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Unable to play X - and the song is not encoded correctly

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101 replies

M

Thanks very much Airgetiam!

That is very interesting.  One thing I should have mentioned is that a very few of the LP recordings do work, which doesn’t make sense to me if they are all from the same recording device (no provision to specify/alter output type).  Working files seem to be much shorter duration—under 3 minutes (some of the other files are as much as 15-20 min and some Wagner and others are off duration charts).  I made the LP recordings with the base model of the ION recording turntable and need to check output specs.   For some of the live recordings I used the H2 Handy recorder and I know I designated  bit rate over 16.   Have also noted in a quick search that it seems to be possible to convert .wav to lower bit rate.  With over 1K files would be big job but no need to do them all at once and could tag filename.   I still wouldn’t want to discourage Sonos from broadening playback capacity that seems to affect many, but realize companies need to measure use of resources.   Anyway, thanks very much for feedback, and if I come up with anything that may be of more general interest may chime in again.

John

D
Userlevel 2

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

K

Yep same for me, most of Amazon music will not play!

M

Same problem on SXM. Just stops out of the blue and gives me this message. After a few minutes it works again. 

5

What did Sonos say, when you submitted a diagnostic after one of these events, and contacted them?

They played a few songs on Sonos radio that worked and he said it was a YouTube music issue. I spent two hours on the phone with them trouble shooting and this is what they came up with.

This has been an issue for two years now, judging by this thread. Others have submitted diagnostics with live tech support to no avail. People bitching on this thread have every right to do so. The Sonos engineers are clueless about what the issue is. 

5

I’ll add my data point. My music is all local -- I occasionally will listen to a SXM channel, but mostly my library is ALAC or FLAC files that I ripped from CDs. The library resides on my iMac.

Things were working fine for the past two years or so. I have two sets of stereo pairs, each pair a One connected via ethernet and a One SL connected via WiFi. Each room has a WiFi access point so the One SLs are no more than 10ft from the router.

At first it happed fairly rarely and I just assumed I had a bad fine. Once it started happing more frequently, I’ve gone back and played the files on my Mac with iTunes or VLC and they play fine, so I don’t believe it is an encoding issue.

I haven’t done the phone support -- I guess I will do that but I’ve spent too much of my life on hold to some support/customer service line to look forward to that.

My thoughts are it’s the network connection, possibly related to the WiFi extenders, perhaps🤔 - I would simply reboot the entire local network, including all the extenders to see if that resolves the issue.

Ken, are you an engineer at Sonos? Tech support? It's incredibly frustrating the amount of money people have spent on these speakers to be having an issue like this...for two years now! How clueless are you? How many times do people have to tell you, yeah, I tried that!? 

Ken_Griffiths

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

I thought Apples iTunes Match was there to allow users to remove DRM - that’s what I did with my iTunes Match annual subscription many years ago and then ditched it. Anyhow I found this from Sonos Support literature…

Some purchased music may be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). This prevents these files from being shared via third-party apps like the Sonos app. This issue most commonly affects music purchased from iTunes before they switched to DRM-free music.

Apple no longer sells DRM protected music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restrictions. If you still have some tracks that are DRM protected and unplayable on Sonos, iTunes Match allows you to upgrade your music to a DRM-free version. More information on iTunes Match and instructions on upgrading to DRM-free can be found on Apple’s website.

—

The link embedded above isn’t very helpful, clearly it isn’t a Sonos issue from what’s been said here already, but if your DRM protected music purchases were from Apple originally, then maybe speak with their customer support service and see what they say.

Airgetlam

No, if Ken were an engineer at Sonos, his account would be marked as a ‘Sonos’ employee account. Like most of us who have large post counts, we tend to suggest things that have worked in99.99% of the cases, and then try to refer people who continue to have difficulty to deal with actual Sonos support, rather than getting an answer here in the community. Only Sonos employees have access to the hard data present in the system diagnostic. 

Bruce
Airgetlam

I unfortunately don’t have any personal experience in ‘down-rezzing’ files, but I would assume you could just save them as a slightly different name, and do a few as a test, it should likely work. 

I’d agree, there’s always the opportunity for more from Sonos speakers, but also recognize the cost of effort versus the benefit to the largest population of users. And frankly. Sonos has long been a non-supporter of high-rez, since the science shows there is no audible benefits, so there’s less of a chance that they’ll expend a lot of energy in that direction. Not impossible, though. 

Bruce
5

No, if Ken were an engineer at Sonos, his account would be marked as a ‘Sonos’ employee account. Like most of us who have large post counts, we tend to suggest things that have worked in99.99% of the cases, and then try to refer people who continue to have difficulty to deal with actual Sonos support, rather than getting an answer here in the community. Only Sonos employees have access to the hard data present in the system diagnostic. 

For readers experiencing this issue, tech support is as worthless as this thread and you'd be better off switching to a different speaker. There. Issue resolved! 

D
Userlevel 2

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

I thought Apples iTunes Match was there to allow users to remove DRM - that’s what I did with my iTunes Match annual subscription many years ago and then ditched it. Anyhow I found this from Sonos Support literature…

Some purchased music may be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). This prevents these files from being shared via third-party apps like the Sonos app. This issue most commonly affects music purchased from iTunes before they switched to DRM-free music.

Apple no longer sells DRM protected music and all music now for sale is free of any playback restrictions. If you still have some tracks that are DRM protected and unplayable on Sonos, iTunes Match allows you to upgrade your music to a DRM-free version. More information on iTunes Match and instructions on upgrading to DRM-free can be found on Apple’s website.

—

The link embedded above isn’t very helpful, clearly it isn’t a Sonos issue from what’s been said here already, but if your DRM protected music purchases were from Apple originally, then maybe speak with their customer support service and see what they say.

Correct.  These ARE iTunes Match tracks so they are DRM-free.  Apple Music songs DO have DRM because you must maintain a subscription in order to play the songs.  So by removing the non-DRM song from my library (iTunes Matched) and replacing with DRMed (Apple Music), it works.  My guess is with the 15.2 update that added Atmos support, they broke something in handling Apple music without DRM.  This is most definitely a bug in Sonos code.

BTW - I just got off a 45 minute call with Sonos support that was completely useless.  They didn’t acknowledge anything was wrong.  They kept reciting information from their website that was irrelevant.  We’ll see if I get any information from the tier 3 escalation.

Ken_Griffiths

@davidbashman,

It’s been quite a while (years, I guess), but I recall I ‘matched’ my purchased and ripped tracks via iTunes and then deleted the ones in my local iTunes folders and downloaded the DRM-free tracks. I recall the itunes match subscription was yearly and around £21.99 per year (or similar). I subscribed monthly and separately for ‘leased’ Apple tracks in those days,  which I had not purchased and they wouldn’t play when my subscription ended - so I deleted those and kept all my own purchased (DRM-free) tracks on my NAS in a separate library.. alongside those many CD tracks I ripped separately from my CD’s (all tagged using MP3Tag). I eventually moved away from Apple and switched to Amazon Music, trying Spotify and Deezer too in-between.

In recent times, I have resubscribed to Apple mainly to see what I think of their service now they’ve introduced (lossy) Atmos music on Sonos and I have uploaded/matched my local library back to the iCloud servers again and now have that online library, which appears in the S2 App (see screenshot attached).

I’ve not (yet) added any Apple ‘leased’ tracks to my library so it’s all just my matched/uploaded DRM -free tracks and whilst there are thousands of them and I haven’t tested them all - I’ve not yet encountered an issue whilst playing them or any tracks from other areas of the App… albeit in the other areas I’ve mostly been listening to Atmos playlists on both the Arc and Era 300’s.

So I’m not seeing the same issue so far, but if I do encounter an issue I will report back here and let you know. Note I’ve only re-subscribed to the Apple service some six or seven weeks ago so not had the chance to test everything but will let you know if I see the same issue.

I did just randomly select a few tracks across the library and they all started playing okay.

Anyhow I hope you get things sorted. 👍

1 Attachment
F

Having the same problem, mostly with Sirius XM, but sometimes with Apple Music. Music stops randomly, I wait a couple minutes, and then everything works again. Happening more frequently now than before.

Airgetlam

In most cases, this is due to some type of wifi interference . It may not be much, but occurs at the moment the Sonos system is reaching out to grab the ‘definition’ of the file, and start the streaming process. Note that it’s entirely possible for the source of this interference to be outside of your network, and WiFi and SonosNet signals are subject to other radio signals. 
 

The only 100% certain way to know, however, is to submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it. But even then, Sonos, looking at the hard data, would only be able to confirm that it is interference, without necessarily being able to tell the source. 

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

 

Bruce
Airgetlam

Delighted that you’ve achieved success! At least now, with a bunch of extra work, you’ll be able to get back to being able to play your stored music. 

Enjoy!

Bruce
T
Userlevel 1
Badge

please sonos this issue has been a problem for months and months - invested heavily in sonos and apple - since 2007 sonos and mid 90s apple - dont let us down!

G

Same problem with Apple Music. I'll try what has been suggested previously and see if that works. Any other suggestions? Thanks.

V

Same here with Tidal. It coincided with Tidal offering Hi-fi quality to Standard subscribers. 

I raised the issue with Tidal support; they suggested rebooting Sonos and the router, but it did not fix the issue - still getting the ‘not encoded correctly’ message.

S

@JohnnyQ, 
Any chance of naming some tracks that don’t work for you via the built-in Apple service. I subscribe to Apple Music and I’m sure there must be many others here too. I’m happy to see if the tracks you name work for my Sonos setup and will let you know whether they play on my setup (or not) - if not, then it will at least give the Staff here some data to work with and perhaps will help Apple (or Sonos) to fix the issue. I’ll add a diagnostic here too if they don’t play.

I’m not currently seeing any issues with the tracks I’ve been listening to since the latest update and that’s playing standard audio and many Atmos tracks too.

The issue is related to iTunes Match vs Apple Music.  Something changed recently with either Apple or Sonos where Sonos can no longer play songs that are in your Apple library that were loaded via iTunes Match vs songs on Apple Music.  This is why removing them from your library and re-adding works.  You are removing the iTunes Match version and putting in the DRMed, newly encoded Apple Music version. 

The issue is for people like me that have thousands of songs dating back years from iTunes Match, some of which are rare songs and music not on Apple Music.  They can no longer be played via Sonos directly.  Whether this is caused by an Apple change or Sonos change, I don’t know.  I can play the songs in Apple Music app, but not on Sonos app.

This makes a TON of sense.  I’ve got a ton of music that I uploaded or added to my Apple Music library via iTunes Match years ago.  Deleting from my library and re-adding (with the AM DRM version) works for me, but there’s no chance I’m going to do this dance for thousands of songs.

D

I will echo the previous posts. Any play list created via Amazon Music will not play. The songs are no longer encoded correctly. 

I’ve just tried several Amazon Music Service Playlists including one called ‘Easy Hits’ …and as you can perhaps see (screenshot attached) they’re working okay here, but it might be a local issue.

The Sonos status page isn’t showing anything at the moment, but maybe keep an eye on that for any updates. 

Sonos Services Status Page

The issue I have (sounds like it is similar to others on this thread) is that playlists or songs from Amazon that I saved a while ago are now not playing and have an error saying the song isn't encoded correctly.  Current playlists will play. Seems maybe the playlist points to a file that has been changed on Amazon.  Really could do with a quick way to re add songs to playlists in order to get the 'new' song location.  Or for it to be fixed within Sonos or Amazon. I've also tried re-adding Amazon music in the app, but without success.  Songs in the playlists that are saved locally still play, it just skips any that are streamed from Amazon.

S

I have the same “not encoded correctly” issue on spotify and tidal streaming services. Playlists that we have been using for a year all of the sudden no longer work after the most recent update. This has been happening only within the last month. I will be submitting a diagnostic. I have unplugged every speaker, then rebooted the router and sequentially plugged back in all devices to no avail. This is definitely a sonos issue.

J

The same for me with Spotify. As one track is finishing I get the not encoded correctly message for the next so it skips every other track.

P

Is there any way I can access the logs myself?

I get this intermittent error with the “encoding” of a song from YT that usually plays fine, so the error message is most likely bs. I can play other tracks when I get this error, and when I try again the next day it usually works again.

I

I get it as well, but with the following services.

  1. Sonos Radio - Seems more odd that this is in the list here.
  2. Amazon music

 

5

In addition to contacting the worthless customer support at Sonos, I did a factory reset of all my devices. This didn't work either.

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