Enthusiast II

Sonos is forcing people to buy new hardware as they've broken the Connect:Amp and they refuse to fix it

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
December 31, 2023
294 replies
16586 views

Hi,

I'm recreating this thread, as the discussion wasn't finished, but it was locked. I also wanted to make it obvious this is a Sonos issue, not a client environment issue.

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/connect-amp-keeps-dropping-out-audio-6885634/index2.html

I've been following this for a while because I've been having the same issues, and when I spoke to support they said the connect amp can't cope with modern software and that I should upgrade to the amp, which is clearly unacceptable.

This has been confirmed by people in that original thread who have been told the same thing.

BillJanzen

“FWIW, these issues seem to have occured after the June 2023 software update to S2 version 15.5. Interestingly, there is an alert posted in the release notes of the 15.6 update released July 25, 2023 about adjusting how older Sonos products use their internal memory. See below (copied from https://support.sonos.com/en-ca/article/release-notes-for-sonos-s2): Alerts: With this update, we’ve adjusted how some of our older Sonos products are using their internal memory. Because of this change, updates for Play:1, Play:3, Boost, Connect, Connect:Amp, and Sub (Gen 1 and 2) will take longer to complete than before. The reset process for these products will also take more time to complete after this update.”

BillJanzen

“We continue to have intermittent drop-outs on all 4 of our Connect:Amp devices, so here’s my update after 1.5 hours on the phone with Sonos today. They said the diagnostics for one of the Connect:Amp devices the chose to investigate showed multiple major alerts, including: Cannot allocate memory to full status Write failed Player crashed: out of memory OOM Killer These items all sound like they are related to memory issues with the older Connect:Amp product, as Big Bull mentioned in his previous post.”

Big Bull:

“Ok latest is I powered down 3 of my 4 units and just had the one I use most running hard wired to the router through my switch and it still gave dropouts so I sent 2 diagnostics to Sonos and they said :

------------------

Thanks, so on this one in specific I can see the audio interruptions are caused because the product basically is old, and it is reaching its capabilities, there are some things that can be done to try to reduce the impact of this, but if it continues this product will need to be replaced with the upgrade program.

-------------------

I am being advised to replace any affected units with the Sonos Amp which can be costly.”

Birchan

“ Same problem, 4 AMP of which two lose sound... SONOS did a wrong analysis and accidentally said that there were memory failures in some of the units. But since they only give a 2-year warranty, mine was 2.5 years too old. How can SONOS sell products that obviously have manufacturing problems and then say that they can replace them with a 30% discount on new ones? Wonder if Tesla would sell cars that stop working after 2 years and say, sorry you have to buy a new car every two years because the warranty has expired. So bad from SONOS so I will be discontinuing my SONOS system and switching to BOSE... “

For context, in my situation I have a connect amp, connected via ethernet with WiFi off, and I started to get regular drop outs around June. It's incredibly annoying, the audio will drop out for a few seconds before continuing, if other speakers are grouped they will carry on fine.

It's absolutely 100% not a network issue. When I was debugging it, I briefly made the connect amp the only wired device and turned on WiFi, and other speakers in my house worked perfectly at all times. I've also reserved IP addresses, and I ran a ping monitor on it to check for any network dropouts. There were none. I've put the system back now, so the connect amp has its WiFi off.

So it seems to me that Sonos have released a firmware update that the connect amp cannot handle, and rather than take responsibility for it, they're just fobbing people off telling them to buy expensive new hardware to solve the problem, not even with any substantial discount. It's unacceptable. This connect amp worked perfectly before June.

Sonos needs to release a new update that solves the issue, or give people affected substantial discounts on replacement amps, and formally announce that the connect amp is end of life. Currently people with issues on this forum are being unintentionally gaslighted by well meaning people who don't know that this issue exists. Sonos cannot say the connect amp is supported when they've released a broken update.

People need to know about this issue, I've seen loads of topics about this issue and people get fobbed off with network issues, which is absolutely not the case, at all. Big Bull proved this by doing a replacement to amps which solved his issue.

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.

Pinned Reply By Corry P

Hi @britcowboy

Thanks for bringing this back to my attention.

We now consider this issue to be largely resolved, and any remaining cases are being dealt with on an individual basis. If you still encounter the issue described here, I recommend you get 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.

I hope this helps.

Show previous replies

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Passed the 200 hour mark of the S1 rollback and the software and connect amps are still super responsive and stable.

K

Kumar

Passed the 200 hour mark of the S1 rollback and the software and connect amps are still super responsive and stable.

Good for you; as I recall your entire system can run on S1 and this solution does not need you to run a split system. For such users that are not in this boat, this may not be a good solution.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Passed the 200 hour mark of the S1 rollback and the software and connect amps are still super responsive and stable.

Good for you; as I recall your entire system can run on S1 and this solution does not need you to run a split system. For such users that are not in this boat, this may not be a good solution.

Yes. I’m aware that this doesn’t work for those with S2 only devices but I’m providing the updates to

keep this front of mind and
show users who can revert to S1 that there is an immediate solution to hand and
attempt to prove it is a software/firmware issue

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

Hi @britcowboy et al,

Thank you all for your information both in this topic and the other one mentioned (which we have reopened as it was automatically closed by mistake).

Our engineers are currently investigating this with the highest priority.

We thank you for your patience while we work through this, we'll keep you updated with any news that we can share.

Thank you.

Any update?

I've just recorded a clip (which I'll try to upload later) showing how annoying the issue can be, listening to the radio, and in a 2 minute segment, probably around 30-45 secs was silence, so I'm missing half the programme. It honestly drives me crazy

Corry P

Sonos Staff

Hi @britcowboy

I appreciate that you are frustrated by this issue, so when/if I have something that I can share, I will share it here. It is unlikely, however, that I will have anything further to share until a fix is made available.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Nearly 300 hours on the S1 rollback.

Totally stable and responsive across all devices with no pauses or dropouts on any amp.

Loving it.

It’s definitely S2 which has broken the connect amps.

T

Tuckerlou

Lyricist I

I have the same issue with my amp! After reading through many of the comments. It is apparent that the software upgrade caused the issue. Sonos should offer a way to reset these amps

K

Kumar

I have the same issue with my amp! After reading through many of the comments. It is apparent that the software upgrade caused the issue. Sonos should offer a way to reset these amps

Sonos agrees per Sonos comments here, but cannot offer you a timeline for the fix. If you can roll back to S1 for the amp and use it on S1, that seems to be the workaround till Sonos deliver a fix via some future upgrade to S2, which is by no means guaranteed to happen.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

Hi @britcowboy

I appreciate that you are frustrated by this issue, so when/if I have something that I can share, I will share it here. It is unlikely, however, that I will have anything further to share until a fix is made available.

I'm not asking for a commit diff, just a basic update like, have the developers managed to recreate internally, do they need any input from us on this? And if they have, what's the prognosis for a fix. I'm not asking for source code here, presumably you have some system for tracking issues internally, like jira, just an update would be good. I'm a senior software developer, and while I have no idea on the Sonos firmware, I am quite good at debugging and making assumptions on what's likely going on.. Which leads me on to..

My latest theory is that it's a memory leak issue. Because I was having increasingly bad drop outs, to an extent where it just wasn't listenable at all, but a hard reboot later, and the drop outs stop (at least for a bit), they'll definately come back, as I've done this before, but I'm thinking a workaround for now is to put a smart plug on it and reboot it every day, not ideal, but as a temporary workaround, fine. But that should help your devs go in the right direction, as that is a very clear sign there's a memory leak that's been introduced, and probably all your devices are affected, but because of their larger memory spec aren't showing the issue as much.

A

abr2021

Lyricist III

Great thread 👍

I’ve been encountering the exact same issue on my Connect:Amp. I did post a reply to a different thread which seemed similar but found that people, in trying to be helpful, just blamed my ‘environment’. Thing is the CA has worked perfectly for over 5 years but now it can be so bad that it cuts out more than it is playing. My ‘environment’ has not changed recently.

Therefore the idea that a combination of hardware ageing and more resource hungry software updates makes a lot more sense.

The CA was an expensive purchase given it is used to play audio through a couple of ceiling speakers in the kitchen. I expected it to still be working after 5 years. I would certainly not replace it with a more modern equivalent Sonos product. If I have to replace then it will not be Sonos. Perhaps more alarmingly for Sonos is that it is the first erosion of the Sonos ecosystem that I had, like many, bought into over the past 5 years. In fact the CA was my first Sonos product.

I will continue to watch for developments. I will also log another support call. I had done this but got fobbed off with the usual ‘turn it off and turn it back on again’ suggestions involving a reboot/reset of the Sonos and/or network devices (router, AP, switch)

Andy

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