Issue with Play:1's and Amazon Music Ultra HD

If there were a general issue with Sonos playing Amazon HD there would be far more posts on here about the issue.  Even if it were just affecting Play:1s I suspect there would be many more posts, but obviously I can't be sure of that.

But maybe the relatively small amount of memory in a Play:1, especially early ones, is an additional factor in the 'failure'.  That is highly speculative and may not make technical sense!

I contacted support and subsequently tested a number of configurations, first with Wifi and then with SonosNet (wired a single Play 1 closer to my switch; pair in another room).  Sent them diagnostics for seven and a summary of outcomes for each.

On either Wifi or SonosNet, any single Play 1 played HD cleanly.  Paired or grouped, they chopped. (Sorry, my mistake above when I said group was “fine”).  So my naïve conclusion was: it must be a problem with speaker to speaker communication. 

Then I found an odd case: if I grouped my pair with the wired speaker (using it as the controller), all sounded good. No chop.  Tried the reverse: grouping the wired speaker with the pair as controller. That was horrible, worse than the pair alone.

Support looked at the diagnostics (some, at least), and saw “wifi congestion, latency, and wireless interference”.  Suggested I move to SonosNet Channel 1 to avoid contention with my Nest mesh using 6 and 11. No improvement.  Rebooted the pair for good measure. Still no improvement.  At their request, I then wired the left speaker of my pair (had a long enough cable handy).  HD played fine on the pair with this as well. 

It’s not convenient to keep the wire attached to the pair so for now I’ll stick with my workaround, keep SonosNet and use the wired single to control the pair when necessary.  So a partial resolution.  Price of older hardware, I guess :)

For the record,  I thought the Sonos support person on chat was extremely competent.  I was impressed.

Amazon automatically upgraded my subscription to Amazon Music HD today. So now I’m having this same issue with my Play:1 speakers and Ultra HD music. I have two stereo pairs (4 speakers total) in adjacent rooms.

I chatted about this issue with Amazon and Sonos, but there was no solution. Amazon couldn’t remove HD from my subscription. Sonos reviewed my diagnostics but couldn’t identify the issue.

I took Scott C’s suggestion above and hardwired each of my stereo pairs to my router. Now I’m streaming Ultra HD just fine. I have one ethernet cable for the pair in the kitchen. And another ethernet cable for the pair in the family room.

The problem persists if I hardwire only one speaker to create a SonosNet for all 4 speakers.

Has anyone tried using a Sonos Boost to create a SonosNet for al speakers and seeing if that solves this issue?

Thanks!

I’ve a set of paired Play 3’s, a Play 3, Play 1 and Connect. Since Amazon started streaming the Ultra HD version of any track (if they have it), the Play 3’’s (paired or otherwise) and Play 1 are choppy and unlistenable. The Connect which plays through an Arcam DAC, streams HD and Ultra HD fine. 

I reckon this is the reason:  

This article:    https://www.techhive.com/article/3632860/sonos-speakers-to-support-amazon-music-hd.html  says that the (my!) Play 1’s and 3’s don’t support Ultra HD, although they do support HD. The Connect still works because it can play a 24 bit stream (ie Ultra |HD), via my external DAC, unlike the Play 1 and 3’s which can only play 16 bit streams.

So for those of us with not new components, unless Amazon revert to just streaming HD files and Ultra HD only as an option (or Sonos can come up with a solution), the only choice seems to be to go to a standard/lower quality Amazon stream or look for another streaming service which streams in 16 bit quality.

I have since received my fives (setup as a stereo pair) and there is no issue with them. I split up the stereo pair of Play 1’s, one in each of my daughters rooms and they are now working fine as single speakers playing any track from Amazon Music (UHD, HD, etc). Seems like my issue was having them set up as a stereo pair.

I’m no longer having any problems with my Play:1 speakers since the 13.3.3 version update.  I have four Play:1 speakers grouped (two stereo pairs) and playing the same Ultra HD music over WiFi. Music no longer skips. 

Something’s happened! Amazon HD is now playing successfully on my Play 1 and 3’s. I’ve not changed any configuration. Either Sonos has done an update on the speakers (can’t find any mention, so unlikely) or Amazon has reverted to a default of streaming tracks in HD. Presumably there’s some way of streaming a UHD version if it’s available and your equipment is able to play it. Again, can’t find any info on this change. But hey, it’s all working again!