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

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

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.

As I've said before, which you're not reading, there are quite a few people reporting issues with connect amps, but they are getting told its a environmental issue on this forum. Also when I rang Sonos, it came up as a known issue with connect amps. I'm not saying it's a conspiracy by Sonos to force people to upgrade, I never have, you're making that up, but they don't seem particularly interested in fixing it. I had zero problems with this device until June 2023, the same time others seem to have started symptoms. Either it's a massive coincidence or that update caused an issue.

I don't know why you're so keen to defend Sonos against any issue btw, I love most of my Sonos devices, I don't hate the company, but the company isn't beyond criticism or probing questions being asked, it doesn't need you to defend it.

B

britcowboyAuthor

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.

FYI I've tried system restarts, reserving ips, having the CA being on WiFi and off WiFi (it's always connected to ethernet) I've tried having different devices as root bridge, I've changed sonosnet channel, I've reterminated the speaker connection. I've gone through Sonos diagnosis on the phone, sending diagnosis information to them. They told me it was a memory issue and the only solution is to buy an Amp

buzz

My vote is a hardware issue.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

My vote is a hardware issue.

You’re correct. It’s a hardware issue caused by Sonos writing code which the hardware can no longer keep up with.
Sonos themselves are telling us this when we call them with this issue ‘your hardware is overloaded. Buy new hardware’.

Like @britcowboy , I don’t understand why many posters are so keen to ignore the obvious. Surely Occam’s razor applies? Perhaps you’re all android users but my parallels with iOS updates rendering equipment obsolete hasn’t elicited a response but seems to be a decent analogy to the situation that connect amp users are facing today.

I shall revert to S1 and report back.

M

MicAnd

Lyricist I

We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house. It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago. We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes. I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem. That did not solve the problem. I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port. I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support. Nothing has solved the problem. I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades. Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems? We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house. It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago. We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes. I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem. That did not solve the problem. I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port. I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support. Nothing has solved the problem. I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades. Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems? We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

I’ve reverted my two connect amps back to S1. The procedure for doing this is documented here

Although it seems simple, it isn’t foolproof and it took a few goes to re-establish the amps on the network via the S1 app (it took some time for my iPhone to establish the necessary wifi connection to the connect amps).

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

A word of caution - you’ll lose all settings associated with your account such as streaming services and music library paths. These will all need to be re-established again.

And once you’ve reverted to S1, you’ll have to tell all the users in your house to avoid the constant Sonos reminder to upgrade to S2 (there’s no way to remove this reminder if you only have S2 compatible devices in your network)

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

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.

I have more evidence than you do for your assertion. The 15.8 update which killed the soundbar interaction with certain Samsung TVs took a long time to be taken seriously and had users like @jgatie, Mr ‘Sigh’ himself, weighing in and claiming that it couldn’t possibly be a software update issue right about the time that Sonos admitted that there was a problem caused by the software update. And even then, certain forum members queried this in case it was a ‘misunderstanding’. In the soundbar case, there weren’t ‘dozens, even hundreds, of users posting within days’ but one persistent user with a few others chiming in.

I find it strange that there are so many on this forum who rush to deny that there could possibly be a mistake in a software update when it’s proven to be a cause of failure. Invariably, it’s the forum members with extremely high post counts. It’s almost as if there’s some sort of Stockholm Syndrome at work.

K

Kumar

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

Good luck; I think that S1 is the way to use older kit, but I was not sure - and am still not - that reverting to S1 will work, but all the best.

And of course, if you just have one unit under S1, that may be inconvenient at times. All my 12 units remain on S1, though some could have moved to S2, for a price I was not willing to pay.

B

britcowboyAuthor

Enthusiast II

We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house. It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago. We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes. I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem. That did not solve the problem. I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port. I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support. Nothing has solved the problem. I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades. Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems? We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

I’ve reverted my two connect amps back to S1. The procedure for doing this is documented here

Although it seems simple, it isn’t foolproof and it took a few goes to re-establish the amps on the network via the S1 app (it took some time for my iPhone to establish the necessary wifi connection to the connect amps).

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

A word of caution - you’ll lose all settings associated with your account such as streaming services and music library paths. These will all need to be re-established again.

And once you’ve reverted to S1, you’ll have to tell all the users in your house to avoid the constant Sonos reminder to upgrade to S2 (there’s no way to remove this reminder if you only have S2 compatible devices in your network)

Happy for you if it fixes it for you, but imo this isn't the solution. I have 7 Sonos devices, all on S2, and don't want the rest of the network hobbled because of this device, plus I did have plans to buy an Arc this year, which won't work on S1, although I'm not in a rush to buy it until this issue is resolved.

A

ANOpax

Enthusiast II

We have a Sonos Connect connected to a Denon Amp via optical connection. The Denon is connected to hard wired speakers throughout the house. It worked wonderfully for six years until about six months ago. We also have the cutting out problem. Sometimes we get several hours without a drop, other times it drops every few minutes. I actually installed a new router several months ago after being led to believe it was a network problem. That did not solve the problem. I have the Sonos on a dedicated wireless port. I have tried using different channels on the advice of Sonos support. Nothing has solved the problem. I agree that this is a problem caused by the Sonos hardware upgrades. Can anyone tell me how can I revert my Connect back to pre upgrade when it worked without any problems? We are retired and on a fixed income and I really do not want to throw good money after bad.

Thank you!

I’ve reverted my two connect amps back to S1. The procedure for doing this is documented here

Although it seems simple, it isn’t foolproof and it took a few goes to re-establish the amps on the network via the S1 app (it took some time for my iPhone to establish the necessary wifi connection to the connect amps).

It’s early days (only been a few hours!) but so far, so good.

A word of caution - you’ll lose all settings associated with your account such as streaming services and music library paths. These will all need to be re-established again.

And once you’ve reverted to S1, you’ll have to tell all the users in your house to avoid the constant Sonos reminder to upgrade to S2 (there’s no way to remove this reminder if you only have S2 compatible devices in your network)

Happy for you if it fixes it for you, but imo this isn't the solution. I have 7 Sonos devices, all on S2, and don't want the rest of the network hobbled because of this device, plus I did have plans to buy an Arc this year, which won't work on S1, although I'm not in a rush to buy it until this issue is resolved.

I appreciate that it’s of limited practical use to you if the reversion to S1 fixes the problem but at least it will prove that the problem is software related rather than network or hardware related.

As it stands, I haven’t noticed any loss of functionality going back to S1. In fact, functionality has improved as the network has been streaming for five hours with no glitches and the app control is much more responsive!

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