Can Sonos please at the very least acknowledge?

Many thanks

This forum, to the best of my knowledge, is only monitored by Forum moderators, and not Sonos coders, or Sonos Support . You’re much more likely to get acknowledgment if you call Sonos Support.

Thanks for the reply but it’s not the end of world or important enough to spend time and money on phone calls to notify Sonos of something they may well be aware.

Hi @Stuart_W 

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear of this issue you are seeing with inconsistent search results with your Music Library. As far as I can ascertain, we’re not aware of any such behaviour. I’d therefore encourage you get in touch with our technical support team to report this and to go through some troubleshooting steps with them, but I do understand if you might find the current wait time too much (although I understand it is coming down these days).

You can, if you wish, upload your video to YouTube (or a file hosting service such as Google Drive) and share a link to it here (if you use YouTube, remember to make the video public). Please also recreate the issue with not getting results and submit a support diagnostic from the same device immediately afterwards, then perform your fix and submit another diagnostic after performing a successful search for the same term(s). Please let me know here when you have done so, but please don’t share the given numbers.

Thanks.

I’ve replicated the issue.

Here is the video on YouTube 

Have diagnostics and will call tech support.

NB the video is for the earlier search than the diagnostics relate to.

Hi @Stuart_W 

Thanks for the video - I noticed that when you do your first search, Music Library does not show at the top while you are typing, unlike in the second, working example.

Does Music Library even show on your Home Screen after a failed search? If not, this is the likely reason as to why you do not get search results and is what we need to troubleshoot.

I notice your system is largely running on SonosNet, but you only have one wired device - we recommend one wired connection for every 5 unwired speakers. If this is not practical for you, I recommend removing the ethernet cable from your Arc and seeing how things perform on WiFi only. If things get worse, just reconnect the cable.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Cory. You probably don’t have time to go through all my recent (24 months) support interactions but I can assure you we’ve been through any number of iterations of Wi-Fi only, 1 wired, 2 wired, ARC wired, Play 3’s wired. I’m not getting the same number of drop-outs I used to though it’s not 100% stable.

Not sure what you mean by Music Library not appearing at the top? It NEVER appears at the top. Sonos changed that to appear at the BOTTOM and it only appears if it finds a result. EDIT. The search result screen does show an icon for Music Library at the top but it cannot be seen even if no results are found - One has to scroll past the other music services to the right and it is at the end. (I don’t know if it doesn't appear at all when this “Error” happens.

Hi @Stuart_W 

Ah, fair enough.

When you are in the middle of typing your search string on the first example in the video, I don’t see Music Library show in the top right. In your second attempt, after restarting the app and before you even finish typing, I see Music Library in the top right corner.

I checked my own system and see Music Library in the top corner even if I am searching for something that I don’t have in my library. 

So, I am wondering if you see Music Library anywhere at all in the app (but I really mean the Home Screen) either prior to or after a failed search - if you do not, that is the reason why search is not working, and that is what we need to troubleshoot rather than anything to do with search in particular.

Thanks again for the reply.

I’ve viewed the video and I now see what you mean by the “Music Library” not appearing - It doesn’t. Though I note that “BBC Sounds” and “myTuner Radio” does and they are all added music services that the app needs to pull from the speakers. Why would it ONLY be the Music Library that ever disappears (I never search for podcasts in this way. Sometimes radio stations) if it was network issues? Wouldn't one expect all or some to be also missing?

This is NOT a behaviour I noted prior to the app “upgrade” hence my post.

Hi @Stuart_W 

Music services are different - it is assumed that they will always be available, and they will show if you have added them.

I’m 99.9% sure the old app displayed Music Library if you had at all configured it. Now, the app only displays ML if it thinks it’s actually available right now. 

So, for some reason, it looks like the app might be deciding that you don’t have a ML, and only reassesses it’s opinion on a restart. This is most likely caused by an unreliable connection to your ML source.

Where is your Music Library stored? On a PC? A Mac? A NAS drive? Have you tried giving this device a reboot? If said device is not replying to queries in a timely manner, it may result in the disappearance of the Music Library item on your Home Screen (something which you have not yet confirmed one way or the other).

The next time you see this behaviour from the app, and before force-closing the app, please go back to the Home Screen and look for Music Library - is it present on the Home Screen or not? This is key to understanding what is going wrong for you.

Edit: changed some thoughts about the old method

I’ll take a butcher’s next time it happens. I think this sometimes happens whilst Sonos is actually playing music stored on the NAS so it would be bizarre if it then “claimed” it didn’t receive a timely response! Perhaps it’s overly sensitive and needs to wait longer or try again?

It’s on a Synology RAID NAS. I spent nearly £1,000 after my previous NAS stopped working due to sudden deprecation of SMB1 so I’m a bit sensitive about not receiving search results as you might imagine.

Hi @Stuart_W 

That would indeed seem to be somewhat ridiculous, but as it is a speaker playing ML, and the app checking for ML, the two are independent. It may well need to be programmed to wait a bit longer, yes - it does depend on whether this is the issue or not, of course.

Ok, thanks for the info. I assume it is connected with ethernet, rather than WiFi? I ask so I can discount one more possible cause of any delayed response.

There are quite a few issues reported by your system that need addressed - the speakers have not been rebooted for 22 days, interference is detected, audio drop-outs are reported, SonosNet is overlapping channels with your WiFi, low bandwidth (local, not internet) is reported and surround speakers are channel-hopping due to interference.

For starters, you should probably put your WiFi on channel 1 or 11 - SonosNet is on channel 6, and those are the only two channels that do not overlap with channel 6. Your WiFi is currently on channel 4, which overlaps with channels 1 through 8.

In addition, it looks like you might have a BT Smart Hub 2? In my opinion, I think you might be over-loading this router that was made at the lowest possible cost so it could be handed to you for free. There are some settings on it that might be able to be adjusted to improve things for you, however (put it in Mode 2, if I recall correctly). A reboot of the router (turn it off for at least 30 seconds) may help - I also recommend that you repeat this several times a year as a matter of course.

I understand that you have been in touch with our support team already, but it looks like some more time could be spent with them clearing up these issues - the issue you report may well disappear when these are all addressed.

I hope this helps.

The NAS is wired to the router via ethernet  and Sonos is wired to one of the TP-Link extenders. The BT router is set to Channel 11 (2.4 GHz) but the TP-Link which provides the network to which Sonos connects does not allow configuration of the wireless channel as it dynamically changes it. I have looked in the past at whether or not another router would help but there’s lots and lots of mix messages (The TP-Link extenders were purchased as a result of Sonos connectivity issues). Furthermore your higher level support teams told me the network throttling was happening at the Sonos unit - The ARC hence they told me to wire that. Doesn’t make any sense to me why the router would be bandwidth limited since I never have more than one stream.

Probably is worth doing a system re-boot even though it is quite a pain in the backside to do and yes I have had a few recent drop-outs of the surrounds when listening to music and fixed by switching those on and off.

Does the TP-Link Range extender have more than one Ethernet port? If so I’d try connecting the NAS to that alongside the wired Sonos speaker. Or if you have a small 4 or 5 port switch, connect that to the range extender and then the Sonos and NAS to that. 

Hi @Stuart_W 

Bingo! I think we might have a winner!

WiFi extenders are unsupported as they do not do a good job of passing all network packet types (something Sonos is more sensitive to than the average device). They also work in half-duplex mode, so half the available bandwidth (which on 2.4GHz is not that high to begin with). Please wire Sonos devices to a router, to a network switch connected to a router, or not at all.

I can 100% guarantee that they did not mean for you to wire the Arc to a WiFi extender.

I appreciate that you bought the extenders to improve Sonos reliability, but you honestly could have done little to make things worse than to use one. If your WiFi does not reach all areas of your home, we recommend the use of a mesh WiFi system as they are far more robust. You may also find that a third-party router will broadcast a stronger signal than your free one does, from the get-go.

Not only do I recommend that you do not wire any Sonos products to your extenders, I recommend that you turn them off all together - you don’t want one to be between the app and your Sonos system either (as in, if your phone connects to router while system connects to extender, or vice versa). At the very least, just for testing - I would be surprised if you do not see instant improvements somewhere at least, if not with the issue you’re reporting here.

I hope this helps.

Edit: @Ian_S’s idea above has some merit, but I’d rather see the extenders gone completely, to be honest.

@Corry P:

 I’m using an Xfinity extender ( POD ) with great success.  It has no Ethernet port so all is WiFi.  Would there be a difference in the way Xfinity extenders work such that I encounter no issues?

The TP-Link is a wi-Fi mesh as far as I know. Don’t have access to its details as out now but Sonos should have a record of it. 
Also we didn’t wire the ARC to the router because of logistics. I can do it but it’s rather tricky.

Hi @MoPac 

I don’t know - I am not familiar with those devices.

If they pass multicast packets and work full-duplex (presumably using a different band for the backhaul), perhaps.

If they are actually mesh nodes (and work in concert with an Xfinity router), then there should be no issue. This page seems to support this idea.

Ultimately, if it works, it works - I won’t argue with that!

The price may be a half-decent indicator - if they cost significantly more than your average WiFi extender, there may well be a positive reason for that.

I hope this helps.

Hi @Stuart_W 

Ok yeah - I see from your most recent case that you have a Deco mesh. It would probably serve your network better than the BT router, so I’m wondering if it is in AP/Bridge mode or not - if it is, it is running the network. If it is not, it is allowing the BT hub to run the network, and that could be part of the problem. If your BT Hub does not connect to the phone line, it might just be an idea to get rid of it altogether. If the BT Hub does connect to the phone line, it’s less simple, as the Deco will not provide a landline connection: you’d need to disable all routing functions on the BT Hub to prevent it from getting in the way of the Deco mesh’s operation.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, I don’t recommend doing this without assistance - our technicians are not supposed to assist with this kind of issue, as, if they get it wrong, the internet goes down and they can then no longer help you fix it. You may find one who is willing to assist anyway (I used to, back in the day, as I knew people were unlikely to get help anywhere else, but mum’s the word). I don’t think BT will help directly, but you may find additional help on the BT support pages (here is a linked discussion, but you may be able to find a better one: https://community.bt.com/t5/Home-setup-Wi-Fi-network/Tp-link-deco-help-needed-please/td-p/2283383)

Note that if you have a landline telephone that connects to the BT Hub, you’ll need to keep the hub connected. 

This page will tell you how to find out if Deco is in AP mode or not: https://www.tp-link.com/us/support/faq/1842/

If you let me know the entire current state of affairs for everything I mentioned above, I may be able to come up with some steps to follow, but please be aware that they would be untested!

You’ll recall my advice was to not wire the Arc to ethernet - with the BT Hub out of the way, this may work better than the last time you tried.

In either case, we still don’t recommend wiring Sonos devices to secondary mesh nodes, as that will still rely upon a wireless connection that we cannot monitor for transmission success rates - it may work, but if it does not, we can’t tell if that link is the issue or not).

I hope this helps.

I think a list of network kit that is plugged in and what has WiFi on or off would be a helpful thing here. If there is a Deco mesh system here rather than range extenders that’s a very different scenario… The BT Home Hub routers are as they say here, utter bobbins. 

Here’s a sketch and note of the units. All of the Sonos units have Wi-Fi enabled. Sonos connected to the network created by the Deco Mesh Wi-Fi and “only” the ARCH wired to one of the Mesh satellites

Ok, so with fibre to the property there should be a small white box near to the BT Home Hub 2? And that should be connected to one of the ethernet ports via an ethernet cable? Also, I think you stated above that the NAS was attached to the router which. presume means the BT Hime Hub? 

There’s a lot of simplification you can do here. As it stands the BT home hub will be using one 2.4Ghz and one 5Ghz channel, the Deco’s the same, and as it’s plugged into ethernet, the Arc will have created Sonosnet, which means only the Play:1’s and 3’s will be using that, as the Era’s don’t support Sonosnet. Sonosnet will be a third 2.4Ghz channel and the Arc uses another 5Ghz channel for the connection to the Sub and surrounds, so @Corry P ‘s suggestion that there’s a lot of interference is not very surprising!!

So, I would:

Remove the BT Home hub completely. Plug the ethernet from the BT Fibre white box into the Master Deco M4. I’m assuming you haven’t put the Deco into bridge mode and it is still running DHCP? If not, take it out of bridge mode so it provides DHCP. If that works… plug the NAS into the spare port on the Deco master. 

I would then power down all your Sonos gear apart from the Arc and its surrounds. Unplug the Ethernet from the Arc and make sure it and the surrounds are working ok. I presume they are on one of the Deco WiFi channels? If that is ok, power on the rest of your devices. They should now all come up on the Deco WiFi. 

That will remove a lot of unneeded networks and will hopefully mean the speakers see the NAS. 

EDIT: If you do have a BT landline that runs off the Home Hub 2, then we need to take a slightly different approach but should be able to get things running better. 

Hi Ian. Many thanks for the time taken to look at my set-up and reply with advice. I’ve been following the mighty Norwich City this weekend hence the delay in replying. Back home and happy now!

So to answer some of your questions.

Deco is in Access Point Mode (This will likely have been Sonos suggestion as not something I would know about (As I implied I bought the Deco because Sonos suggested my Wi-Fi needed extending).

I have digital voice and have plugged in a modified old BT rotary phone modified to do the Pulse to tone dial conversion (I’m 59 so this is a nostalgia trip!).

Here is a pic of the white box on the wall.

Before I start unplugging The Wi-Fi extender (Mesh, whatever the darn thing is called!) which I can do but I’d need to remove the Hub from the cupboard since that won’ be the best place for it! I’ll wait to see if you have any other thoughts with this extra information.

NB Sonos have been telling me for a number of years that there is a lot of Wi-Fi interference but never told me much of that might be of Sonos’ own making!

We all have our cross to bear… 

So… in terms of the picture above, I presume the red/black cable goes directly to your BT Home Hub which you have hidden in a cupboard? And you have a digital BT land line number that runs effectively from the home hub with your modified phone connected via wires to the home hub? 

Then I guess you have an ethernet cable from the Home Hub to the Master Deco M4? 

Where do you currently plug-in your NAS? Home Hub (in the cupboard) or one of the Deco’s?

Yes correct. The NAS is connected to the BT Home Hub.

As a matter of interest I’ve just added a Sky Stream puck and taken the opportunity to route an Ethernet cable from the Arc to the BT Hime Hub (Not connected yet just routed).

As for Digital voice I’m not that committed to it. I rarely receive calls on it not make them so wouldn’t be too devastated if it stopped working especially if that was the result of the Sonos system being healthier.