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

L

Limonata

Lyricist I

downloaded the update, my Connect Amp has come back to life. It had gotten to the point where it wouldn’t even detect zones or play at all, but after the update, we are looking good. Will monitor performance over the next week or so. If this was the fix, my sincere appreciation to the Sonos engineering team for rolling out the fix.

K

Kumar

With these reports of the fix having worked, it remains to be seen if Sonos will make any recommendation to users of the affected kit to keep updating it with ever advancing versions of S2.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

Hi all,

Sorry not been about for a couple of weeks, but some things I’ve noticed.

Rebooting the Connect Amp seems to fix the issue for a week or so (in my experience). Updates cause a reboot, so this can mess up the counting if an update happens in that time. So for those saying the update has fixed it, hopefully it has, but it might just be because it forced an reboot.

What I’ve done, which is the temp solution I’ll go with until it’s fixed, is to put the Connect Amp on a smart plug and I’ll just automatically reboot it every day. I’d much rather the issue was properly fixed though.

It’s weird though, if it’s true that Sonos has released a fix for this, and posted about it elsewhere, why haven’t they posted that to this thread? I don’t get them.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

Hi,

We have been a SONOS dealer for years and have sold hundreds of setups each year.

Count me in on tracking this issue. Since last summer we have had multiple clients reporting audio interruptions. This has been affecting multiple different devices across multiple different setups we have sold. The most common device we’ve witnessed having this issue is the Connect Amp. Although we have also seen similar issues with the new Amp as well.

SONOS has been a reliable product for years, I hope to see this resolved!

Pity you did not join the forum here sooner and report your issues, as it may have helped others (and Sonos) to have identified the issue sooner, rather than later. I assume (hope) you’ve been in touch with Sonos since the Summer in an effort to resolve the matters you encountered with your installations?

To be fair, I had the issue since Summer ‘23 and I didn’t create this thread till NYE! I kept checking the forum to see if anyone else had reported it, there was one thread that was locked for some reason which prompted me to start this one.

K

Kumar

It’s weird though, if it’s true that Sonos has released a fix for this, and posted about it elsewhere, why haven’t they posted that to this thread? I don’t get them.

There is some talk by Sonos that the issue in the other threads is not the same as the one surfaced here and therefore the fix may not apply here, but there some lack of conviction in that talk. Basically, if the fix works for you, use it and be happy!

M

mikevanoost

Lyricist II

I am having the same issue as the original poster. Regular short dropouts (usually one per song) from a single hard-wired connect amp. Very frustrating issue.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

I am having the same issue as the original poster. Regular short dropouts (usually one per song) from a single hard-wired connect amp. Very frustrating issue.

Have you tried the latest S2 update? If so and it’s still not working properly then;

Please let us know and

You should try reverting to S1. I’m now over six weeks into my S1 rolllback and my connect amps and apps have been completely stable.

M

mikevanoost

Lyricist II

Yes I did the latest S2 update last week and was hopeful that would fix things but the issue persists. It might be happening a bit less since the update but it’s hard to be certain.

I had resisted upgrading to S2 for a long time as my S1 worked great but I had to get a new Sonos Amp last year and apparently needed to update to S2 at that time. I’m worried if I revert to S1 the dropout issue might fix but I won’t be able to connect to the newer amp.