Unfortunately, you haven’t provided any information to begin to assist you in figuring out why you’re having connection issues. 

Have you taken the step of calling Sonos Support directly to discuss it?

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

If you’re having to regularly reconnect to devices, my thoughts here are that anyone with the type of issue ‘perhaps’ could have a multicast ‘device discovery’ issue across their network that’s preventing the controller device from communicating with their Sonos speakers.

Such communication failure can occur across networks that use WiFi extenders, EoP adapters, or if managed switches are misconfigured. It can also happen if some settings on a local router are incorrect, or there’s software running on the mobile device that is getting in the way of the multicast communication, such as security software, VPN client, firewall, site blockers etc.

I’d perhaps investigate further in the areas mentioned and if still no luck, then it maybe best to reproduce the issue(s) seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.

Doesn’t seem to matter whether I attempt to connect to speakers via iPad or iPhone, keep getting a message saying it can’t connect but randomly plays music in rooms I’ve not selected, won’t connect to the one I want.

I now hate Sonos and want to put all the speakers in a row outside and drive my car over them! I’d sell the lot on fleabay but can’t imagine there’s anyone daft enough to buy these pieces or s***

I am lost for words as to how a system that I used to enjoy could be so annoying!

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

Networking has evolved over the years. The updated SONOS system uses the network differently than the older versions. Some router defaults do not support the new (actually more modern) SONOS approach. Adjusting the router configuration, or in some cases replacing the router, will cure most of the issues reported.

I’ll not mention a name, but a wireless access point company had been involved in many complaints on this forum. The grumpy company kept trying to pass the problem off to SONOS. Finally the company issued an update that cured the issue. Currently, we don’t see complaints involving that hardware.

Hi All

To be abundantly clear, it is not acceptable for people to accuse other members of being bots, Sonos employees, or anything else, for that matter. All such posts will be removed, and anyone posting anything of the like will be warned and eventually banned from the site.

My tablet doesn’t receive phone calls, but I’m with you - I’d prefer a direct wireless connection between source and Sonos speaker(s) …and the various voice assistants, plus direct control do cater for that. Even Apt-X HD/Lossless Bluetooth is good though, if using a decent long-range TX and the Sonos Ace. I perhaps should have included TV Audio Swap sources aswell for those using the new Ace headset.

No point having Sonos of you run it directly to the speakers. The entire point of it is so your phone can run apart from blue tooth music to avoid having phone calls etc coming through while you are listening to music plus the added features of everyone else on the network to queue in and add music. You are essentially just using really expensive blue tooth speakers. Just buy JBL pill instead. 
 

I’m sorry if you do not know how to play chromecast audio on Sonos - but if you search the forum you should find those answers. I accept there is a Google Assistant playback issue on Sonos currently, but that only started last week and is being investigated and hopefully a temporary outage that will be fixed in the coming days. Amazon Alexa is working fine (just tested that) and so is SVC. AirPlay & ‘Direct Control’ not presently tested at this very moment, but I believe there’s no problems there.

I can only assure you I’m not a Sonos employee - I’m long retired - 2009 - (business owner and certainly not Sonos, or even audio related). The Wife & I live in the UK

I just don’t see some issues mentioned, such as the music ‘stopping playing’ mid-flow etc. as being Sonos App related, for the reasons given earlier.

If devices are disappearing from the Sonos App, then that’s ‘likely’ these days, to be mDNS/SSDP (multicast discovery) related problems and as I outlined in my earlier post, there can be ‘other reasons’ for that too that can be explored.

At the very least the things mentioned are worth exploring further, rather than doing nothing and thinking the issue might be new Sonos App related and solved with an update - I find that as being less-likely as Sonos would have resolved those discovery issues by now and by all accounts they have, for the majority of users.

I’m just suggesting to maybe look elsewhere to maybe try to resolve the issues you (and some others) are seeing.

Chromecast? Google Assistant? Amazon Alexa? Are you sure you're in the right forum and actually using a Sonos product? Where are these features supposed to be?

If you check the forum, you'll find plenty of threads from users complaining about Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant not working properly.

And just to clarify, Chromecast isn’t even a feature of Sonos. What’s going on here?

The only thing I’m missing is queue saving features and some playlist management, but that’s in the pipeline - I can’t think of anything else I need personally, for how I use my Sonos Setup - I have Amazon, Apple, Plex, Sonos Radio, Podcasts, local NAS SMBv2/3 Shared library and plenty of other things besides the working Sonos App, including…

• Airplay 2 (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Direct Control (PlexAmp/Spotify/Amazon Apps/iBroadcast/Emby)
• Bluetooth Audio
• UPnP/DLNA
• Alexa Voice Services (useful for grouping speakers too)
• Google Voice Services 
• Sonos Voice Control (useful for grouping speakers too)
• TV Apps (YouTube/Chromecast/Plex)
• Line-In audio
• 3rd Party Apps (Soro/SonoPhone/Orto etc.) (useful for grouping speakers too)

I appreciate though that some users are having device discovery issues and in some cases LAN/WAN issues too, but otherwise there’s still plenty of options, mentioned above, to help keep the music playing, even without the Sonos App, which is a ‘remote’ anyway, rather than an audio ‘player’ in its own right.

This is 100% nothing to do with anything network / wifi related. Sonos themselves came out with a massive apology not that long ago telling everyone that it IS the app and they are working on a fix. That being said this “fix” was well over 6 months ago and it has gotten worse. So Ken don’t worry about what you are saying just understand that when you talk like an owner of the product and not a user it’s gunna get called out. I don’t deal in hurt feelings or anything I just deal in getting this rectified, if people get upset that’s their right to be offended haha. Anyway. No one can tell me that this is anything more than a Sonos app issue. It is software related and it needs to be fixed. I don’t have a solution all I can do is bring this forward to get enough people barking about it so they actually make it a priority fix now. Not down the road. We expect to hear something from an official person that actually says they work for Sonos vs a Sonos employee in customers clothing. Sorry Ken if it looks and walks like a duck….

This is kinda funny  

​@Ken_Griffiths One last thought, and then I shall give this a rest.

A legitimate argument can be made that by negligently releasing the app update that messed things up (and there is enough out there that staff at Sonos opposed the release as “premature”), that the modification to the product caused by the app rendered the product to be different than the product originally covered by the Terms of Service thereby creating a basis to set aside the dispute resolution procedures in the Terms of Service.  While the argument most likely would not prevail in the USA, it will in Europe, and at a minimum, Sonos will have to allocate resources to defeat the argument - and yes, that gets all of us nowhere, but no speakers that work, nowhere sounds fine to me.

In Europe, it is now possible to sue companies like Sonos due to new legislation requiring them to provide functional software. The advertised features must work properly and deliver what they promise.

That’s of course a completely different matter from the music playback stopping mid-flow, the thoughts here are that anyone with the type of issue you describe ‘perhaps’ could have a multicast ‘device discovery’ issue across their network that’s preventing the controller device from communicating with their Sonos speakers. See attached re: SSDP/mDNS.

Such communication failure can occur across networks that use WiFi extenders, EoP adapters, or if managed switches are misconfigured. It can also happen if some settings on a local router are incorrect, or there’s software running on the mobile device that is getting in the way of the multicast communication, such as security software, VPN client, firewall, site blockers etc.

I’d perhaps investigate further in the areas mentioned and if still no luck, then it maybe best to reproduce the issue(s) seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.

Support this Post and let's wake up Sonos together

https://en.community.sonos.com/general-feedback-and-conversation-229090/a-plea-for-openness-sonos-let-s-build-a-better-future-together-6923515

Perhaps you can take the lead then with your ‘legal background’ anyway and begin with this link as your starting point…

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/legal/terms-of-use

At the very least, without using lawyers, perhaps let us know how the arbitration and the informal dispute resolution steps go for you.

@Ken_Griffiths - No, you were not the one acting in an insulting manner, so no need to apologize.  It is not a playback issue, it is the system dropping off components (and yes, I tossed the Sonos Boost to the side a while ago) - oddly this may be a result of focusing on mobile device apps instead of base operating systems, i.e., I get better results, albeit limited, if I DELETE the app from my mobile device and just use it off the desktop PC (and high-end, Alienware R11, Killer Bluetooth, 1 Gig service), and best of all, when all this started to happen, I moved everything into one room so that connectivity by WiFi would not even be the hint of an isssue.  If I feel like I have to play tech support, will fool around with some of things you have suggested (and have tried some of them in the past).  Let me state it this way, there are times where the mobile app tries to tell me I have nothing connected whereas the desktop lets me control things.  So if it works on the Desktop, and works badly from a mobile device, I believe Occam’s Razor is applicable.

I agree, I have spent thousands of dollars on Sonos and now I basically can’t use it at all. Really pisses me off. 

My post was not intended to offend (sorry if you took it that way) but what you describe is certainly not Sonos App related - it must be something ‘coincidental’ that’s stopping the speakers playing. I’d at the very least set aside your thoughts about it being App-related and look closer at the matter ‘more likely’ lying elsewhere.

I started music playing on a group of Sonos speakers this morning and they’ve played nearly all day without stopping and I’ve not opened the App at all since earlier on.

If you still think it’s App related then I think you’re looking in the wrong place - my thoughts are to change your WiFi settings - as examples, maybe try…

• Setting a different non-overlapping 2.4Ghz channel on your local router
• Set the channel-width for the 2.4Ghz band to 20 MHz only.
• If using multiple WiFi access points, then blacklist Sonos so they all use the routers WiFi AP only.
• Reserve the Sonos IP addresses in the routers DHCP reservation table.
• If using SonosNet (not recommended these days) then switch to using the routers WiFi instead and where devices allow, get them to use the faster 5Ghz band, but ensure in any event, that your device SNR levels shown in the Sonos App are 45dB or higher. If you have to use SonosNet for any reason, such as the router not supporting the proxying of some Sonos IP addresses via primary devices, then at the very least ensure the SonosNet channel is not the same as the chosen router WiFi channel.

I’d start with those few suggestions and see if that might resolve your playback issues. 

I have a legal background (but, I hate lawyers), but I will have to say, for a clever one if you are out there, there are the elements of a class action here….totally destroyed value of product

Sounds like Ken is a Sonos employee. This has nothing to do with anything other than Sonos’s new updates or app tweaks. I have had Sonos for ever since the beginning and it has been great for me  I have new equipment too. No mini sub and roam speakers etc. the system is crap now. I hate it. I use  the tv for music now and a sound bar that’s how bad it has gotten so don’t you dare try to say it is a network problem or anything other than Sonos itself. I have at least 10-15 people that I know going through the same thing. 

Moderator edit: Sonos staff are clearly marked as such.

Thank you Ken_Griffiths, but I have spent, since August, over 10 hours on several phone calls with Sonos tech support, have submitted diagnostics, have reset routers, have made sure the router is recognized, blah, blah, blah, and, as was done in a response to me a few weeks ago, there is a tendency for Sonos Loyalists to blame the user, their respective router set up, etc., and have been once called stupid - I have had computers and related equipment since the late 70’s, and will wait until after Xmas to dump my system and speakers and move back to Bose...look at all the posts in the forums, we all cannot be idiots or not have engaged with Sonos tech support in useless efforts….my first Sonos was acquired about 10 years ago, problems have only surfaced since the new app, so I guess I must have inadvertently changed my setup in my sleep to have things not work well anymore...

That’s clearly not an issue connected to the new Sonos App. The App is a controller of their Sonos devices and not a music ‘player’. Once music playback is started by the Sonos App, then you can actually close the App, shut down the mobile device and the speakers should continue playing. So you likely’ either have a hardware issue, or there is a network connection issue between the audio source and your playing speaker(s). I would start with taking a look at the local network setup. See this Sonos support link for some initial advice:

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/reduce-wireless-interference

If the issues persist however, then it maybe best to reproduce the issue(s) seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.