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Audio glitches with Youtube Music via the Sonos App?



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Yep. You can shame Google, who has poorly implemented the Sonos API, after having done  a much better job on the older Google music integration. If only Sonos had access to Google’s music servers, I bet they could fix it in a jiffy. 

Can confirm I get glitches (increasingly it feels) on YT music too. Every other service works just fine. 9 months ago this thread started!

Shame. 

Started to get glitches on YTM like 2 weeks ago and I just found this thread. It's honestly driving me crazy. I can't believe the first messages of this thread are from like 9 months ago and that Sonos still didn't solve the problem. Like probably a couple of you guys, I have like 4k worth of Sonos speakers at home. No problems till 2 weeks ago. Same WiFi system for a couple of years now, router on every floor of the house, 2 of the speakers are even hard wired. Can't believe I must now listen to music with glitches like we're in 1998...

SONOS, it's your responsibility to adress this problem. You say you sell hi-fi speakers with the best connectivity, prove it. It shouldn't take months. Have your engineers work with Google asap. It's a shame. 

Sonos certainly doesn’t control what aspects of the API that Google implements. It has been noted before that the implementation for Google Music was much better than what Google has done for YouTube Music. And the speculation continues to be the lawsuit between the two companies may be a reason for that. Your best bet is to complain to the folks who implemented the API, i.e. the folks at YouTube Music.

I don’t know if I just noticed, but this seems to have just started for me.  I have the skipping, and the static noise.  Any movement on this?  Guess I’ll go over to the YouTube music thread too.

 

This combined with the no thumbs up . . . very sub-par.  

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I'm having this problem since they forced you to switch from the Google play music app to yt music. It is driving me nuts. 

Hi @bobby.batson - it doesn’t look like you’re on a Beta program currently. I’d recommend that you reach out to our Support Team via live chat or phone call, so they can take a closer look at what’s going on, and go through some live troubleshooting.

It would also help if you took a diagnostic shortly after experiencing the issue, and take a note of the confirmation number - that will help when looking in to what’s causing this :)

I was previously on Beta - you are correct, I am not currently. I guess I stopped. I will call-in - the glitch happens randomly and frequently while on Youtube Music. I signed-up for Apple Music and I am not having the problem - been testing on the same songs and albums (Black Pumas). 

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Hi @bobby.batson - it doesn’t look like you’re on a Beta program currently. I’d recommend that you reach out to our Support Team via live chat or phone call, so they can take a closer look at what’s going on, and go through some live troubleshooting.

It would also help if you took a diagnostic shortly after experiencing the issue, and take a note of the confirmation number - that will help when looking in to what’s causing this :)

I’m also having this problem - seems to have started in the last month or so for me. Hello Sonos - what’s going on? I’m a dedicated long time user and supporter of your products. This is unacceptable particularly given the length of time this has been an issue (based on the comment dates in this thread)! I’m a beta participant - send me some software to monitor locally or something!

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Thanks for the response!  I had no idea there is a lawsuit.  That’s very unfortunate!  Probably easiest to switch to Spotify for now.

However: I just found a workaround:  When I use YouTube Music on my laptop, and then I stream through my AppleTV connected Sonosbar and then Group all other Speakers with the Sonosbar I can stream without getting the Chirping sound.  Not what I should have to do, but hey… it’s somehting.

 

 

It’s not very likely to be in between your router and the source (your 1GB Fiber connection) but much more likely to be internal to your local network, either wired, SonosNet of wifi. Or, it could potentially be the servers at YTM sending a data interruption down. But it’s happening across a pretty wide variety of people, so it’s not terribly likely to be the pipe size. 

Sonos is, however, more sensitive to local issues much more than a standard device. Certainly, like a normal device, there’s a connection from the Sonos to your router to the outside world, but then Sonos also has a connection from the Sonos to your router to your controller device, and also from the Sonos to any and all other Sonos devices in your network. 

I’m happy to hear that someone at Sonos is looking at it. If it’s on their side of things, it will get fixed, although perhaps not as quickly as you’d like. However, if it’s on YTM side of things, Sonos doesn’t have much clout with them (especially given the lawsuits between the two companies) , and it would be up to the YTM engineers to fix. Given the rather poor implementation of the Sonos API that YTM did, it’s hard to think they have a cadre of high performing coders on the issue….but I could be wrong there. 

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Glad I’m not alone.

I used this “Email the CEO option” on the SONOS support page and was connected with someone from the SONOS team.  Spent 30 minutes on the phone. I sent him the recording with the Chirping sound and provided more insights.  He never got back to me (Three weeks and counting).

I guess we are on our own with this one :-|

 

Btw - I rebooted my Google Wifi routers and the problem went away for a few days. But now it’s back and it looks like the chirping is more frequent. 

 

I don’t have internet issues. I have Sonic 1GB Fiber internet.  It’s the most reliable network I ever had.

I am also experiencing this exact same problem since switching over to YouTube music, there are a number of threads on this subject so there is a definite issue - sonos support have been absolutely useless on this and despite me sending them these threads refuse to acknowledge them or provide further information.

This audio glitch has made YTM totally unlistenable through Sonos for me. It’s a shame because I’ve been using Google Play Music through Sonos for a very long time and it always worked great until the forced switchover to YTM. The audio glitch for me is like fingernails on a chalkboard. Extremely harsh irritating sound, especially at volume. It happens at least once per song, but often more. For some reason I’ve been naively thinking they’d fix it, but I guess I’ll just have to switch streaming services. Here’s demo of what I hear (at 2 sec):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xkgOHdxDee8W6C32xyvoM5xaewREDA7I/view?usp=sharing

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Man - I’m so glad I found this thread.  I love YTM - because I also get AdFree YouTube streaming for me and my son.  Awesome deal.   

I managed to record the glitch.  Is this what everyone is hearing?

 

Thanks for taking the time to make this!

This is really interesting because my glitches are totally different. One sounds like a click and another sounds like the volume was lowered for a split second but you can still hear the audio.

Here’s a recording of each:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10IkxX60opuVGJ53J8NkWz8DKAFfSrIdN

 

 

I went ahead and started a thread on the YTM side: https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/thread/104742971

Let’s try getting some attention on that side by upvoting and adding any new details :)

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Man - I’m so glad I found this thread.  I love YTM - because I also get AdFree YouTube streaming for me and my son.  Awesome deal.   

I managed to record the glitch.  Is this what everyone is hearing?

 

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LZL - that makes sense.

Arguably, SONOS should not be providing the service if it does not come up to expected standards (no matter who is providing it).

Please don’t get we wrong, I’ve been very happy with SONOS since 2010 when I bought my first bundle (including a CR200 that is still working fine)

Napster - worked great for years until artists started pulling their music

Google Play Music - worked great, no issues at all

YouTube Music - works but glitches in every track

 

Hopefully a bright spark will come up with a solution soon.

What I find strange is that I haven’t heard sporadic glitches like this since the days of CD rips and mp3 downloads via dial-up internet. Error correction works well enough these days that corrupt transfers are uncommon, so the worst that happens when the network is bad is that the audio pauses until the buffer can refill enough to resume.

Another strange thing is that when I hear a glitch and then skip back to a few seconds before it and replay, I don’t hear it the second time.

Yet another strange thing is that I’m pretty sure I hear at least one glitch in every track, but never two in a short time, so it’s not frequent enough to be super obvious. For weeks I wondered whether my ears were mistaken until I came across this thread.

Maybe YTM won’t allow tracks to be streamed in perfect fidelity via third party software because they can’t guarantee it won’t be copied, so they add minimally invasive glitches to each one. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but when was the last time anyone heard glitches like this on any streaming music platform?

This idea is plausible, my experience with the glitches is the same as yours (I’m a network engineer and understand that this is not a connection / network issue)

The odd thing is that when it was Google Music, it worked well. It was only when they switched over to YTM that things became troublesome. I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions. 

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I think @controlav has an interesting point but perhaps could have explained it more clearly to folks who aren’t software engineers

Makes me wonder how Sonos is able to do it. My guess is that they have a special arrangement with Youtube which gives them access to a non-public interface, since the integration adds value to both Sonos and YTM as products.

If there is a special arrangement, then it’s hard to say whether the cause of the glitches is on Sonos’ or Youtube’s side.

There is no special arrangement: YTM implemented a SMAPI endpoint like every other music service, which is publicly documented, then they give Sonos the urls to it to add to the global list of services. Anyone who knows how (eg my apps) can consume that endpoint for enumeration. Playback does require certificate pinning, so only the official Sonos apps can stream (this is to avoid piracy so makes sense).

However reliable streaming does require the YTM endpoint actually provides streams in a reliable and timely fashion, and that appears to not be the case. My guess is that there aren’t enough servers allocated to that SMAPI endpoint because Google don’t care enough.

Ah that makes sense; I had assumed it was Sonos that had to build the integration against a Youtube API, not vice versa.

In that case, seems better to take this to the YTM support forum.

But given that YTM still needs a lot of work to catch up with competing music platforms, I’d guess fixing this would be low priority.

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LZL - that makes sense.

Arguably, SONOS should not be providing the service if it does not come up to expected standards (no matter who is providing it).

Please don’t get we wrong, I’ve been very happy with SONOS since 2010 when I bought my first bundle (including a CR200 that is still working fine)

Napster - worked great for years until artists started pulling their music

Google Play Music - worked great, no issues at all

YouTube Music - works but glitches in every track

 

Hopefully a bright spark will come up with a solution soon.

What I find strange is that I haven’t heard sporadic glitches like this since the days of CD rips and mp3 downloads via dial-up internet. Error correction works well enough these days that corrupt transfers are uncommon, so the worst that happens when the network is bad is that the audio pauses until the buffer can refill enough to resume.

Another strange thing is that when I hear a glitch and then skip back to a few seconds before it and replay, I don’t hear it the second time.

Yet another strange thing is that I’m pretty sure I hear at least one glitch in every track, but never two in a short time, so it’s not frequent enough to be super obvious. For weeks I wondered whether my ears were mistaken until I came across this thread.

Maybe YTM won’t allow tracks to be streamed in perfect fidelity via third party software because they can’t guarantee it won’t be copied, so they add minimally invasive glitches to each one. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but when was the last time anyone heard glitches like this on any streaming music platform?

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I think @controlav has an interesting point but perhaps could have explained it more clearly to folks who aren’t software engineers

Makes me wonder how Sonos is able to do it. My guess is that they have a special arrangement with Youtube which gives them access to a non-public interface, since the integration adds value to both Sonos and YTM as products.

If there is a special arrangement, then it’s hard to say whether the cause of the glitches is on Sonos’ or Youtube’s side.

There is no special arrangement: YTM implemented a SMAPI endpoint like every other music service, which is publicly documented, then they give Sonos the urls to it to add to the global list of services. Anyone who knows how (eg my apps) can consume that endpoint for enumeration. Playback does require certificate pinning, so only the official Sonos apps can stream (this is to avoid piracy so makes sense).

However reliable streaming does require the YTM endpoint actually provides streams in a reliable and timely fashion, and that appears to not be the case. My guess is that there aren’t enough servers allocated to that SMAPI endpoint because Google don’t care enough.

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LZL - that makes sense.

Arguably, SONOS should not be providing the service if it does not come up to expected standards (no matter who is providing it).

Please don’t get we wrong, I’ve been very happy with SONOS since 2010 when I bought my first bundle (including a CR200 that is still working fine)

Napster - worked great for years until artists started pulling their music

Google Play Music - worked great, no issues at all

YouTube Music - works but glitches in every track

 

Hopefully a bright spark will come up with a solution soon.

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@controlav.

 

Sorry, you feel this is ridiculous.

What other conclusions can you come to, when YTM casts fine for hours with no glitches,  Yet when playing the same tracks through Sonos there are glitches in EVERY track?


Because the YTM SMAPI endpoint is a poorly written piece of software (so many examples on this forum), unlike the old Google SMAPI endpoint and (I assume) the direct YTM endpoint (wherever that is).

I think @controlav has an interesting point but perhaps could have explained it more clearly to folks who aren’t software engineers.

@ChrisKalas the reason YTM sounds fine through Chromecast while it’s glitchy on Sonos is likely because Chromecast can interface with YTM directly since Google controls it, while Sonos can only use interfaces made available to third parties.

It seems YTM doesn’t even have an official way for third party apps to access the service. Has anyone seen other non-Google apps besides Sonos that can play YTM? I’ve seen some unofficial open source interfaces which allow searching and accessing data about artists/albums/etc, but there’s no public interface for actually streaming music as far as I know. 

Makes me wonder how Sonos is able to do it. My guess is that they have a special arrangement with Youtube which gives them access to a non-public interface, since the integration adds value to both Sonos and YTM as products.

If there is a special arrangement, then it’s hard to say whether the cause of the glitches is on Sonos’ or Youtube’s side.

Add me to the list. YTM and the squeeks. I can't personally hear it, but it drives my wife crazy. No problems on Spotify. Please Sonos fix it. 

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I opened up a ticket and submitted audio sample of the chirping noise. Hoping they will fix the issue with the API between YouTube Music Service and Sonos.

Ticket number: 02729032

New Recording.m4a (from Move):

- Paired : Dining Room - Play 5 and Move
- chirping : Between - 2m56s and 3m00s

New Recording 5.m4a (from Bathroom Play 1):

- Paired : Dining Room(Play 5), Bathroom(Play 1), Master Bathroom(Play 1), Master Bedroom(Play 1), Bathroom(Play 1), Move
- chirping : Between - 4m20s and 4m30s

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