NAS & WMA - No Longer Working

You’ve rebooted the router, and the NAS. Have you rebooted (power cycled, not factory reset) your Sonos speakers, too? 

It wouldn’t be an change in SMB versions (although NAS companies are known to change settings in updates without warning), or you wouldn’t be able to run an update of the library, it would give you an immediate error. 

Given the list of speakers, I’m assuming you’re running S2, which means SMB v2 or higher. Which version of Western Digital’s NAS are you running? They recently stopped supporting some versions, including my NAS, with any software/firmware updates. 

I would recommend that you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of reproducing the issue, and call Sonos Support to discuss it. Don’t post the resulting diagnostic number here.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the Support staff, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Ummm, a couple of ‘edits’ to my response:

Is this just WMA files, and not other files? You seem to state FLAC files work fine. That would point to another issue, IMHO, and not a communication with the NAS directly. 

I think my recommendations stay the same, though. A power cycle of the speakers first. It might be worth double checking for firmware/software updates in the controller, but submitting that diagnostic and calling in might still be the most helpful. I’d get past the Chatbot, and speak with a human, though. 
 

It might be worth a try of copying a couple of these ‘questionable’ WMA files to a non-NAS location, and set that location as an additional library. Then test there. If it is a communication issue with the NAS in any way, they should play fine. If it is an issue in Sonos’ playback software, they’ll be the odd response you’ve seen before. I haven’t noticed this on my WD MyCloud, but then I don’t look once I’ve started playback, and am not paying attention, other than listening, but I haven’t noticed any breaks in the music, either. I’m not aware of how many, if any, WMA files I have, though. 

Are the WMA files compressed? If not, there could be a network issue limiting bandwidth to the NAS. The compressed FLAC files could sneak through while the larger uncompressed files are over a threshold. 

Have rebooted the speakers, router, nas.

All speakers have upto date sw/firmware

App sw upto date.

NAS is WD mycloud ex2, firmware is upto date, no changes for about 3 years now.

NAS is set to SMB v3

The wma files have been played for many years no issues, we'll apart from the whole S2  initial release. 

Been this way for years, now recently they don't work as expected.

As I mentioned the flac play no issues, these are larger files. Less compressed.

The wma files are basic rips, smaller file size. Issue is not limited to certain files, applicable to all wma files.

Something has changed, thanks for all the feedback/support.

You might want to call Sonos about this. Could be your system only, because I have not seen any other complaints.

Just as a test, set the SMB version on the MyCloud to SMBv2? This really doesn’t track my worldview as to how software works…

But I’d agree, something is odd, and I’d be providing hard data to Sonos via a diagnostic followed by a phone call to a human (not the chatbot…excellent for more simple issues, not as good, IMHO for more complex issues like yours). 
 

Does WD still support the MyCloud ex2? I’m pretty sure I trashed the email I got from them explaining when they stopped supporting my NAS, although I suppose it’s somewhere on their website. I’m not a fan of them anymore, since they updated my SMB version from 1 to 2 without notifying me in advance..took me a while to figure out they’d automatically updated the firmware and changed the SMB version, back when it was important to my Sonos system to stay on SMB v1 (years ago now). I suspect they needed to do the update for legal reasons, but not calling it out in an email seemed egregious to me. Unfortunately, a change to SMB wouldn’t just affect WMA files, to my knowledge, it’s just why I don’t trust them anymore with firmware updates. 

The NAS is longer supported by WD, But its is running the last available firmware, which has been in place for a 3 years or more now. 

Will try going to SMB V2, see if that makes a difference and contact Sonos when i have more time to diagnose the issue.  Thanks for the support / feedback. 

Hi ​@richardbsimpson 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’m sorry to hear of this issue you are having with playing WMA files on your Sonos system.

This is a known issue which we are investigating, though we have no estimate for when a fix might be available. Please cease troubleshooting, as you will not be able to address this yourself.

The only known workaround is to convert the WMA files to another format.

I hope this helps.

Thanks, ​@Corry P , I couldn’t make it work in my mind as a connection issue, but that was, other than a player issue, the only thing I could ‘chase’. I’ll continue to follow this, since I’m still not sure I understand why it plays fine on a local share, and not on a NAS share. 

Hi ​@Airgetlam 

Um, NAS shares are local shares (although maybe some proprietary software such as WD Cloud is different, but I don’t think that is supported anymore anyway), and WMA files won’t play on Music Libraries, period (or if they do, only for a second, as described above).

I hope this helps.

 I stopped using Windows Media Player many years ago, but for reasons that have nothing to do with WMA.  When i dis rip with Windows Media Player i set it to rip in WAV.  I don't trust proprietary codecs.

Maybe go through the process of converting the WMA files to FLAC.

Hi ​@MoPac 

Converting any lossy format to a lossless format (like FLAC) is a waste of storage space.  MP3 or AAC would be better options.

I'm really happy with FLAC, and the compression (losless) saves a bit of space and bandwidth. 

I'm not that familiar with WMA.  Is it always lossless?  With Windows Media Player, which I’ll never use again, I always ripped in WAV.

Converting lossy to losless is a waste of space but it doesn't further reduce the quality as you would  by converting to another lossy format.

Always best to start out CD quality lossless and then convert to other formats. My collection  is FLAC but tne Honda has limited space so it got an MP3 conversion. 

Overall, the web comments claim that WMA files are becoming obsolete and can result in issues when attempting to deal with them. Some WMA files are lossless, others are not.

I’m not a FOOBAR2000 or WMA file user, but various websites indicate that FOOBAR2000 can show which WMA file format has been used. While you could mass convert all WMA files to FLAC, I think a better strategy would be to convert only the lossless files into FLAC and the others into a compatible lossy format. I suppose this could be a bit tedious and messy, but it is a one time task. Make sure that you have appropriate backups.

Thanks for the update Corry P,  will wait for any further update.