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
16587 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.

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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

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Has it been 5 years since Sonos last sold connect amp? If so, that’s all the software update support they promise unfortunately if they can’t fix it.

Almost 4 years.

And while I don’t care about a lack of active support, I don’t expect the company to accidentally make my product obsolete too which is what has happened.

At least I’m not so heavily invested in Sonos that the S1 rollback isn’t possible for me. People who have invested more than me over the years and have a mix of S1/S2 capable and S2 only devices have been left high and dry at the moment.

K

Kumar

On this thread, it has been said that Sonos is working very hard for a fix - said by Sonos Staff.

Do you know when it was last sold?

I do not but if that was the criterion, the Staff member should have said so and not conveyed what he did on this thread. And it seems that Connect Amp is just a precursor to even play 1 units and Subs suffering this issue soon.

Bumper

On this thread, it has been said that Sonos is working very hard for a fix - said by Sonos Staff.

Do you know when it was last sold?

I do not but if that was the criterion, the Staff member should have said so and not conveyed what he did on this thread.

During the s1/s2 split this is what Sonos communicated, but there’s no legal obligation obvs. I only raise this for awareness to the affected owners as they consider their options.

K

Kumar

If it does turn out that older play 1 units/Subs and the like that have been moved to S2 are also going to be affected in future, Sonos responses may be different than if just a few Connect Amps are being affected.

Muddy waters.

As has been expressed here, pulling active support and breaking something that was working are two different things.

Ken_Griffiths

If the Connect:Amp works and then after a while it doesn’t on S2 and the current fix suggested is to simply restart the device and it then works again for a while, that sounds more like a memory-leak with the software, rather than a hardware issue and it’s affecting the old (limited memory) devices like the Connect:Amp, early PlayBar etc. I’m guessing once the leak is found and plugged, everything will likely work fine again. However we can only guess at these things as outsiders looking in, but it sure sounds like that type of issue to me.

K

Kumar

I’m guessing once the leak is found and plugged, everything will likely work fine again. However we can only guess at these things as outsiders looking in

Right; perhaps Sonos may fix the issue and then move on to S3, leaving the old units that are memory limited on S2 and not allowed into the S3 environment!

Ken_Griffiths

I’m guessing once the leak is found and plugged, everything will likely work fine again. However we can only guess at these things as outsiders looking in

Right; perhaps Sonos may fix the issue and then move on to S3, leaving the old units that are memory limited on S2 and not allowed into the S3 environment!

I’m not quite so sure, personally speaking. My own thoughts are that any envisaged system ‘split’ next time around, might perhaps be invisible to the end-user, under the umbrella of the same Sonos App, so that any devices seen as being low on available memory/processing power etc; stand-still in terms of their own development and capability, maybe with the added option of storing/restoring system features and backups from a "cloud" based resource via a users account login/credentials - who knows what longer-term development plans may lie ahead for ‘older’ Sonos device sustainability🤔?

Many things seem to be server/client based these days, with more and more things being centralised and pushed towards the server-side.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

So many possibilities for the source of the problem. A memory leak is one but it could also be something as silly as the logs filling up a space that is less than adequate.

I have no hard evidence to back this up but it appears that Sonos does have accommodations built into the firmware to accommodate the needs/abilities of the different Sonos devices. If that is correct we could see a simple update adding this as one more tweak,

K

Kumar

At least I’m not so heavily invested in Sonos that the S1 rollback isn’t possible for me. People who have invested more than me over the years and have a mix of S1/S2 capable and S2 only devices have been left high and dry at the moment.

For such people too, is not a rollback to S1 better than their present situation? How many times do they play the same music on all their speakers at the same time such that a split system will come in the way of doing this? And even for such cases, some may be resolved by some rearranging of the kit to allow such play.

The only downer then would be having to use two apps, S1 and S2.

I am merely suggesting that there may be workarounds that do not need all such people to reach for their wallets if Sonos does not address this issue soon enough for their needs.

On the Sonos side, the whole logic for hiving off S1 was for their software folk to not be bounded in future by memory constraints of old kit. Like people and cars, software also bloats with time, so it seems that more older speakers are now/will now be in the orbit of this logic.

PS: there is also then the philosophical question of what this bloat has delivered to users. I have five zones served by excellent sounding Connects/Connect Amps/Play 1s/Sub, running on S1. I don’t think there is anything that S2 has in it that would elevate this listening experience further. Even if I was to replace working kit with the latest/greatest Sonos hardware, I doubt that this will be the case because in home audio, the law of diminishing returns applies as much to Sonos as it does to legacy HiFi kit whose makers have been living on this delivered illusion for decades.

M

Micha007mk

Trending Lyricist I

Same issue here, 4 connect amps hardwired, went through all the trouble shooting and was told that my hardware is at the end of its cycle and I should upgrade lol

so before I buy 4 new amps with their measly 15% discount…do I really want to dump more money into a company that burns their own products with no fix in sight? They rendered the hardware useless with the upgrade without telling you…that’s liable.
Perhaps its worth a class action lawsuit?

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