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

jgatie

There’s more than two so obviously counting is beyond you. Put away the insults until you have mastered basic arithmetic.

There was once an actual problem with a single Sonos model, the Playbar. That thread had thousands of posts in a few days, along with a dozen or so other threads about the same issue. This thread hasn’t even hit 25 posts. So 2, or 12, or even 25 users, means nothing. The advice stands - Put away the tin foil hat.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

There’s more than two so obviously counting is beyond you. Put away the insults until you have mastered basic arithmetic.

There was once an actual problem with a single Sonos model, the Playbar. That thread had thousands of posts in a few days, along with a dozen or so other threads about the same issue. This thread hasn’t even hit 25 posts. So 2, or 12, or even 25 users, means nothing. The advice stands - Put away the tin foil hat.

Apples to oranges comparison in terms of user base and size of installed base.

Regardless of that fact, even Sonos themselves consistently diagnose the problem as a lack of memory or do you dispute that too?

N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

I used to think that it was a network issue but the surefire way to temporarily fix the problem is to reboot the connect amps and to use Spotify instead of Qobuz, all of which supports the memory buffering theory.

The obvious conclusion is that Sonos, like Apple, has rendered its older hardware obsolete through unnecessary software upgrades.

So the choice as I see it is to;

roll back to S1
buy the new Amp
jump ship to bluesound

But let’s be clear about this - this is definitely a problem which has been created by Sonos

Out of curiosity, have you tried a system restart? By that I mean:

shut down Sonos devices and router, wait a few minutes, and then restart the router;

when it’s fully running and wifi is running, restart Sonos devices one at a time;

set fixed ip addresses for Sonos devices.

There are numerous cases on these forums where this has resolved issues where the app can’t connect to system/devices.

I’m just asking/suggesting trying this as the drop-outs might be network/ip issues rather than memory issues in the devices.

Either way, I can’t believe that Sonos would risk deliberately sabotaging customers’ devices, whatever you might think to the contrary. The legal ramifications would be disastrous to them, if found out.

jgatie

I don't dispute anything except the accusation that Sonos is purposefully sabotaging older devices in order to force you to upgrade. It's patently absurd, especially when the average lifespan of solid stare memory is a far more likely reason.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

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.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

I used to think that it was a network issue but the surefire way to temporarily fix the problem is to reboot the connect amps and to use Spotify instead of Qobuz, all of which supports the memory buffering theory.

The obvious conclusion is that Sonos, like Apple, has rendered its older hardware obsolete through unnecessary software upgrades.

So the choice as I see it is to;

roll back to S1
buy the new Amp
jump ship to bluesound

But let’s be clear about this - this is definitely a problem which has been created by Sonos

Out of curiosity, have you tried a system restart? By that I mean:

shut down Sonos devices and router, wait a few minutes, and then restart the router;

when it’s fully running and wifi is running, restart Sonos devices one at a time;

set fixed ip addresses for Sonos devices.

There are numerous cases on these forums where this has resolved issues where the app can’t connect to system/devices.

I’m just asking/suggesting trying this as the drop-outs might be network/ip issues rather than memory issues in the devices.

Either way, I can’t believe that Sonos would risk deliberately sabotaging customers’ devices, whatever you might think to the contrary. The legal ramifications would be disastrous to them, if found out.

Thank you for the suggestions. I have followed them all and to no avail.

I don’t think that Sonos is deliberately setting out to sabotage devices but the careless coding of new firmware updates is having the same effect.

jgatie

Sigh.

J

John B

I note that you have wired your Connect:Amp and "disabled Wi5". So you are presumably not aware that this is a misconfiguration of your system? Unless you wanted to prevent the use of SonosNet for some reason? Or is everything wired?

This would not explain dropouts on the CA itself, though.

Only the connect amp has the WiFi off, this was something I suggested to Sonos support to reduce load on the connect amp and Sonos agreed it should help. This isn't a misconfiguration, it's hardwired to ethernet, and it's not the root bridge in my sonosnet

It is sub-optimal at best. Another question for you, if I may? Do the dropouts occur only when the C:A is being used alone, only when grrouped with other speakers, or in both of those scenarios?

And a related question. When you group speakers, from which Sonos speaker to you start the group?

J

John B

I don’t think that Sonos is deliberately setting out to sabotage devices but the careless coding of new firmware updates is having the same effect.

You have not a shred of evidence for this assertion. The facts simply do not support it. In particular, the tiny number of users who have supported this claim. On the very rare occasions that an update has introduce a bug, even one affecting a tiny proportion of users, there have been dozens, even hundreds, of users posting within days.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

I note that you have wired your Connect:Amp and "disabled Wi5". So you are presumably not aware that this is a misconfiguration of your system? Unless you wanted to prevent the use of SonosNet for some reason? Or is everything wired?

This would not explain dropouts on the CA itself, though.

Only the connect amp has the WiFi off, this was something I suggested to Sonos support to reduce load on the connect amp and Sonos agreed it should help. This isn't a misconfiguration, it's hardwired to ethernet, and it's not the root bridge in my sonosnet

It is sub-optimal at best. Another question for you, if I may? Do the dropouts occur only when the C:A is being used alone, only when grrouped with other speakers, or in both of those scenarios?

And a related question. When you group speakers, from which Sonos speaker to you start the group?

What's sub optimal about it? I've turned off sonosnet on the connect amp to reduce the load on it, but for your information I've tested it as part of sonosnet and had the same symptoms.

The dropouts occur in both of those scenerios. I don't tend to group this speaker that often, but when I do, it's usually another speaker being the coordinator, but like I said, the speaker on its own, alone, ungrouped, also drops out, so I think the grouping is a bit irrelevant. In fact today I had loads of drop outs listening to a podcast which was driving me mad, as I was missing bits.

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