SiriusXM Continues to Drop Out

I don’t know where you are in the US; not that it should make a difference, unless you're in a mountain region which can generate natural interference for radio signals (WiFi).

I’m having no such issues was you describe. I stream SiriusXM Watercolors on a regular basis. In fact I streamed it for over an hour today.

I can “Group” a SiriusXM stream without issues over multiple zones as well. FYI, I have ten (10) zones comprising thirty-two Sonos units. My network consist of three (3) ASUS ZenWiFi Pro ET 12’s via wired backhaul.

For the record...No I don’t “Group” stream all ten (10) zones simultaneously; as three (3) of the ten (10) are in the same room. I have “Group” streamed 3-4 Zones together. 

As you claim you are professional installers; I therefore have no advice to offer. You probably don’t want to hear this; but my gut tells me there are network issues involved. 

Great insight thanks!

Just to reiterate the issue is ONLY with SiriusXM, no other streaming services, including a dozen or so others that we stream. Perhaps the Watercolors channel is streamed at a different format...would be interesting to know.

I can play for an hour no problem. It is after a few hours, sometimes it takes longer than that, for the issue to occur. And we have troubleshot and confirmed with Sonos that grouping exacerbates the issue, regardless of which zone the stream is initiated from. The issue can occur consistently for days at a time, then SiriusXM is not streamed for perhaps a week with zero issues from other streaming services, then when we go back to streaming SiriusXM the issue persists. Diagnostics show that the streaming format from SiriusXM is unique to services like Pandora or Apple Music.

There are zero problems occurring on our network outside of this. Realize many say this (It’s not my network) but we have done absolutely everything possible to try and mitigate the SiriusXM dropouts from the network side. As of now Sonos has deemed it a SiriusXM issue.

We need Sonos to pickup the troubleshooting steps from here on out. In our experience having installed Sonos for 15+ years they tend to try and put the ball in the users court with regards to troubleshooting. I understand this procedure, as we implement ourselves at times, but after the 3rd or 4th troubleshooting call on the same topic it is unhelpful and frustrating. Shoot our clients can barely take 5 mins of troubleshooting at our direction, little on hours and hours with major suggested changes revealing no beneficial results. But I digress...

​@koberlin1 

Glad you thought my response was of value. 😊

Sorry I couldn't offer more insight. Maybe SiriusXM Watercolors does stream at a different bit rate….I don’t know 🤔.  

I’ll have to pay more attention during a marathon streaming session of my own (two hours or more) to see what happens. However, a drop over an extended period of time may be SOP.  We are talking about radio waves and possibly human “body”generated interference not to mention electronic and/or ISP dips.

I’ll “pin” this thread to see if you come back with a resolution and/or a probable cause. Good luck going forward!

Thanks for the reply! I’ll update if anything changes. To be clear there will be an initial drop and at that point the dominoes start falling and the drops will continue every 30 seconds or so until the stream is reinitiated. I understand occasional/random drops, it definitely happens, but this is not that. It is very indicative of Sonos being unable to “keep up” with the stream. We actually lost a big customer to this issue, and they were on an entirely different network/WiFi system.

You might be seeing duplicate IP address issues, either separately, or in combination with wifi interference issues. Or, for that matter, DNS issues. 

To be clear, all Sonos does is take the instruction to point their speaker to a specific router owned by SiriusXM, at no point does that data reside on Sonos servers. Those servers, for most streamers, are slightly different than their ‘normal’ servers, as they need to run the Sonos Music API as an interface, but beyond that, they should be the same as ‘regular’ servers. 

If you want additional information about why Sonos can expose duplicate IPs more frequently than other networked devices, feel free to ask. Some people are aware, some are not. Networking can sometimes be complex. 

Thanks Bruce. We have ruled out WiFi interference. To reiterate it only happens with SiriusXM. It does not happen with any other services. How would I approach Sonos regarding the possibility of duplicate IPs/DNS issues being the issue and for possible fixes?

A network refresh, by unplugging all Sonos devices from power, then rebooting the router and waiting a couple of minutes before plugging back in the Sonos, would, at least temporarily, resolve both the duplicate IPs and any DNS issues. However, with the information that it only occurs with SiriusXM, I’d be leaning towards a DNS issues, if it was duplicate IPs it would occur equally on all streamers. Frankly, since Sonos uses the same ‘player’ for all streams/local music, if there is an issue, it’s most likely outside of Sonos completely. So I’d be investigating something other than Sonos…which could be duplicate IPs (unlikely in this case), a DNS issue upstream, causing the router to ‘flap’ when attempting to contact the SiruisXM server, or an issue of the data itself on the SiriusXM server. DNS changes are few and far between, my only experience with them was when about 50% of my customers couldn’t reach the game I was working on, due to a DNS change by AT&T which took hours to propagate across all sorts of repeating devices. It was painful, and a learning experience. 

The challenge is, if you submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, Sonos would, I assume, be able to see that data stopped coming in from the SiriusXM server, but I have no idea if they could see why. They might be able to see a DNS issue, I’m not sure, but they’d unlikely to be fed any error data from the SiriusXM server itself, you’d likely want to talk to the SiriusXM CS staff about that particular issue. Sonos can only play what they’re handed across the internet, unfortunately. 

Note, however, that a simple diagnostic submission doesn’t cause Sonos to look at the diagnostic. As explained in the Diagnostics - How do they work? thread, won’t look at them until you call in with the number. 

Roger that Bruce, I'll go ahead and do a full network refresh again to see if it mitigates the issue. If it does sounds like it might be a DNS issue. Although you think I'd suffer in other areas in that regard, not just Sonos SiriusXM. Either way I’ll generate another diagnostic and immediately reach out to Sonos's following up on my case, after which perhaps reach out to SiriusXM. Although their customer service is fairly rudimentary can't imagine that would be helpful. At that point I’d try to lean on Sonos to reach out to their point of contact there. Really feels like it's a SiriusXM stream issue though… Of course they'll ask if I'm experiencing the same issue with their standalone streaming app which once again reinforces how these companies love to put the troubleshooting ball in the end users court, which makes sense in certain cases, but this has been an exhaustive process and such tactics aren't helpful.

I wouldn’t think so, although it could be possible. Networking is hard. The DNS issue could be anywhere along the chain of routes to SiriusXM, and be avoided when reaching to ‘other’ addresses on the internet. 

And of course, the fact that SiriusXM uses different servers to feed Sonos and their own apps and other streams, something many CS folks don’t grasp, is a potential issue as well. 

Most streaming companies, from what I can tell, don’t really ‘care’ when Sonos reaches out to them. After all, Sonos doesn’t pay them any money, most CS folks react more strongly when a paying customer talks to them. I think it’s unfortunate, as Sonos represents a larger number of potential customers, but I do understand the human nature of responding to a ‘real’ customer, and not a ‘potential’ group of customers. And I think it depends too much on the CS rep themselves. 

It’s unfortunate that Sonos doesn’t have more ‘control’ in these situations, but they’re a lot like a TV manufacturer. They provide a method of playback of a signal, but it’s the broadcaster that sends the signal. 

​@koberlin1 

Just wanted to follow-up with you. I’ve been streaming SiriusXM Watercolors for a little over 4 hours to four zones. I’ve had no drops. 

​@koberlin1 

Second follow-up.

At approximately 4 hours 45 minutes the SiriusXM Watercolors stream paused for about 5 seconds towards the end of a song. I know it was towards the end as I have listened to the same track countless times.

However, it was a pause and the stream resumed on its own with no intervention as you have described. Upon resume the stream continued with a 2-3 second Watercolors commercial. So I can’t say it was a drop or more likely SiruisXM’s way of announcing their presence to listeners. Possibly a required commercial break after “X” minutes of streaming. At this juncture I’m leaning toward the latter. 

I’ll keep monitoring and report back when I can.

Sorry might of missed it but what Sonos equipment are you using?

​@AjTrek1 your dropout would be a nice change for me! Once mine drops out it just continues to do so until I stop the stream, wait around 30 seconds, then restart. Feels like it's a SiriusXM format issue on this particular Deep Tracks channel or perhaps Sonos can't manage the data amount/packaged format. That is what a few different L1 technicians have also concluded on my case. ​

@Micha007mk I have (3) AMP stereo zones, (1) PORT zone, (1) ARC + AMP for i/c surrounds + SUB 3 theater, (1) ACE, (2) PLAY:1 stereo paired, (1) MOVE almost always powered down

Been streaming Deep Tracks all day with no drop outs, first time in forever such has been the case...go figure. I submitted a diagnostic so we can see if perhaps their delivery format has changed, will reach out to support for verification of such soon.

Just in case you’re wondering, submitting a diagnostic is only useful when you call in to have someone look at it. They don’t automatically look at all that have been submitted. You can read more at the  Diagnostics - How do they work? thread.

​@Airgetlam yes I know, we are Sonos dealers and rely on diags quite a bit.

Good deal. Not everyone does, unfortunately, and get upset when they don’t get a response to their submission. Just wanted to be sure everyone reading this thread understood.