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 :

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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.

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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

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ANOpax

Enthusiast II

So here we are, two weeks in to the S1 rollback.

I’ve had one 8s dropout at the end of a track and that might simply have been a Qobuz issue or a buffering issue as it was the first track on play after being paused from the night before and the track played out the last 8 seconds in the app but without sound - and the next track cued up and played fine, including sound out of the amps.

But as ever, the apps remain responsive and quick to find the connect amps (S2 was terrible for this). Playback (apart from the 8s end of track dropout) has also been seamless and glitch free.

S

schmod

Lyricist I

Adding my name to the pile of folks who are having this exact issue.

I don’t think an S1 downgrade is viable for me, because my system has a handful of Roams in it, and I don’t want to lose the ability to group them together with my Amp.

G

Gerald Harmon

Trending Lyricist I

Add me to the list also. This is a software issue, IMO. OP has it dialed here:

“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.”

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Another update.

The system has now passed 400 hours of continuous up-time since the S1 rollback.

Everything continues to run as it should.

M

mheisey

Lyricist III

We are a Sonos dealer and have been having this same issues for several months now on multiple systems with Playbars and/or Connect Amps.

We have made every recommended network adjustment; wired the devices, set 2.4 to 20MHz, reserved IPs, separated the network and SonosNet channels, tried turning 5G off, etc. nothing has worked permanently. What we have found is that after rebooting all Sonos devices, they work fine for about a week to 10 days, then the problem starts up again - this has been fairly consistent. Sonos support has looked at a few of the systems and saw no issues in the logs.

This is NOT a network issue. I have seen Corry P (Sonos staff member) acknowledge on a few different Sonos Community pages that this is a Sonos issue and I have also spoken with our Sonos rep who has acknowledged this was an issue created by a firmware update that they are treating as a high priority. There is no ETA yet on the resolution.

S

SteveWelham

Trending Lyricist I

I’ve just spent some time on the phone to Sonos support and this is the bottom line re the Connect:Amp audio dropout issue …

Telephone support was more productive than the chat support who just follows a level 1 script and suggest things that for this memory issue will never make a difference (eg changing wireless settings on speakers, router, etc), when my Connect:Amp is ethernet connected anyway.

Telephone support acknowledged the memory problem with this Connect:Amp device but I don’t believe there will ever be a resolution. Sonos continue to develop the S2 software and the smaller memory in the older devices eg Connect:Amp will never be enough for the growing requirements of the software.

They suggested trying things like removing linked subwoofer which even if it worked (which I doubt), is not an acceptable fix. My Connect:Amp and ceiling speakers need the subwoofer.

Unfortunately the only true ‘resolution’ accepted as much by their telephone support is to replace with the newer Sonos Amp with its greater memory specification.

B

beynym

World-Class Superstar

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.

This is the official reaction from Sonos, a pinned reply earlier in this thread. All the rest is gossip and hearsay.

B

beynym

World-Class Superstar