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Again….

After not being able to access any music library stored on my Macs I gave an QNAP NAS a try in order to nail the major “library indexing” thing of Sonos a bit better. To make it short: No success. The Sonos S2 app on Desktop or mobile device is still not able to get the private local music library. A very long phone call to Sonos support did not solve the problems at all, in fact I had the impression that the supporting guy did not know very much about Mac OS, Unix, file sharing within Mac OS and else but I might be wrong here.

The basics:

For many years my music and video library resided on external USB volumes connected to an Intel Mac mini running Mac OS Mojave and iTunes. I did not want to update to higher OS versions because iTunes would get exchanged with Apple Music - and Apple Music is not compatible to one of my favourite old desktop apps called “TuneSpan”. TuneSpan so to say “spreads” the whole media library of iTunes to as many drives as You like, You are not forced anymore to keep Your complete library on the Macintosh HD startup volume. All this worked very fine until that ugly SMB1 killing update somewhere around middle 2024. Until then every Sonos device was able to reproduce the library and playlists.
 

After doing some research on that SMB1 thing I disabled SMB1 and NETBIOS within Mac OS Mojave following this link:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102050

As terminal command states there is no SMB1 and NETBIOS support anymore on my Mac mini server. But Sonos desktop app still is not able to get the library at all. Using the option to fetch the library from the Macintosh HD or a drive connected physically to the Mac mini it all still ends up in the “913” error, so the only available solution might be the NAS way.

Of course I added new users to the shared drives / folders in order to “reset” Sonos music library presets. To no avail.  Using old, formerly working (!) users and permissions also do not work anymore. Sonos starts to fetch the library credentials but stops after 20 up to 40 minutes complaining about “the drive not being available anymore” - although every connected and shared drive still is visible and accessible within the local network.

So I tried another thing:

On my major Mac, a M1 Mac mini I set up another, smaller library. Please note that this Mac runs on newest OS and as far as I know SMB1can only be used when the internal Mac OS firewall is deactivated. So no option at all for SMB1. Guess what: Indexing the library on Macintosh HD and any connected external drive also ended up in “913”. Configuring any connected drive as NAS also ended up in unexpected stop of library indexing moaning about “the drive not being available anymore” - although still visible in the Mac OS Finder → AND ← the complete home network. Of course I set up several different users with differing permissions on that Mac. No change.

So I tried another thing:

I’ve never been a friend of dedicated NAS drives but I connected an SSD directly to my router. Same troubles.

So I tried another thing:

For testing purposes I got myself an old QNAP TS-212P NAS. For some odd reason Sonos accepted that drive and fetched all music titles (of course no playlists). Every Sonos device was able to play music without any troubles using the standard admin account on QNAP NAS OS (somewhat of that old 4.x version). My conclusion: All this does not seem to be caused by my local network setup (as mentioned it worked for many years without troubles). I still don’t want to use a newer NAS as I am not a very big friend of PLEX and else. So using a NAS in the future just in order to make Sonos work is only the very last option before selling my whole Sonos setup once worth several bucks. I simply do not understand why this QNAP NAS gets along seamlessly with my local network configuration while any other device seems to cause troubles to the Sonos apps.

As I did not change anything (!) on my local network, port forwarding settings and whatever the reason for the Sonos app failure must be hidden in the desktop and mobile apps themselves. For many years everything worked fine. Right now I can AirPlay to some of my Sonos devices. The Mac mini Server still works fine with the videos streamed to an Apple TV 4k from within Mac OS Mojave iTunes (another reason why I do not want to change the setup). The Apple TV connection even is able to drive a Sonos Playbar setup with surrounding speakers.

Now for the Sonos support “experience”…

Well, I really “love” the double explaining thing! After providing as many details as possible via the “Chat” I had to re-explain everything at the telephone. Of course Sonos tried to establish a remote connection. They did not understand why it was not working - although I explained my server setup to them. This Mac mini Mojave server is running “headless” - no monitor, mouse, keyboard. Remote controlled from within my local network via standard Mac OS “screen sharing” function. As it has been working for many years before, too. Obviously a second remote control channel could not be opened. They promised to have a further look into all this and contact me again via e-mail….

 

So I am pretty much at end with my “wisdom” using Macs from OS version 6.1 onwards. I am pretty sure that none of my network settings is causing all this. If anybody in here has an idea what options to solve that troubles I still might have, please let me know. I am tired of waiting for Sonos app updates that solved nothing until now.

 

Thanks for reading!

Like many other manufacturers, Sonos has dropped support for SMB v1 in the new app.

If you would like to continue using SMB v1 and have speakers that do not require the S2 app, consider downgrading to the S1 app. SMB v1 is still supported with that version of the Sonos app.

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/downgrade-a-sonos-product-to-s1

 

I still do have SMB2 Sonos devices and as already mentioned SMB1 is deactivated within my whole network.

The more I read here the less I understand what is going on.

I have a simple SMBv2 network share (Samba) on a Raspberry Pi that has been stable and working on the latest Sonos software/firmware releases.

This is what I am thinking, too. 

As I did not change anything to whatever in my home setup the reasons for Sonos S2 not working anymore must be buried within the app itself.

So in order to solve all this myself before contacting support I tried the described tests, including new users / different permissions within the used surroundings and else. The only “thing” that is more or less obvious is the fact that the QNAP does not use any (!) SMB from within it’s own OS: No SMB 1, 2 or 3. The router just uses SMB when attaching an external USB drive that is used as NAS afterwards. Going that way Sonos shows exactly the same problems.

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