The New Sonos App and Future Feature Updates

Update. I killed the queue and reloaded the playlist and sound quality restored. Very odd and the first time I've experienced a drop in quality of sound coming from the speakers. To quote David Bowie 'This chaos is killing me!'

Bonjour is Apple’s branding for what is often known as ZeroConf. It is a collection of technologies, including mDNS and DNS Service Discovery, for automatic service discovery over IP. When they originally published it as an open standard, parts of it were adopted into the global standards used within the zeroconf technologies.

https://developer.apple.com/bonjour/

On Linux/Unix Ahavi the package which provides mDNS/DNS-SD and probably the most widely used on those systems. 

I and colleagues I work with are guilty of using bonjour interchangeably with specific parts, eg mDNS, depending on the context of what we’re dealing with because in the Apple world it’s all parts of bonjour and the context of conversations means it’s rarely ambiguous what we’re discussing.

To customise bonjour, such as adding Bluetooth LE discovery to the Apple TV in Airplay, they don’t need to customise the mDNS service, they can add a new supporting services within the bonjour branding or use IP over bluetooth. It is in Apple’s interest to keep their mDNS in line with standards as it is a part of Homekit and the emerging Matter/Thread standards.

For device & service discovery, Sonos could do whatever they wanted. Sonos is a closed system with APIs for integration. As long as the controller app and devices used the same discovery method it doesn’t matter if it is standards based or their own custom protocol.

While the control API currently on devices is used by 3rd parties and has similar endpoints to the cloud api, there is no guarantee it will stay that way. Sonos state that in their current developer docs in their architcture overview.

The Control API on the LAN is not available for wide release. We'll add a blog post when it is available.

https://docs.sonos.com/docs/connected-home-architecture

Why would Sonos adopt mDNS? I can think of a few reasons. It’s a published standard with specification, programming languages have libraries available and/or operating systems have packages to provide it. Longer term, future products and integration within the home. Sonos are a participant of the CSA (Connected Standards Alliance) who oversee the Matter standards amongst other IoT standards. While upnp/DLNA was focused on on the media side of upnp, CSA and Matter are aiming far bigger.

In the latest Q3 financial report, there is an overview of product portfolio and on that Audi is listed under the Automotive category.

Amazon have released a Fire TV which implements the Matter Video casting protocols and this year I believe work has started on creating an Audio casting protocol.

How successful the CSA and its members will be has yet to be seen, but the companies involved include everyone from chip designers and manufacturers through to end user consumer product companies.

I’ll try and keep this one short, my own troubleshooting process would probably be better as a post in it’s own right. If I included my current network diagram and wifi signal strengths I suspect you’d end up having a few nightmares 😂🤣

My understanding, like everyones (i think), is that in a normal world, volume is controller to individual speaker. In a group the controller calculates relative volumes or each device based on the group volume and sends it to each device. Playback is group leader is responsible to retrieve the stream and send it to other group members.

My troubleshooting method is based around taking steps to validate & confirm and try to avoid disappearing down rabbit holes. I also want to try and understand why it’s not working, so when I break it again in future I know the symptom and how to fix.
I’m sure other people will disagree or find holes, but over the years it has worked when I’ve messed my network up.

When I’ve previously had odd group/playback/discovery behaviour, usually self caused, at a high level it goes along the lines of:

1 - If I remember (which is rarely) check I haven’t plugged ethernet into a speaker that is meant to be wireless

2 - Use either an internet radio station or an mp3 album from my local library. For no other reason than they’re the usually the lowest bandwidth, easy to decode media. There’s no reason my flac library or hires streams should cause an issue, but I just make it as easy as possible.

2 - Open the controller app on two different devices. Tablet + phone or two tablets/phones doesn’t matter, as long as it’s two. Use one device to do things and make sure the second device reflects the changes immediately. Repeat the opposite way around.

Most of the time I find the controller apps on different devices connect to different speakers so the controller apps aren’t in sync. The idea is to confirm the speakers the two different controllers connect to have the same view of the Sonos world.
Not fool-proof but for me has often given a quick shortcut to my network is wonky and I have a rogue speaker or two.

3 - Controversial and pre-May unnecessary step. At the current time I have niggling doubts about the controller app and firmware behaviour. Too much keeps changing, regressing and people see odd behaviours between releases. I don’t like doubts when trying to confirm and validate things, so would download a 3rd party controller. Fully close the Sonos apps and see if the 3rd party app behaves the same.

The purpose is to use something external to current Sonos releases with the intention it will confirm behaviour of the Sonos App. which is grouped playback goes wonky because that should be player and not controller related, but at the moment who knows.

At this point one of two things happens. The 3rd party app confirms wonky group behaviour or the 3rd party app works without any issues. If it works without issues, try the Sonos app again and see if it works.

Assuming group playback is wonky regardless of the controller app

4 - Another controversial step, which could become difficult in the future, but my aim is to confirm it is my network causing an issue. Move my entire Sonos system (previously ~12 devices) to SonosNet. At this point I do usually check ethernet cables in all devices and may then realise what an idiot I’ve been. I also use either a device already in ethernet cable distance or the easiest to move to plug a cable into.

The aim is to remove the Sonos device network from my network. At this point low bandwidth media for testing can help as it reduces bandwidth requirements across the SonosNet network.

Usually it is this point where my playback issues go away and it confirms something in my LAN network setup is causing an issue. If it is still wonky on SonosNet, then the time consuming bits start. Does the order I add speakers into a group affect the wonky playback? While a pain due to socket locations and affecting other users in the house, does a power off/on clear it up? Maybe one speaker has got into a bad state and needs a reboot.

At this point self troubleshooting becomes a methodical time consuming process of working through one thing at a time. What have I added to my network between it working and not working? Do I remember what settings I changed somewhere? Is it just Sonos I see odd behaviour on or is it other devices as well? Has a neighbour started blasting out a wifi signal that interferes. More commonly for my setup, has that blasted weather radar scan my Wifi AP logs kicked me off my 5Ghz channel again? Some end devices don’t cleanly recover wifi channel changes and one day I’ll find a clean channel without it.

The above usually 3, but currently 4 steps, I can do very quickly as a sanity check before disappearing into the rabbit holes of other possibilities. As I know my typical network behaviour there are other things I can notice while doing the above, eg changes in switch/router led patterns, but this post has already ended up longer than expected.

Sonos Amp

• After last update the sub settings on Amp is gone again.
• When adjusting any of the EQ settings nothing actually changes in sound.
• Surround settings is not possible (no slider only info about reset)

• 

  On Era100 with Sub Mini no problem

Try all or some of the following:

- Go to Settings - Manage - System Updates - Check for Updates. Run any updates it shows.

-Log out of the app, then log back in again

-Delete the app and reinstall the app.

@vilden66,

Is it a Sonos Sub or a 3rd-party active Sub that has gone AWOL? Have you tried signing out/in on the Sonos App, just to see if that makes any difference to that Sonos room? Also maybe try ‘fully’ closing/re-opening the App too. 

3rd-party active sub and adjusting both EQ and Sub level on Amp worked before last update.

All except the last - it feels like my Sonos system has became lika an old Windows computer constantly updating fixes, patches and restarts, instead of the Mac feeling it used to be.

Maybe try power-cycling the devices (if not tried already) I don’t have the products to help test things here, but I’ve not (yet) seen anyone else mention this so far. Maybe someone with an Amp/3rd-party Sub will chime in here to say if they see a problem too. 

Thanks, now it works after deleting the app and reinstalling it again👍🏼