Yes, many users have reported this problem with lossless playback. The ability to disable lossless music would be a nice feature.

One workaround is starting the Apple Music stream using a voice assistant. This will result in lossy playback and a more reliable stream.

Hi ​@SonosChicago 

Welcome back to the Sonos Community!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

I will definitely give the voice assistant route a try - thank you for the tip! 

And yes - definitely a feature request -- would love to see it implemented -- thanks for marking it as such. 

I'm having the same issue with Apple Music and lossless audio – random dropouts on both my wired and wireless speakers. So, disabling lossless isn't the answer, I think Sonos needs to investigate and fix this lossless playback problem. Lots of people are experiencing it, and it's definitely not a user network issue everytime.

Hi ​@kdth_jhspk69 

We will be happy to investigate for you - 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 will attempt to re-engage with technical support; however, this issue has persisted for several months without resolution.

This is a huge issue for me too - only with my Era 300. There’s an obvious and consistent drop out at the beginning of every song from Apple Music. It’s a 7 speaker system, and it appears most noticeably on the Era 300. I’ve tried forcing all the devices to the 5ghz band and it makes no difference. The speaker is within line of site, less than 3m away from my Unifi AP. I’ve tried using 2.4ghz only, I’ve tried 5ghz, I’ve switched off any roaming on the AP, I’ve given the Era 300 its own IP address, and nothing works.

I’ve been searching ‘Apple Music Sonos Drop Outs’ and ‘Apple Music lossless Era 300 constant drop outs, constant fades’ and I’ve ended up here.

I too have had this since (guess when!) the horror update in May last year. This NEVER happened before the last app update so I am pretty tired of seeing the endless ‘oh it’s your network’ posts.

My network prior to the horror update last year never ever did this - Apple Music could play for hours on my speakers with no drop outs like this. I can 100% reproduce this instantly by either playing a playlist or station from Apple Music either within the app, or using Airplay. I had thought it might stop if I streamed from Apple Music and not the Sonos app but whatever I do there is an obvious and noticeable audio ‘dip’ at the beginning of every song on the Era 300.

The others will do it randomly but the Era 300 is absolutely consistent in dropping out between songs when playing from Apple Music.

I wondered if there was something in the cross fade, but I have tried this with it on and off and it still drops out for a few seconds at the start of every song.

Same issues and posts on Reddit and elsewhere and all I can say is that I have plenty of bandwidth, this was never an issue before and it’s still 100% reproducible and unresolved ever since the release of the disastrous app ‘update’ 12 months ago. 

Never even an issue until then, but Apple Music and Sonos just will not play together with my system.

I followed all of Unifi’s advice, I’ve tried every config I can think of but somewhere in this new app there is a problem with Apple Music that remains unresolved after a year of so called ‘fixes.

For anyone searching this topic - please let me know if you resolved this. No other device on my Unifi network has a single issue. But Sonos and Apple Music is still glitchy and patchy with drop outs between songs.

OK for anyone searching Apple Music Sonos Drop Outs:

I just spent 51 minutes on a call doing every conceivable reset and setting tweak to my system that was asked of me, and eventually I was told and I quote:

“This is a known issue for at least 6 months, we don’t have a solution, can you use Amazon Music instead?”

No, not really as all my family’s music and playlists are in Apple Music, we don’t have Spotify and we don’t really use Amazon Music.

I tried every setting and every option on my router, and on my 2 x Unifi APs and the diagnostics confirmed there was nothing with the network and there was not an issue that I could fix or a setting that I could change that I hadn’t already tried over the last 12 months.

I feel like there needs to be a big bold message on the homepage of the Sonos website saying ‘we know there are drop out issues with Apple Music and Sonos’ because at least it would be clear they know and they’re being transparent with customers.

So much of my time wasted over the last 12 months (not to mention an hour on the phone in the middle of a work day) to hear there’s a known fault, there’s apparently NO timeline to fix it and there’s nothing I can do.

Can anyone at sonos confirm they know, they’re working on it and also address why their marketing and comms has not made this very clear somewhere on thier website.

As if people in the Apple ecosystem would buy a speaker with clearly known issues with their music provider of choice!

I appreciate the information you've provided.

It's reassuring to know that the issue has been acknowledged, confirming that it's not isolated to our local network. The intermittent nature of the problem, with some days working perfectly and others being unusable, has been my experience as well.

My concern is that if this issue has persisted for six months without resolution, how long will it take to be fixed? It seems contradictory to advertise Apple Music Lossless if the service isn't consistently reliable.

Any Apple Music inconsistency is also itself inconsistent - i.e. I have no such drop outs on any Apple Music lossless or Dolby Atmos tracks, across any of my ten speakers, and I suspect the majority of users don’t experience this issue. I can’t imagine how Sonos or Apple will ‘fix’ something that isn’t a universal issue. (I personally don’t believe your customer service agent’s assertion that this is an issue that has been known for six months.)

I have not experienced any Apple Music Lossless dropouts either, unless I’m cooking on high 

If I was experiencing the dropouts I would be getting IP address of affected device, doing some constant ping tests ‘ping -t <ip address>’, checking the UniFi admin logs, checking if affected device was roaming between APs, being force to band steer, etc.

I know there is a known issue that any steaming service will be affected by network issues, either local or beyond with ISP or CDN network.

​@craigski 

“If I was experiencing the dropouts I would be getting IP address of affected device, doing some constant ping tests ‘ping -t <ip address>’, checking the UniFi admin logs, checking if affected device was roaming between APs, being force to band steer, etc.”

And what would you do if you were just a normal person? 

I appreciate vast majority of Sonos users, ‘normal people’ are not network engineers (me included, does that make me normal?)

I have no reason to doubt what I was told. Which makes a difference being told something at least. I think you’ll see loads of posts across here and internet with the exact same issues.  Not everyone, but it’s enough of an issue I had read lots of posts that were the identical issue I’m having on my set up.

Good point! This is why my dad gave up on his Sonos speakers after the app update. All too hard!

However I had previously done all of this over the last 12 months and there is zero wrong with the UniFi gear. It’s not showing any issues or dropped connections. 
 

All the devices have fixed IPs - it’s the Sonos gear and Apple Music and none of this was an issue a year ago.

Any update on this?…the zones continued drops with Apple Music Lossless are unbearable. Today I spent time with support and I was told it’s a matter of bandwidth and that I should try to reduce the amount of Sonos products playing at a time as they may not be able to cope with the increased loads…this defeats the purpose of a large system. I was suggested to disable lossless at Apple’s end, which I don’t think is possible without downgrading my subscription.

i never had this problem before the feature had new app were introduced…

Hi - I had the same interaction you did when I called Sonos Support about this problem and it’s mildly infuriating when we get offered these types “solutions”. First option, don’t use our products the way we advertised them to be used. Second option, do something with Apple Music that is actually not possible when streaming via the Sonos app. The solution that many people have asked for is for the user to have the option to turn off Lossless streaming from Apple Music. This seems to be the most sensible thing until Sonos is able to sort out why there are so many dropout, skipping, etc problems since the “upgrade” to Apple Music Lossless. 

In case it’s of use to someone else. I’ve had some luck improving Apple Music playback by bandwidth limiting my speakers, forcing Sonos to request lower quality music.

I have 4x Ones and a Playbase, all using Sonos net. The Playbase is too dumb for lossless so if it’s included in playback, there are no issues. The Ones on the other hand, will request lossless and then deliver choppy audio.

I’ve experimented with limiting the bandwidth each speaker is allowed from my router (Asus guide - https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1013333/). I kept dropping the limit and found 1 Mb/s is pretty reliable and almost never requests lossless. I’ve had a buffering issue maybe once in two weeks? I suspect this works because the Sonos, itself, is choosing a worse quality stream as a fallback.

Notes:

• I appreciate this is a hack but it’s stopped me going mad.
• There’s probably a more accurate figure to force the quality fallback - I’d be curious to know…
• If you’re not using Sonos net, I expect this approach will only make your playback more unreliable. (presumably, Sonos net data is transferred between speakers directly, and as such, won’t be limited by the router. The limit should really only impact traffic between the speaker and Apple.)

Thanks gang. Good luck!

Apple Lossless starts at 16 bit 44.1kHz, which is 1.4Mb/s.

Thanks Dan! I’ll be giving this a try. Hopefully the people at Sonos will figure out a fix for this persistent and absolutely frustrating issue. 

I’m not experiencing any of the such with Apple Lossless. The Apple music playing was started within the Sonos app as one of my streaming services. The Sonos speakers are Era 100 x 2 with Sub Mini. Could this issue be isolated to older Sonos speakers (i.e. Play 1, Play 5. Play 3 and/or Sonos One etc)?

Also, Ive made no adjustments to my ASUS router bandwidth (lowering it) other than to enable QoS giving Audio/Video streaming top priority. Interestingly, others in the community have spoken against enabling QoS many times. Unless that can be construed as bandwidth manipulation

Which Sonos device is plugged into your router?

The Playbase. 

As a test for a few days, I would try move a One to where the Playbase is, and swap the wired connection a One, move it away from the WiFi router and TV.. See if that improves lossless play back. If the One’s are setup as pair, connect the left one. 

Another thought, is your WiFi router located near the playbase? As another test, I would take your phone with it connected to your home WiFi to the locations where the One’s are, and open browser on phone and go to fast.com, let it run speed test, and then click ‘show more info’, this will show download speed and latency for loaded connection in ms, and may provide a better connection than SonosNet from the playbase (especially if playbase located under TV and near WiFi router). But lets see how the One(s) perform with wired first.