Oh wow. As a quick and dirty, I committed some networking crimes to connect a One to Ethernet - and removed the bandwidth stuff - and lossless works!

I’m genuinely surprised that omitting the wired unit from the Group breaks the underlying networking! haha! Ass-u-me etc, I guess. 🫠

Thanks for the suggestion, craigski!

Yes, many users have faced dropouts since Apple Music switched to Lossless. A toggle to switch back to non-Lossless streaming would be a helpful solution for affected systems. You can find more information on similar issues with multi-room audio and stability in this post. Hopefully, Apple adds this option soon.

Moderator Note: This post is likely AI generated.

Hi Dan - just following up - this worked like a charm and seems to have fixed the skips. I had to go to 0.9 mb/s to stabilize and it eventually got there. Thanks for the hack! I’ll probably post this over on Reddit (and give you credit) if you haven’t since I know there are people struggling over there as well. Thanks again!

I sometimes experience drop out problems in audio, well that’s where I notice it first, and the cause has always ended up being WiFi channel congestion due to neighbouring networks.

To fix it quickly I just restart the WiFi so that it selects a quieter channel when it reboots.

Eventually I’ll get around to seeing if I can make it change channels without such a disruptive move, though I expect that might require buying different gear.

I just wanted to throw my experience into this thread. We sell/install a lot of Sonos products, primarily a mixture of Amps and Soundbars on each of our projects. This is absolutely an issue. We also have been told by dealer support and direct consumer support that this is a known issue, and that the client should use a different streaming service or use Airplay. (The issue does not replicate when using Airplay).

Whenever I come here for support I always see responses that “don’t believe” what people say. It’s mind blowing. 

And for the love of Christ it’s not a network issue.

Thanks have a great day.

I actually just posted about this because I’ve become so infuriated with it over the last several months. I can’t take it. I’ve had Apple Music since the day they offered it as a subscription service and have all my playlist and everything on Apple Music. Ever since the new app came around, that’s been nothing but garbage they’ve been all sorts of random problems. I can’t play any of my Apple Music playlist without it cutting out literally on and off for an entire song until I just give up playing Apple Music. Sonos 100% knows this is an issue and like always they will refuse to acknowledge it and then 2 1/2 years from now they’ll put on the message board. They’ve got to fix for Apple Music. They have the same problem with the Apple TV box every time a Dolby Atmos movie was played on it through the Sonos arc the arc made a loud pop and shut down the arc. It took them three years to fix that problem. I had an arc that I couldn’t use my Apple TV on unless I disable Dolby Atmos on it and they sat around and acted like they kinda knew something about it, but didn’t really know about it and then somehow it took him three years to fix a problem with Apple. I was playing my playlist again tonight every single thing I played dropped out every song I played everything. Switched over to the free Spotify that I have on the app play the same exact songs work perfect not one single drop out the entire time except I’m not gonna buy a whole brand new Spotify account just to use my Sonos when I’ve got an Apple Music account that has 1 billion songs on it that I used to buy back in the day and now that I stream. I don’t know why this company is so bad the last 2 to 3 years I know they fired the last guy that ruined the app and made 99% of the customer base annoyed at, but they’re not doing any better. I’d like to add I have 19 Sonos speakers in my house. Had no problems ever before this new app was introduced Everything worked perfectly everything connected perfectly, and I Rarely had a single issue. All of this started with this garbage app that they still have not fixed and are using all their customers as beta testers for when they could’ve just put the old app back up until this hunk of garbage was fixed.

Fortunately I don’t have too much invested in Sonos products. Planning on replacing my era 300 speakers with a pair of apple HomePod 2 speakers . 

Hello All:

I have been experiencing this issue since the app update. I have called and worked with people at Levels 1, 2, and 3, and get different information from each person that often contradicts the previous. Some examples:

Level 3 said it was my router from Spectrum. Purchased new router and they tweaked my settings via remote control of my laptop at least twice. He also said not to hardwire any of my ten speakers. 

I was passed off to another Level 3 who had me hardwire the Beam gen 2 and sub mini. He also made tweaks to router. In total about six phone calls and over 100 emails between Level 3 and I. 

After all that, I upgraded to a TP-Link WiFi 6 mesh router to get more coverage in my home. 

Level one said my mini should not be hardwired, so I tried that. 

Another Level One said I have too much run time and that Sonos speakers need to be reset every ten days by unplugging them.  Done. Rebooted router countless times. Unconnected Apple Music and reconnected. 
 

Another Level One was “chatting” with Level 2 who said to try hardwiring another speaker to one of the mesh routers in another room.  That seemed to fix dropouts, but not skipping. 
 

Last night Level 2 said a speaker should not be hardwired to a remote router in mesh, and I should try having no speakers hardwired. He also controlled my computer to try and make a temporary Apple account to see if that would work, but then he didn’t know how or couldn’t once in my computer and Sonos app on it. He is issuing an investigation.  He looked up all my past tickets and saw how extensive and exhausting this has been.  Everyone apologizes, but no one can fix the issues.  

Every time I contact them, we redo all the previous troubleshooting steps, and then they take a guess and suggest to try something. It never works and I have to call back in. 
 

No one at Sonos has been able to get my system stable. I am on a third router, and they always go in and tweak settings. I don’t understand why I, the customer, must keep chasing them.  Any other company would either send a technician, or refund the purchase price. 
 

I honestly don’t know what else to do. I have posted in this community over the past 1.5 years since the app and architecture change for advice as well. I made network changes based on community input to no avail. 
 

The most frustrating is the “try” this. No more trying. I just need a real fix, a technician visit to my home, or my money back for all eleven speakers. I don’t want to waste any more time. 
 

I realize this is a rant, but I really do not know what to do next. Is there a Level 4 support, and how do I reach them?

Brian

I have been having an issue with pausing a song, then clicking play to resume. However, the song does not pick up where it left off. Very annoying it usually is skipping ahead in the song. I spent a lot of time with Sonos support. I figured out that it was only occurring with Lossless music streamed from Apple Music and they told me this is a known issue. Why did it just start happening for me and when will it be fixed?

Same problem here. I have one hard wired speaker to the router and the rest on sonos net. So it has nothing to do with wifi and I have 250mbps fibre so its not a bandwidth issue. I can play from other sources all day long without a glitch so there is clearly a problem with sonos playing apple music lossless. It would be great if can we stop blaming the users WiFi and for Sonos to post an official bug that we can keep an eye out for a fix.

But what might be interesting is if we did our own survey of configs with people posting what works and what doesn’t with Apple Music. Maybe we could narrow it down to a common factor to point Sonos in the right direction.

I have 4 x one sl (two are a stereo pair) one Sonos connect, one roam. One of the speakers is hardwired.

Just keeping this thread alive…

Streaming Apple Music Lossless tracks on a large Sonos system is an unbearable and ashaming experience: the system tries to play them with a lot of interruptions until it finally gives up and streams with a lower quality, this until it decides to try again a few tracks further. 

Talking with support, I got the incredible suggestion to ungroup some zones and play just one or two at the same time...this defeats the whole purpose and promise of this brand.

It would be great to have a selection switch on settings so the system could default to a lower bit rate and avoid this.

I can’t recommend Sonos any longer, it was a fantastic product until the new app flip-flop and feedback like this falls into a void, with no recognition of the problem and willingness to improve.

Sonos, can you please acknowledge your users and come back with at least a comment?

First I don’t work for Sonos I’m just a user like you. You’re probably not going to like this comment. 😊

I don’t know what you mean by “large” system but I have 31 units  which comprises 10 rooms. Obviously I have no need to group 10 rooms together for streaming.

However I have grouped three rooms together for steaming Apple Music Lossless with no issues. Granted l have a mesh network with a Wired (Ethernet) Backhaul versus a Wireless Backhaul that allows all three routers to use every available Wi-Fi bandwidth strength.

One thing to remember is that Sonos will tax a network just streaming lower quality audio. When grouping there has to be sufficient bandwidth available for buffering to allow al rooms to play in sync. Lossless requires more bandwidth than lower quality audio streaming.

Depending upon where Sonos speakers are located the signal strength may vary. The speaker in a grouping getting the lowest signal strength will dictate at which level the stream is maintained. If a speaker in a grouping can’t keep up with the others the stream will drop to a lower quality that requires less bandwidth in order to keep the stream going. Therefore a lossless stream may revert to a stream requiring less bandwidth. Worst case scenario if the stream doesn’t adjust there will be skips and/or drops. Also remember that interference from internal and external sources can affect the stream.

One point you made is that Sonos was more reliable in days past in most instances. However, that was before Lossless audio became common place. As such network type, configuration and signal strength to Sonos speakers are all the more important. 

But can any one explain why we suffer drop outs when using Sonosnet with one wired speaker. WiFi doesn’t play any part in this does it? 

also I can stream 4k movies to several tvs all day long without issues which uses far more bandwidth than hd music.

also I tried an experiment with using Amazon music HD free trial and have been streaming in HD all week with no issues. 

so it does seem it is a Sonos/apple compatibility problem (for some). It might even be down to Apple but it’s certainly making Sonos look very bad.

SonosNet is not a cure-all. It’s still a wireless communication to Sonos speakers not wired. Buffering is still needed to other Sonos speakers. Also speakers such as Era 100, Era 300 and Portables ignore the SonosNet. 

I’ve just discovered this thread and, from one side I’m happy to know that there are more people like me on the world... But on the other hand, I am really shocked to know the Sonos answers, I though I was buying a premium brand. I suffered the same issue and the Sonos support told me a different story, but never recognised that I was suffering a known and not solved problem.

I bought this brand trying to find the best sound and the ability to play the best audio formats. But, with Apple Music, the feeling is like kick the CD player every 15 minutes. And I can’t believe the answers of support’s people… change the music service?  Ungroup some speakers? Change the router? Really?

After some weeks I changed to Amazon Music and no problems with sound quality, although I found another known issues described in the following topic:

For those who wanted to try Amazon, I used the free version of SongShift to pass all the playlists with less than 200 tracks.

If it could help, this is my set up:

• Arc wired directly to the router
• Sub gen 3 (WiFi)
• 2 x Era 300 (WiFi)

it happened even before and after I added the 2 Era 300.

For folks with iffy networking or slow connections it would be great if all the "preimum" bitrates above 44k could be locked out. The audible performance improvement of them is questionable and the data needed stresses the network beyond what is necessary.

I agree, but I don’t think this problem is related to low speed connection, at least in my case, it wasn’t. 
Now, with Amazon there are no glitches, and I suppose the Ultra HD or Atmos are as heavier as the Apple lossless, aren’t them?
 

Can you stream AM Lossless to the wired speaker without dropouts, ie no group?

Are your TVs streaming 4k via WiFi?

I’ve had this issue for ages - since before the new app was released.

I've noticed that when I play Apple Music through the Sonos app, if the "Lossless" label isn't displayed on the Now Playing screen, then at some point during that track there will be a jump/stutter (usually around the 1m - 1m 40s mark for me). At which point, the "Lossless" label will appear on the Now Playing screen.

If the Lossless label is displayed from the beginning of the track, I've found that the track won't jump.

The Phonos app (shoutout to controlav) shows the sample rate and bit depth of the currently playing track, so I've noticed that these will sometimes switch to a higher quality when this issue occurs. But not always. I've also had Sonos display no "Lossless" tag, while Phonos reports that Sonos is streaming 44.1kHz 16-bit audio (CD quality lossless). Then the track jumps at some point during playback, the "Lossless" label appears on the Now Playing screen, but the sample rate and bit depth hasn't changed.

I think there's generally an issue with how Sonos detects the "best" quality to be streaming in based on what is available from Apple or your network conditions, and then it does a pretty poor job of switching quality mid-track.

Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Qobuz all play lossless without a problem, so I think this is an issue on Apple Music or Sonos' side, rather than my network.