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Resume topic: Starting a week ago, Amazon Music no longer works on my Sonos 1 system!!

T
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Since the topic was closed, starting a new one. After a few other Sonos S1 updates I signed up this morning for another month of Amazon unlimited -- and weird problems immediately (upon signing up) returned. In mid-flight of playing a playlist I received the message below.
 

Couple of other interesting observations:

1. On my Ipad controller I can turn off compression of music -- did that (that option doesn’t seem to exist on my Windows 10 controller...). Seemed to help. Also on the Ipad controller but not the Windows controller is an option to Pair Airplay devices with the others; it was set as OFF, I turned it ON (I have one Airplay device).

2. I now get sort of random messages like the one above, where in mid-flight the message pops up and the next song starts… Very strange. I now have many messages in the Error log: Sunday, October 16, 2022 - 8:28 AM Central Time; Unable to play 'Duet for Flute and Clarinet, Op. 46 No. 1: I. Allegro' - the song is not encoded correctly. [or many other songs...]; never saw such messages or errors with Prime only.

3. Unlike my previous symptoms, I can play through all 11 stations.

4. Also noticed that the search in the Sonos S1 controller doesn’t work for Amazon (didn’t work for Prime either).

5. On Amazon Music I set playback to “Standard”, not HD.

Also found an option on Amazon Music Unlimited Player (Web UI) for Audio Quality, which I set to Standard and now also set Auto Adjust Quality to OFF; will report back if that helped any.

Finally, as of this writing: everything seems to be playing correctly, but will continue to watch for random issues as described. Those never happen when I listen to Pandora. Also, I went to Sonos Support and clicked on the email-the-CEO button to send an email to the CEO (presumably...) to describe the issue. Really would like to have this resolved! (Or will cancel Unlimited again next month)

 

PS: Final edit: Same weirdness, now set in Amazon Unlimited interface on Web the Audio Quality to Data Saver; will see if that does anything useful...

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Best answer by Corry P 17 October 2022, 10:50

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16 replies

Corry P
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Hi @THill182 

Thanks for your post!

“The song is not encoded correctly” most commonly occurs when there is a transmission error on your local network, usually due to electromagnetic interference.

It’s possible that Amazon is playing at a higher bitrate than your other sources and is therefore more susceptible to the interference.

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
J

I was confused by your post. Are you playing using the Sonos app, the Amazon Music app or Airplay? If you are using the Sonos app then I think that  most of the settings changes you made are irrelevant. 

Your problems are classic local network interference. 

T
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First, I am playing Amazon Unlimited (Stations, Playlists, doesn’t matter) through a Sonos S2 system. I have mostly S1 older amps/pre-amps(receivers), but also one Airplay node. Nothing I could find on the Sonos UX/UI seems to make a difference.

Thank you for feedback; the interference-root-cause might be it and I will explore further. It is consistent with what I see, e.g., :
 

  • When I play Amazon Unlimited through only a single node/station all works well
  • When I toggle more or all 11 stations in -- my Sonos controller on my laptop disconnects temporarily.
  • As I wrote before I have a lot of “stuff” in my office, including 3 Wifi routers pretty close together and close to the ethernet-connected Sonos node; I will try first to turn off the other wifi’s and move the Sonos node as far away as possible with a longer ethernet cable.

Will keep you’all posted. Really appreciate your advice.

PS: I still find it strange that I have determined with very-high certainty that Amazon Prime music worked well, but the second I re-enabled Amazon Ultimate the trouble started again. Whatever the difference is in the delivery mechanism of music between those two services must be one of the root-causes, or at least triggers….

Mr. T
Userlevel 7

PS: I still find it strange that I have determined with very-high certainty that Amazon Prime music worked well, but the second I re-enabled Amazon Ultimate the trouble started again. Whatever the difference is in the delivery mechanism of music between those two services must be one of the root-causes, or at least triggers….

Amazon Prime streams in compressed audio (up to 320 kbps). Amazon Music Unlimited (HD) is lossless, 16-bit CD quality. Your local network evidently has difficulty streaming lossless music.

J

I am even more confused now! Your thread title says you are on S1, but now you say it's S2.

You haven't clarified which app you are using (Sonos or Amazon) and I have no idea what an Airplay node is but it certainly isn't relevant.

You had 3 different WiFis running and you thought the problem was Sonos?

Still, it sounds like you are now headed in the right direction and I hope you resolve your issues.

T
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My apologies about confusions:

  • I am running S1, NOT S2
  • “Airplay” is one of the products/nodes from Sonos; it shows up on the Ipad S1 controller as an option to “bundle Airplay nodes with all the others”; I set that; probably irrelevant; didn’t do anything.
  • Yes I had 3 different Wifi networks active; I took two of them down (one an old leftovers, and a new COX phone/internet/wifi modem). Anyway, now the Cox modem is wired to the Linksys Velop Mesch, which is the only Wifi I am running.
  • After those changes, I actually DO get an error saying “network connection speed insufficient to maintain playback buffer.” . This message shows up when I slowly toggle in Sonos nodes i.e., I play Amazon Unlimited to a single node -- works fine; two worked fine; after about 4 of them I get that error now. If that is actually an accurate message, I still don’t get why that happens. My apartment is small (2000 sqft), so how/why does that get “too slow”?
     

Will work with Sonos support next I suppose. Or just turn Amazon Unlimited off again….

T
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  • Well, I think I just give up at this point, and cancel Amazon Unlimited again, to return to the Amazon Prime Music subscription, which worked fine…I spoke with Amazon support (via chat), and configured Amazon Music playback to the lowest possible delivery format and quality -- which didn’t help.
  • Amazon support also said they cannot think of any other difference between Unlimited and Prime -- but I KNOW (!) there must be because the moment I re-enabled Unlimited my playback started to break!
  • All suggestions I get from Sonos and from Amazon amount to “something is wrong with your network; start over and reconfigure it”. But I am no longer buying it because:
  • There are at least 2 other older threads reporting the same problem (here, and here); the suggestions there are the same, and none of them worked!

At this point my impression is that (1) Sonos is not in the business of investing any effort or engineering into the S1 system (which I get, from a business perspective; that is the price I paid for being an early supporter and adopter!), and (2) Amazon has competing music services and systems (the Alexa ecosystem and API’s). 

 

So bottom line is I will cancel Amazon Unlimited again.

 

But have one last question: What other music service(s) similar in breadth and depth to Amazon Unlimited can you’all recommend that that will work (is confirmed to work!) with large Sonos S1 systems. GREATLY appreciate guidance! And thank you for all your input!

Ken_Griffiths

I’m using Amazon Music Unlimited with Sonos S1 here and it’s working fine for me. So it’s likely a local network, or maybe an Amazon account issue, but maybe try Deezer Music instead

 

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Mr. T
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  • Well, I think I just give up at this point, and cancel Amazon Unlimited again, to return to the Amazon Prime Music subscription, which worked fine…I spoke with Amazon support (via chat), and configured Amazon Music playback to the lowest possible delivery format and quality -- which didn’t help.
  • Amazon support also said they cannot think of any other difference between Unlimited and Prime -- but I KNOW (!) there must be because the moment I re-enabled Unlimited my playback started to break!

Playback settings in the Amazon Music app have no effect when playback is initiated from the Sonos app.

T
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I’m using Amazon Music Unlimited with Sonos S1 here and it’s working fine for me. So it’s likely a local network, or maybe an Amazon account issue, but maybe try Deezer Music instead

 

KEN: How many Sonos nodes do you have? And are they are mix of S2 and compatible and incompatible devces or S1 older devices only?

My system seems to work (almost 100%) reliably with up to 5 nodes grouped together playing the same Amazon Unlimited station/service, and slowly “deteriorates” when I toggle/group in more nodes into the same-Amazon-Station playback. At 11 nodes (that I have in my system; a mix of older S1-only and newer S2 compatible devices, but all running under S1) it just all falls down (music randomly shows up, and “cycles” randomly through the nodes). Pandora works great, and my local music server has no problem. Also, in the links I referenced, this is clearly an issue others experience….

 

So given my tests I would expect things to work OK with up to five nodes in the system.

T
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Playback settings in the Amazon Music app have no effect when playback is initiated from the Sonos app.

Indeed, and consistent with what I find out through experimentation -- even though Amazon Support (via Chat) claimed it would make a difference.

I have been studying the API reference for the Music/Alexa “skill”, to see if I can locate interfaces that might control the format of music delivery when accessed from an external (non Amazon) device or app. But so far haven’t found it….

Ken_Griffiths

KEN: How many Sonos nodes do you have? And are they are mix of S2 and compatible and incompatible devces or S1 older devices only?

My system seems to work (almost 100%) reliably with up to 5 nodes grouped together playing the same Amazon Unlimited station/service, and slowly “deteriorates” when I toggle/group in more nodes into the same-Amazon-Station playback. At 11 nodes (that I have in my system; a mix of older S1-only and newer S2 compatible devices, but all running under S1) it just all falls down (music randomly shows up, and “cycles” randomly through the nodes). Pandora works great, and my local music server has no problem. Also, in the links I referenced, this is clearly an issue others experience….

So given my tests I would expect things to work OK with up to five nodes in the system.

I only have a few speakers running on S1 - the majority of products here are on S2 - I have many (20+) devices ‘currently’ operating on S2.

Many (not all) of the S2 devices form part of different Home Theatres in various rooms - I don’t have difficulty playing to all with any of the music services and I have tried each of the popular services, but currently subscribe to Amazon and Deezer.

I run the S2 setup on an older mesh WiFi-5 (4-node), rather than SonosNet, but it runs well on a SonosNet signal too, at least it did the last time I switched to using the setup in that way.

The wireless connections to all my speakers show as ‘excellent’ in the router configuration software - all Sonos IP addresses are reserved in the local DHCP reservation table. The 2.4Ghz band is limited to a channel-width of 20Mhz only (by default) ...and I use non-overlapping wireless channels for that band.

Standalone/paired speakers mostly use the 5Ghz band, but the HT master devices (obviously) use the 2.4Ghz band and I’m lucky to not suffer from too much interference from neighbours.

The ISP speeds quoted are 500mb/s upload and 30mb/s download (give or take), so not the fastest these days, I guess, but more than enough for our Home and streaming 4K video and hi-res audio (24/48) all seem to work well.

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T
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KEN: Excellent info, thank you!

 

I will continue to poke at my wireless network. I have a Linksys Velop Mesh. I will be honest: I do not fully understand (yet) what I am seeing on the configuration pages - not the technical setup options but rather, there are devices on their showing as “Ethernet” connected and active when those devices were recycles eons ago (and before I moved).

I think my next step will be to rebuild the Linksys Velop Mesh from scratch, and reserve an IP range for the Sonos system.

Thanks again; will keep you posted how it goes (or not...)

J

Do I correctly understand that you are using a mesh WiFi and have no Sonos device wired to your network?  If so that is unlikely to work reliably.  If you would be kind enough to confirm whether or not that is the situation I will happily explain my comments and suggest some simple measures that I think will improve the situation considerably.

T
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Alright -- I gave up..

First, John B: No, I have one of the Sonos nodes hardwired to the Linksys Velop node, which itself hardwired (to the Cox Internet modem) Node. 

In fact, today, I rebuilt “everything” from scratch, starting with the Linksys Velop Mesh (3 nodes). Before doing that I had unplugged all Sonos devices, and then added them one at a time (and reserved the IP for each device [DHCP reservations] -- no way to do a reserved range in the Velop system it appears).  After 3 hours of working on this (connecting all 25 devices) it was all back up -- and the same problems persisted.

So at this point I have eliminated all other Wifi systems I control (there are others I see from neighbors; also a very strong Cox public Wifi hotspot nearby it appears), and I am pretty sure that the Wifi bandwidth is very good throughout my space. The problem has to be with the Amazon Unlimited delivery format which overwhelms the memory capacity and synchronization of my very old first-generation system components -- which makes sense to me.

I contacted Amazon Support tonight and asked them to cancel my Amazon Unlimited upgrade, which they did right then and there (and refunded; very nice customer service!)-- and my system now performs flawlessly again with Amazon Music! I also told the Amazon Support person to let their Engineering know that I/we need an option to control the delivery of Unlimited music at exactly the format as Amazon Unlimited.

Again, the fact that at the exactly the moment Amazon cancelled my Unlimited subscription it all started to work again makes me think that is the root cause, along with my very old Sonos components…

Thank you for all your suggestions. I don’t know how some of you make S1 work with Amazon Unlimited -- but now suspect that some of the earliest systems (I was an early adopter) probably don’t have the hardware “horsepower” to support even reasonable music delivery 10 years later. (A lesson in there about technology, and the downside of being one of the first to use it...; then again I had 10 years of using it...)

Corry P
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Hi @THill182 

Looking at your most recent diagnostic, it seems pretty clear that the main issue is interference near the only wired Sonos unit - Wolf Cave.

If you isolate this device from any other WiFi devices by at least 1m, it should clear things up fairly well.

It does look like there’s quite a lot of WiFi signals around your Sonos system, though the system hasn’t done a WiFi scan recently so that’s all I can really see. If these signals are on channels that overlap with channel 11, they could be a bit of a problem.

I really do recommend you get in touch with our technical support team for some in-depth troubleshooting, regardless of your choice of stream quality.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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