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I’ve got an unusual issue which has started over the last few weeks.

The Sonos in my bedroom (Wired Sonos Amp S2) when playing BBC sounds keeps dropping out - sometimes after 10 minutes, sometimes every 1 minute. The stream sometimes recovers after a 5 seconds, other times it simply stops.

This morning, when I played the same stream via my desktop App, it actually has given me a more useful error message (than I got from the App) stating “song not encoded properly” ?

However, if I play BBC Sounds via my mobile or desktop, it plays perfectly.

I’ve done the normal “reboot everything” including internet.

I’ve also setup continual PINGs from my desktop to the Sonos in question (just in case its somehow having connection issues) and to the Internet (just in case my Internet is failing). Everything shows a constant connection. Obviously Sonos buffers the audio stream anyway, so the odd packet loss should not impact it (if I stop the internet it takes around 25 seconds before the radio actually stops).

Is this a sonos issue or a BBC Sounds issue? I’ve done some searching, not found any BBC sounds issues and obviously searching for Sonos issues there are loads related to app..etc.

I did raise this with Sonos support - not very helpful unfortunately, they sent me a guide on how to configure wifi? (despite the device being wired)

Any suggestions?

Hi @grussell73 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Sorry to hear of the issue you are having with BBC Sounds playback all of a sudden.

As I was reading you report, I have to admit that I was thinking that this sounded like classic electromagnetic interference affecting the Amp’s connection. The encoding error, in relation to streaming services, is usually seen when interference corrupts the data stream resulting in data that cannot be “unzipped” (decompressed) into audio. However, if your Amp is ethernet-wired, this is obviously not the case - assuming that you have wired it to the main router and not to a wireless extender or mesh node, that is, and that your internet connection is not wireless in nature.

So, assuming that there is nothing but wires (or fibre-optics) between your Amp and the BBC servers, there must be something else getting in the way.

You haven’t mentioned playing any other service to the Amp, so I’m going to assume that what happens with BBC Sounds will happen with Spotify or Apple Music (for example) too. If you haven’t tried, please do try some other sources, even if it’s just radio - if this only happens with BBC Sounds, then it’s an entirely different issue.

I think the likeliest explanation is that there is a device on your network flooding the Amp’s input buffer with multicast packets that are not intended for it, and that this is preventing the Amp from downloading what it wants to download in a timely fashion. This issue would still likely leave space for a simple ping response, but not for streaming live audio. Please recreate the issue and submit a support diagnostic, letting me know here when you have done so (don’t share the given number), and I can confirm this for you.

The resolution would be to enable an IGMP Snooping/Filtering option in the router’s settings (if it has one), fitting a IGMP-capable unmanaged network switch between the router and ethernet-wired player(s), or switching to a WiFi-only system. Alternatively, stop the source of the multicast packets (we can’t determine where the packets are coming from in the diagnostics, so you’d have to figure that one out with packet sniffer software).

It could also help just to reboot your router - if you’re using a router supplied by your ISP for free, then it could probably do with a) monthly reboots and b) swapped for a privately-bought one (£50 or more - you get what you pay for, just like with free routers). When rebooting, please switch it off for at least 30 seconds.

I hope this helps.

 

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