Hi. I’ve checked the forums for over an hour and nobody seems to share this particular setup. I’ve had this SONOS ZP100 setup for over 20 years. Others have had similar complaints that a song will play for a bit, give an error message (“connection to (music source) lost”), and skip to the next song. But those questions all deal with music services or networking issues. Mine isn’t that or I wouldn’t be posting.

My music source is a 4Tb bookcase drive directly connected with USB-3 into my desktop computer. My ZP100 is hard-wired into my router with a CAT-5a cable, which in turn is hard-wired into my desktop, also with a CAT-5a cable. (Yeah, I know, quaint, amirite?) So no wireless involved and therefore no interference.

If I play the same song on Media Player, VLC Media Player, or any other MP3 player on my desktop, all is good. But my SONOS system no longer reliably plays music that’s literally hard-wired to it.

Here’s a sample error message from the log.

“Saturday, November 4, 2023 - 15:32 Eastern Time
Unable to play 'Won’t Get Fooled Again' - the connection to //DESKTOP-ETL44LU/My Music was lost.”

DESKTOP-ELTL44LU is the name of my desktop. The directory “My Music” is on a Western Digital My Passport Ultra drive which happens to be connected as “F:” In Sonos, this music library appears as “F:\My Music.”

I have tried deleting and re-adding the folder as a music library. I’ve tried rebuilding the music library. I’ve tried rebooting the computer and modem, separately or together, with and without disconnecting and reconnecting the drive in various combinations. All to no avail. My computer reads the drive just fine.

PS this fails even if I use “Cast To Device” to the ZP100. A connection error results. When it fails using CAST, the song plays a bit, stops, and restarts. Very weird. The songs play on any media player except SONOS.

This setup has worked flawlessly for 20+ years and only in the last month or so has it been barfing.

Sounds like a need a new device?