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

T

TheRamblinMan

Renowned Enthusiast I

It’s no more deliberate than Apple’s policy of rendering older iOS devices obsolete through OS ‘upgrades’

And I don’t buy the solid state memory degradation argument as, if you bother to check other users’ experiences, you’ll see that multiple connect amp devices in the same installation experience the same problems at the same time.

At least Apple cuts off some devices from upgrading as basically saying they can’t handle the upgrade, then it’s up to me whether I want to upgrade devices to get some new features. I’ve never had an Apple “upgrade” to firmware render my device useless like what has happened here. Sonos delivered an upgrade to firmware that clearly the device can’t handle and their solution to have the functionality I had before is to buy a new one. Apple has never told me that.

T

TheRamblinMan

Renowned Enthusiast I

Sorry for another question. It looks like Sonos has removed the ability to downgrade to S1. Is that correct?

Not quite, it is not currently in the new app, but it is believed that it will be in one of the pending upgrades in which missing functionality is to be reinstated.

Thanks for that response. So I have the new crappy app I updated to on my iPhone but I still have the previous/better Sonos app on my iPad. I am thinking the downgrade back to S1 may be available on that iPad app if I use that to add it back? I may try that as an experiment. I wish I could transfer the old/better app from my kids iPhones over to me but haven’t figured out a way to do that. Guess there isn’t. But I am thinking I could try my iPad app or their iPhone app that they haven’t updated.

I can’t recall what S2 brought us as a benefit. Will need to refresh my memory. Also can’t recall which Controller app I use after going back to S1. Will research that too. Thanks again.

T

TheRamblinMan

Renowned Enthusiast I

Apologies for another post. If I take all of my Connect amps back to S1, am I correct in thinking I need to set them up as a separate system? I’m doing some reading and I’m concerned about unintended consequences of going back with S1 on some devices but S2 on the others.

Also, I currently have an old Connect amp paired with a sub running S2. I imagine this would not work and both may need to go back to S1? Not sure the amp is S1 compatible.

Thanks.

J

Jon Crossley

Avid Contributor II

Does anyone have improved performance with the updated system?

T

TheRamblinMan

Renowned Enthusiast I

Does anyone have improved performance with the updated system?

Same crappy app. I downgraded my Connect Ones all back to S1 and they are working great. Don’t plan to return to S2 unless/until they fix the crappy app.

I did do the updates to the S2 that just went through. I have my other equipment still on S2 and they are playing fine, but they were playing fine before this. Sorry I’m no help if you’re wondering about the Connect Amps.

M

magisimo

Lyricist II

I have a regular Connect (no amp) and just discovered this thread after trying to find out why I’m having so many dropouts when listening to music from all apps.

I have been trying to downgrade my system from S2 to S1, but could not find the option when following Sonos’ instructions. It wasn’t until I found this note that it all made sense:

Sonos app version 80.0
The ability to downgrade a Sonos product to S1 is temporarily unavailable, but will return in a future update.

Very frustrating…...

K

Kumar

Yet another broken promise by Sonos. Before the present debacle, they had said that they are working on addressing the harm an earlier S2 update had done to Sonos kit, with the highest priority.

Now, with their hands full fighting this present self lit fire, that promise will likely be buried and forgotten.

I notice that this Sonos promise is there in the pinned reply to the OP. A 4 month old unfulfilled promise.

Shameful.

Bumper

Yet another broken promise by Sonos. Before the present debacle, they had said that they are working on addressing the harm an earlier S2 update had done to Sonos kit, with the highest priority.

Now, with their hands full fighting this present self lit fire, that promise will likely be buried and forgotten.

I notice that this Sonos promise is there in the pinned reply to the OP. A 4 month old unfulfilled promise.

Shameful.

Coming up on one year since the bug was introduced by Sonos. That’s a long time for owners to be putting up with this.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

Updating the forum on my S1 rollback; the amps have been totally stable for 135 days of continuous power up.

But I now see that the option to roll back to S1 has been removed by Sonos.

So let’s summarise events.
1 Sonos knew last year that they had created a problem with a firmware update.
2 They promised a fix ASAP (which still hasn’t been delivered).

3 They subsequently removed the only interim solution available to users in the meantime (the ability to roll devices back to S1).

What a bunch of jokers. Shame on you Sonos, Shame.

K

Kumar

It isn't just shameful, it is in bad faith. Sonos can do this only so many times before having to deal with the consequences of this appalling behaviour. And I am not referring to the removal of the ability to roll back to S1, that may well be one of the many unintended consequence of this latest debacle.

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