 and leave the others as they are; I’d hate to have to replace the other switches if they are not causing some ‘bad juju’ for the two Connect units, even though they serve other devices (and connect to different LAN ports than the GS108 v3 serving the PCs and Sonos units that connects to the gateway).

As far as an internal drive, I REALLY didn’t want to have to go to that end, mainly because the T7500 has several internal hard drives (of much smaller volume than the 4TB drive that I use for the flac library) and the last time that I tore into that unit was to increase the memory. I really don’t want to have to do that.

QUESTION: I did think about a NAS but I am wondering if anyone out there has two connect units and a single NAS (with GS108v3 / v4 switches in their network) and still has issues. I mean, if a NAS directly tied to the main connect unit has this issue then I can’t see any resolution.

Turning off the firewall and or rebooting does not seem to help. I’ve tried most practical things (I suspect) including a hard reset of the gateway, periodically resetting the switches and so on. Nothing seems to stop this.

Is there a list of known “rock solid” switches anywhere?

Thanks for your help.

Mark

I just noticed the Netgear GS108 switches were incompatible. I would have thought that v3 and v4 would have been included on the list too had they had the same incompatibility issues. So I would not change anything just yet until you can be sure,

My only thoughts of trying some of your library .flac files on your computer drive, was just to eliminate the USB drive connection as perhaps being the cause of the issue… it doesn’t mean losing what you have already - you can simply add a second ‘small’ library to Sonos and see if it behaves any differently.

I understand re the GS108 list, however, I have been singularly underwhelmed with the level of support from Sonos. Thus, I can imagine them not testing the v3 and v4 variants.

Good point re the USB. I actually have a hub but opted to plug the drive directly into one of the six USB ports on the 7500 rather than go through the hub “just in case”. The hub serves the drives that are not used with the sonos system (as well as some peripheral components). I used to have USBDVIEW installed but I need to reinstall it; I had been looking at the various system and app logs via event viewer for USB-related maladies but don’t recall seeing anything amiss via USB.

I’ll download USBDVIEW now and have a look-see.

I did go out and buy a Linksys 8-port gigabit switch as I figured the $45 was a small gamble to make on the odd chance that the Netgear GS108, irrespective of rev level, might be the issue. I have swapped it in for the GS108 that was providing connectivity for the two Sonos Connect and the three PCs onto which Sonos S1 controller is loaded.

Oh, and I also uninstalled and reinstalled S1 controller on all three machines. I have done the same on my android phone as has my girlfriend. To date none of those actions made a difference.

Thanks for taking the time to try and help me out on this. I used to sing the praises of Sonos and the connect but now I no longer do because I don’t want my friends implementing an unreliable streaming device.

I’m on the fence about a NAS. I mean, in general they are great to have, but I truly don’t need a NAS for other purposes, and by the time I were to buy an enclosure and two drives I’d be dropping around $500 on something that I don’t “need” and with no assurance that it would fix this issue. If on the other hand there was ironclad proof that a NAS would stop the problem I’d buy it. However, the way I feel now about sonos is “once bitten twice shy”. Sorry that it’s come to that with sonos. I used to love using these...but now? Not so much.

@immersifi,

I use Netgear NAS boxes here and they don’t cause me an issue, but most of my (now old) library is just ripped to 320 AAC lossy, so can’t say how well things would be with streaming .flac lossless, but others in the community, that I know rip to .flac, haven’t mentioned a problem recently, but most use the S2 App.

I’m also running the S2 App mostly these days.

I would just try a small library of tracks on your PC hard drive and perhaps see what can be learned from that.

I would maybe also check the power-saving settings of the PC to ensure its network connection or external connected drives are not entering some kind of low-power state, from time to time, which might perhaps be interfering with things. 

I think testing tracks stored on the PC HDD will maybe help to eliminate some things to begin with. 

Yep, I’ve visited the parts of the OS to keep the 7500 out of “power saving” or balanced modes. I can’t recall where the “never sleep” option was in the O.S. I’m a recording engineer and not a computer jockey so I have to rely upon the web, forums etc.; it’s been 30+ years since I wrote any assembly code (Zilog Z80), Fortran 77 or anything else to be honest. You would think that with a playlist enqueued there would be little opportunity for a drive to go to sleep what with the frequent I/O (a few minutes’ idle time seems a bit aggressive to put a drive to sleep; 20 minutes, maybe...but less than five?)

As I recall S2 is not compatible with the connect units, so that’s not an option.

I can however copy a bunch of music to one of the internal drives in the 7500 and temporarily point toward that library. However, this will be inconclusive because since the copied files would constitute but a fraction of my library I wouldn’t know if the “fix” were due to a) a smaller library, or b) a drive being directly on the bus and avoiding USB I/O. The ultimate irony here though is that no one from SONOS is trying these things to help a CUSTOMER. I’ll never enter the chat portal again. If I get desperate I’ll call and try to speak with a human at Sonos. 

Even the 65,536 limitation is a cludge in my opinion. I mean, OK, find a way to use a page file-type thing to support a database of 512,000 songs. On that note, wouldn’t it be nice to see just what percentage of database memory had been consumed at any point? I mean, that would tell me quite a bit more than “around 65,000 songs”. Mind you the metadata sitting in the header is like a fly on the a_ _ of an elephant, so I can’t see it lessening the library by all that much.

Thanks again.

Hi @immersifi 

Thanks for your post!

Could you please immediately submit a support diagnostic the next time this happens, and report back here with the number given when convenient? There will hopefully be an error message reported at the time, and the lack of one may even tell us something too.

Thanks!

Thanks for your post!

Could you please immediately submit a support diagnostic the next time this happens, and report back here with the number given when convenient? 

Thank you for the helpful link.