Controller apps are buggy as hell, always losing connection

Despite protestations to the contrary, that's actually an indication of some sort of interference in your LAN environment, as the controllers are able to, and then not able to, reach your speakers. I'd recommend that you look through the wifi interference FAQ.

I've had absolutely no issues whatsoever on multiple devices, across 16 or 17 speakers, and 5 controllers.

If you're unwilling to do the legwork necessary to investigate, you may want to submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this issue, and either post the number here, or contact Sonos Support to discuss it. I tend to suggest the phone folks, they have more tools available, but are only available during business hours. Both the Twitter and Facebook support folks are available 24/7.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

Ronbot1984 wrote:

Why do the Sonos controller apps constantly lose connection ?

The last 6 months or so both the iOS and Windows controller apps have been buggy as hell, never connect properly, buggy as hell.

Don't tell me it's my network, all of my speakers work 100% fine when controlled via Alexa and stream audio from TuneIn, Apple Music and Spotify which wouldn't be the case if it was a network issue. Can you stop adding pointless features and work on stability please !!!!

Mine never lose connection. It's your network. Fix it.

Hi Bruce,

ive been through my Network configuration with wire shark at least 4 times over the last 6 months, even to the point of removing everything from my network and cabling up with just

PC, Speaker and router on the network, all wireless turned off. Open the app, connect ply music. Close the app, re-open and boom looses connection.

I’ve been a network engineer for 13 years and just to check I haven’t missed something I had one of my colleagues look at the wire shark logs and he couldn’t find any network issues.

Similarly with wireless, i disconnected every device from my network connected only my phone and speaker to the router, the iOS controller is far more reliable but still has issues with only those 2 devices

Ronbot1984 wrote:

I’ve been a network engineer for 13 years and just to check I haven’t missed something I had one of my colleagues look at the wire shark logs and he couldn’t find any network issues.

Weird flex, but okay.

It's 100% your network though.

Check out the following links:

Sonos System Requirements
Sonos and Incompatible Hardware
Speakers disappearing or dropping off controller
Reducing wireless interference

It does seem odd that everyone else's experience is in direct opposition to yours.

I still recommend contacting Sonos. While a wire shark might be great for normal issues, I'd suggest that is your experience is only with the Sonos devices and controllers, getting assistance from experts in that particular system might be able to pinpoint something that your wire shark (a phrase I've never heard of before) might have missed.

Some great suggestions on where to look have been posted already. In addition to those, if your players have 100% up time and it's just your mobile/wireless controllers that lose access to them, it could be multicast subscription issues on the local network popping up, this could prevent wireless devices from seeing Sonos players. When Alexa sends a command to a Sonos device, the command comes from the Sonos cloud, not from the local device.

If your Sonos devices are running on SonosNet (with one of your players or a Boost wired into the network), they could be having some communication issues with wireless devices from time to time if your network is segmented.