Apple Music Lossless Cutouts and Skips

Yes, many users have reported this problem with lossless playback. The ability to disable lossless music would be a nice feature.

One workaround is starting the Apple Music stream using a voice assistant. This will result in lossy playback and a more reliable stream.

Hi ​@SonosChicago 

Welcome back to the Sonos Community!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

I will definitely give the voice assistant route a try - thank you for the tip! 

And yes - definitely a feature request -- would love to see it implemented -- thanks for marking it as such. 

I'm having the same issue with Apple Music and lossless audio – random dropouts on both my wired and wireless speakers. So, disabling lossless isn't the answer, I think Sonos needs to investigate and fix this lossless playback problem. Lots of people are experiencing it, and it's definitely not a user network issue everytime.

Hi ​@kdth_jhspk69 

We will be happy to investigate for you - I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I will attempt to re-engage with technical support; however, this issue has persisted for several months without resolution.

This is a huge issue for me too - only with my Era 300. There’s an obvious and consistent drop out at the beginning of every song from Apple Music. It’s a 7 speaker system, and it appears most noticeably on the Era 300. I’ve tried forcing all the devices to the 5ghz band and it makes no difference. The speaker is within line of site, less than 3m away from my Unifi AP. I’ve tried using 2.4ghz only, I’ve tried 5ghz, I’ve switched off any roaming on the AP, I’ve given the Era 300 its own IP address, and nothing works.

I’ve been searching ‘Apple Music Sonos Drop Outs’ and ‘Apple Music lossless Era 300 constant drop outs, constant fades’ and I’ve ended up here.

I too have had this since (guess when!) the horror update in May last year. This NEVER happened before the last app update so I am pretty tired of seeing the endless ‘oh it’s your network’ posts.

My network prior to the horror update last year never ever did this - Apple Music could play for hours on my speakers with no drop outs like this. I can 100% reproduce this instantly by either playing a playlist or station from Apple Music either within the app, or using Airplay. I had thought it might stop if I streamed from Apple Music and not the Sonos app but whatever I do there is an obvious and noticeable audio ‘dip’ at the beginning of every song on the Era 300.

The others will do it randomly but the Era 300 is absolutely consistent in dropping out between songs when playing from Apple Music.

I wondered if there was something in the cross fade, but I have tried this with it on and off and it still drops out for a few seconds at the start of every song.

Same issues and posts on Reddit and elsewhere and all I can say is that I have plenty of bandwidth, this was never an issue before and it’s still 100% reproducible and unresolved ever since the release of the disastrous app ‘update’ 12 months ago. 

Never even an issue until then, but Apple Music and Sonos just will not play together with my system.

I followed all of Unifi’s advice, I’ve tried every config I can think of but somewhere in this new app there is a problem with Apple Music that remains unresolved after a year of so called ‘fixes.

For anyone searching this topic - please let me know if you resolved this. No other device on my Unifi network has a single issue. But Sonos and Apple Music is still glitchy and patchy with drop outs between songs.

OK for anyone searching Apple Music Sonos Drop Outs:

I just spent 51 minutes on a call doing every conceivable reset and setting tweak to my system that was asked of me, and eventually I was told and I quote:

“This is a known issue for at least 6 months, we don’t have a solution, can you use Amazon Music instead?”

No, not really as all my family’s music and playlists are in Apple Music, we don’t have Spotify and we don’t really use Amazon Music.

I tried every setting and every option on my router, and on my 2 x Unifi APs and the diagnostics confirmed there was nothing with the network and there was not an issue that I could fix or a setting that I could change that I hadn’t already tried over the last 12 months.

I feel like there needs to be a big bold message on the homepage of the Sonos website saying ‘we know there are drop out issues with Apple Music and Sonos’ because at least it would be clear they know and they’re being transparent with customers.

So much of my time wasted over the last 12 months (not to mention an hour on the phone in the middle of a work day) to hear there’s a known fault, there’s apparently NO timeline to fix it and there’s nothing I can do.

Can anyone at sonos confirm they know, they’re working on it and also address why their marketing and comms has not made this very clear somewhere on thier website.

As if people in the Apple ecosystem would buy a speaker with clearly known issues with their music provider of choice!

I appreciate the information you've provided.

It's reassuring to know that the issue has been acknowledged, confirming that it's not isolated to our local network. The intermittent nature of the problem, with some days working perfectly and others being unusable, has been my experience as well.

My concern is that if this issue has persisted for six months without resolution, how long will it take to be fixed? It seems contradictory to advertise Apple Music Lossless if the service isn't consistently reliable.

Any Apple Music inconsistency is also itself inconsistent - i.e. I have no such drop outs on any Apple Music lossless or Dolby Atmos tracks, across any of my ten speakers, and I suspect the majority of users don’t experience this issue. I can’t imagine how Sonos or Apple will ‘fix’ something that isn’t a universal issue. (I personally don’t believe your customer service agent’s assertion that this is an issue that has been known for six months.)