Spotify unstable when starting tracks

Hi @Standforhats 

So the last diagnostic said that only the Boost was wired, but Floater and Outbuilding were showing signs of being connected too. Now, it only shows Floater as wired.

If you’re going to create a group that includes Floater, I highly recommend you select Floater first, then group the other rooms in. This will minimise the path that the data flows through the network, and could be the difference between getting dropouts and normal playback.

My advice to reboot everything in sequence was more of an ideal than a requirement - just trying to give your system the best chance. Just rebooting at all will probably do fine.

If you are in the habit of playing with a large group, I’d ideally want to see a second unit wired too, like the Boost. Just keep it 1m away from your router or other sources of interference. 

Do all your rooms play individually, without grouping, successfully? If any rooms have trouble playing by themselves, this will certainly get worse with grouping. Please ensure all the rooms are able to play individually.

Also, it looks like your WiFi is split across 3 channels - 1, 4 and 7. These overlap, and it may be better for you to have them all on one channel, or on non-overlapping channels (1 and 6, seeing as Sonos is on 11). Please note that any channel above 6 will overlap with Sonos on channel 11 and could cause additional problems. Admittedly, my information could be out of date if it’s been a while since Sonos scanned the WiFi environment.

Finally, I’m seeing the Dining Room receive some multicast flooding. A router reboot should sort that out, when you have the chance.

Ok that’s interesting, clearly the diagnostics aren’t a completely up to date snapshot of the system and have some out of date info in them - the first diagnostic in this thread was clearly out of date as when I submitted it both the Boost and “Floater” were wired. It is interesting that it showed signs of “Outbuilding” being wired - I had tried that very briefly the day before! (More on that later)

Sorry but what is multicast flooding? (I’m no expert at things router)

The individual rooms generally work ok, but the Front and Back Bedrooms which are made up of 2 x Play:1 speakers in a stereo pair will often act up and one or both speakers drop in and out, but usually when the system has been idle for a while. 

Re: large groupings - this is our preferred use of the system - we generally want everything playing at once. However the options for hardwiring further speakers are limited. The only real option for most locations would be via Powerline adapters which I’ve had excellent results with for other purposes in the past like streaming TV etc, but I understand Sonos do not support and have been told previously they cause issues. If it was an option then I could in theory connect pretty much every speaker.

The other option is the outbuilding could be wired to the Child Node for the Router which is nearby. Given all the comments about Mesh WiFi not being ideal for Sonos I assume you’ll tell me this won’t work!

Given we need to use Mesh here to cover the whole property (Especially for the outbuilding) is there a type that causes less of an issue?

Still getting problems this morning as before but it is noticeably better since I took the Boost out of the equation and connected “Floater” instead (Pretty much the same location!) Weird.

Hi @Standforhats 

This explains what I saw, to be sure. 

There are 3 ways to send data packets across a network - unicast, to one destination, broadcast, to all destinations, or multicast, to multiple specific destinations. Something on your network is erroneously sending Sonos devices multicast packets, which they will ignore but first have to receive, and this can soak up available bandwidth. Router reboots tend to clear this up, but if it is excessive a IGMP switch between Sonos and your router can help. I don’t think yours is excessive.

If you group all the speakers but leave out one bedroom (try leaving out each), how do the rest behave?

We don’t support Powerline but that isn’t to say it won’t work, just that it can introduce a lot of variables that can make matters worse. Not always though, so feel free to experiment. I would recommend keeping one Sonos unit wired directly to the router, however.

Assuming Outbuilding is distant from the rest, this will probably only help this one speaker (the other speakers are likely to find a stronger connection elsewhere). We generally don’t recommend wiring to mesh nodes as we don’t know how good the node’s signal is (and a cable to a router is always better), but there’s a chance it can help matters. In you case, however, I doubt that it would.

When you have Sonos units wired, one mesh is as good as another. 

That is weird. Do you have the option of wiring two speakers and leaving the Boost out of it?

Thanks! :-) 

Like I said, I’m a complete novice at Routers and the like. Something that came up when I was on to LinkSys was that it is far from ideal that we are feeding the Velop Mesh Router from another Router rather than direct from a 4G modem as this could be causing conflicts. IP addresses were mentioned, but since on the whole it all seems to be quietly working we didn’t go too deeply into it. 

Could this be contributing? I had a look around and discovered that alas my TPLink 4G router doesn’t have a bridge mode, but there are work arounds apparently. Should I investigate or is it unlikely to be an issue? 

You’ll have to bear with me. It’s the Missus’ birthday so I think it prudent to leave investigating that until tomorrow ;-)

Will do, as above, maybe later! When I connect a speaker with a cable do I need to reboot it to use it or will it just notice?

If the Outbuilding is struggling to connect will it muck up playback in the other speakers though?

Only using Child Nodes on the Mesh or Powerline alas. Will have a play around later. 

Thanks for the continuing input. 

Hi @Standforhats 

Having two routers on your network can cause a host of problems. Your Velop mesh will count as a second.

As the 4G router is the point of internet ingress to your home, it should run your network - if for no other reason than it’s easier than disabling all it’s routing functions. Your Velop mesh should be put into Bridge mode, instructions for which can be found here: https://www.linksys.com/ua/support-article?articleNum=316730

After putting Velop into Bridge mode, please reboot your 4G router. This will ensure all devices get IPs from the router, and not the Velop system.

To be honest, I don’t think this will help with the reported issue, but it’s very good practice.

You may find my Troubleshooting Sonos on WiFi article has some additional information for you to peruse:

Hello once again

Further to the above - this morning it was acting up as described even just in single rooms. The two bedroom pairs in particular were being very reluctant to play straight away from both speakers.

I captured another diagnostic to see if that shed any light… 1493651065

Any further insights gratefully received

Ta

Hi @Standforhats 

If you have a spare ethernet cable, please try replacing the one connecting “Floater” to the router.

If that doesn’t help, I really recommend you get in touch with our technical support team for some in-depth and real-time troubleshooting.

Hi @Corry P

Thanks for your continued assistance. Did the diagnostic suggest an issue with that cable then?

Thanks for the link to the FAQs will do some more fettling at the weekend Wetherby the missus isn't using the network.

And again, thanks for the input. To be honest I was trying on here because two mammoth sessions with support, one via chat and one on the phone got me basically back to where I started and I hoped throwing it open here would at the very least get some different ideas…

Cheers though

John

Hi @Standforhats 

You are most welcome!

Yes - “Floater” reported 4 disconnects over 12 hours. If this was you, you can ignore it, but if you haven’t adjusted anything then most likely the cable has one of those annoying works-but-only-in-a-certain-position or works-but-not-when-it-moves issues. I assumed I was seeing these reports because you’ve been troubleshooting, but if you haven’t touched the cable since connecting it, then I think we’ve found the main problem.

My over-all thinking is that if lower-bitrate Spotify behaves itself just like the other sources, then we just need to clean up transmission issues. The ethernet cable replacement may be the key - it may be serving to reduce, but not cut off, bandwidth and if the Boost was using the same cable, then presumably it was having the same issue. In fact, I just now found an older diagnostic of yours where the Boost was reporting the same ethernet disconnections - again, this was presumed to be seen due to troubleshooting steps taken. It’s always easier to figure all this out in an actual conversation.

Regarding getting in touch, for a persistent issue like this a chat agent should really transfer you to phones, so I recommend you start/resume there, not on chat. You should definitely refer any agents you speak to to this thread, just to cut down on the time spent explaining things, and repeating things you’ve already tried.

I hope this helps. I really hope it’s just a case of replace the cable and the job’s done.

Right then... 

A bit of a reshuffle over the weekend. 

The velop is now in bridge mode, so the TPlink Router is doing the heavy lifting. 

The Boost is back, now plugged into the TPlink. 

This generally seemed to work ok, especially if playback started from one of the bedrooms or Fire Room... 

However, if started from floater, it would still act up. For a giggle that is now plugged into a child node of the velop to see if that helped. 

(the outbuilding is also plugged into the other child node)

All seems well, (although I wouldn't want to swear it won't act up later) with one notable exception. When editing the playlist (say removing the next track) when it gets to it, it jumps a few tracks and the controller says connection to Spotify lost.

Sigh. One more diagnostic 396500956

(oh and the cables changed even though the suspect one last time was almost brand new 🤷🏻‍♂️)