Spotify on song start or skip has delay on multiple speakers

HI @Corry P,

Thanks for your message and analysis. I will try each of them this evening. The IGMP Snooping is activate. But will check again.

Right now the 8 AP are distributed evenly over Channel 1 and Channel 11 (with 2 APs, one on each channel on each floor and placed so the same Channel on other floors is as far from it as possible).  

I have tried wiring on two different floors, thus giving the best physical distribution.

Does it make any difference whether I use a 20Mhz band or 40 Mhz band on the wifi?

The “AC55-gw-upper”/”AC55-gw-lower” are two Bluetooth gateways that pick-up Bluetooth signals. There is nothing/no devices connected by Wifi to them. So they should no be generating noise. I can try to turn-off the WIFI signal on them. Will try

Would you elaborate on this: “From the speakers’ point of view, they are all reporting a failed physical transmission rate higher that we’d like to see, from the APs they are connected to - with the exception of Office. Office therefore is probably the best choice of group coordinator while the system is using UniFi. Perhaps you could try this and the steps outlined in my last post to reduce the bitrate, but on the Office (Left) speaker?” What is it that you can see. When you mention Office, is that the Speaker set called Office or the AP named office?

Thanks

Hi @UserInMadrid 

20MHz is preferred.

I wouldn’t have seen them if they were only Bluetooth, so there must be a WiFi transmission too.

I mean the speakers. The two speakers in the Office are the only speakers on your system not reporting excessive physical reception (RTX) errors - each error results in a re-transmission which in turn results in less bandwidth being available and in increased latency - this is quite likely the source of the delays you experience. What I meant was, regardless of what your UniFi system reports about the health of the connections, the speakers don’t see things the same way.

If you haven’t already, I recommend you read the reducing wireless interference troubleshooting page and check each speaker and AP for other devices in proximity. Separate them all by as much distance as is practical - all WiFi devices like to have at least 1m separation from any others, including APs.

I hope this helps.

HI @Corry P,

Thanks for advice.

I have tried the following:

1. IGMP Snooping is now activated. => Does not seem to make a difference
2. I removed the WIFI signal from the two Bluetooth Gateways => Does not seem to make a difference
3. I have read the “Reducing Wireless Interference” Troubleshooting page. It highlights all the basics, all of which are done. i.e. All devices are minimum 2 meters from each other, the nearest Access Point and other Wifi Devices. However, the dropping out happens on all of the Sonos speakers at random. If I was able to detect a pattern, e.g. Speaker X, - I would be able zoom in on that device. The dropping pattern appears across the full setup.
4. In the first your messages from this morning, you mentions I have multiple WIFI’s. I only have one WIFI SSID on the 2.4Ghz band and on my network, and yes there are 8 Access Points with that SSID, but as per the next point they are on different Channels.
5. Independent of point 3. I have done a radio frequency scan across three of the AP to see which of the Channels 1, 6, or 11 was least congested. I moved those three from Channel 1 to Channel 6. So right now I have
   • 2 x Access Points on Channel 1
   • 3 x Access Points on Channel 6
   • 2 x Access Points on Channel 11
   • NOTE: As the Access Points are on different floors and far from each other they do not interfere with each other
   • YET: As of right now it does not appear to make a difference.
6. I appreciate your point that my “Networks Experience” / Connection Quality could be different from when seen from the Network side vs. from the each speakers. Yet the Signal Strength (dB), Transmission Rate (Mbps) for all 14 speakers seems OK. The Channel Utilization % seems acceptable too. The highest utilization is momentarily at 65%, otherwise its in the low 20-30%. See the two screenshots. With this data I struggle to see whether I have a network issue and if so what it would be. Again, I have no problems when I play on only 6 speakers.
7. I have submitted new diagnostic data: 8257783530. Please see if you can see any difference in the data set now vs. yesterday. Is there better RTX performance now on the speakers vs. yesterday and vs. the Office speaker set.
8. You mentioned “they are all reporting a failed physical transmission rate higher”. How can I observe that, and experiment with solutions. Curiously the speakers in the Office, do not exhibit different performance than the other speakers. The drop the same amount of time. 
9. I have tried wiring before. I can try again, - but all the speakers are now wall-mounted and with the cables hidden. So doing the test, will require me to unmount quite a few, buy an additional switch (as my 16 port switch is full) and about 5x 25m ethernet cables. And “IF” the test was positive, i.e. solved the issues (in other words I need to wire my wireless speakers to make them work), - then I have a major project getting the new ethernet cables through the wiring tubes hidden in the wall, and 4 floors down to my rack. So, - I will go to great great lengths to avoid that and figure out why my system is not working properly - when fully wireless.

Thanks for your support, - lets keep at it.

HI @Corry P ,

I hope you are well.

I still waiting to hear from you on what try test next.

In parallel I have been troubleshooting my network with Unifi, and tried implementing all of the known tweaks, - non-make any difference. But in that process we did observe/learn that some call to NTP servers (to get date/time) do not get answers, this impacted several times of devices, e.g. my Philips Hue and my Unifi CloudKey. However, the issue is not “my network” but in the ISP’s network. Do you know if that can have any impact, i.e. the speakers “inability to get the time” delays them in getting into synch?

I have read all of these posts and others, and what I don’t understand is why this is ONLY an issue with Spotify.  Every other streaming service works perfectly fine just as everything is setup.  It makes no sense that I should have to go through all of these system configuration and setting changes when it is clearly a streaming service specific issue.  Furthermore, Spotify has worked without issues for years - literally 5 years - but only in the last year have I had the same issue as everyone else where various Sonos speakers turn off and on randomly when trying to stream Spotify.  I have lost all respect for Sonos and have stopped recommending it to friends because the don’t seem to take the issue seriously nor are they seeming to do anything about it with Spotify.

I am not yet convinced that it is a Spotify only issue. I got the same issue (worse actually) when using Tidal, as Tidal has higher bit-rate it drop-outs were more pronounced. When using SoundCloud - which has much lower bit-rate the issue did not present itself.

I am still struggling to pin-point whether the issue is my Internet Service Provider (ISP), my streaming service, my home network or SONOS.

The evidence - which is still inconclusive - points towards SONOS