Sonos app 9.0 switches rooms and loses contact with Players


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Long time Sonos user. It used to be rock solid. Not any more. We have 4 Zone Players in the house (no PLAY speakers), and since the 9.0 app, it's practically unusable.

Our zones are Office, Shop, Living Room, and Pool. 95% of the time I am using it in Shop with an Amazon Fire tablet (new model). What happens is the controller app in the shop will randomly switch the room to Pool. Sometimes I can switch back to Shop, and other times Shop is completely missing, with the only room available to choose it Pool. Quitting the app doesn't work. I have to go into settings / advanced and do a reset controller. All the rooms come back and Shop is now selectable and works.

Other times, it switches to Pooll all by itself, and when I choose Shop, it says "Sonos Player not found" (or something similar). Again controller reset in the app fixes it. But most of the time, I can just go to Rooms, select Shop and start playing again.

The other issue/annoyance that has existed since V8 is that my Now Playing screen will drop down, and the tablet is left with whatever screen was up before I started playing. I can touch the arrow to raise up the Now Playing screen and it will just randomly drop down by itself. It never used to do that. It would always leave Now Playing up (even when music has been stopped) making it an easy one-touch to start playing again.

I have put in a brand new Fire HD8 tablet, loaded the latest Sonos app, but these issues remain. I have also tried connecting to different WIFI (a temp WIFI AP a few feet from the tablet in the Shop) and had even tried enabling the option to use SonosNet instead of WIFI, but no difference.

All my Zone Players are wired to ethernet. In the shop, the ZP:Connect is about 6 ft from the tablet.

I would like to submit diagnostics from this tablet. Please advise.

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47 replies

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I've found nmap to be fairly good at tracking IP addresses for this sort of thing, it shows the responses from the network, not cached data from a server or router.

code:
stan@dell-3620:~> nmap 172.16.1.1-254   
Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2018-08-06 13:37 MST

Nmap scan report for SonosZB-4C.home (172.16.1.110)
Host is up (0.00047s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
1443/tcp open ies-lm

Nmap scan report for SonosZP1-04.home (172.16.1.120)
Host is up (0.0011s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
1443/tcp open ies-lm

Nmap scan report for SonosZP3-6A.home (172.16.1.126)
Host is up (0.00050s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
1443/tcp open ies-lm

Nmap scan report for SonosZP5-E2.home (172.16.1.132)
Host is up (0.0017s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
1443/tcp open ies-lm
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Ok cheers. Some things to try. I'll feedback what happens for me
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Things to look for is always a fun game to play when presented with networking issues, some aren't obvious.

I'd start with the nmap above to get a list of what Sonos device is currently answering at each IP address.

Next I'd check the "About My Sonos System" on each of your controllers and see what IPs they are each showing.

Last look at your DHCP server's logs and see what activity they show for your Sonos gear's MAC addresses.
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Ok just had a wee flicker of the issue. Resumed a playlist on my Connect, then after 1 song, shown track stopped updating and when i try to skip or pause etc...I get "unable to play the seleceted....". When I did the About My Sonos System, my 2 Play5s gave full info, but the Connect only had the player name and Connect....nothing else
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My Connect is the player hardwired too, fixed IP. I also can't submit diagnistics when this happens. It's not always the Connect either
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Note regarding Duplicate IP addresses - you can look at your router and it will certainly show all your Sonos units and the IP addresses assigned to them. That doesn't mean that some other device on your network is not incorrectly using the IP address that Sonos is using. In most duplicate IP address issues it is not the Sonos unit at fault it is another device on your network that has been assigned a new IP address and is not using the new address but an old expired address (that Sonos is now being directed to use).

Best way to resolve is go through your router list of all Sonos devices and give them all new fixed addresses higher up in area your router never starts assigning to. On my router I have it set to assign IP addresses between 100 and 300. I have all of my Sonos units set for like 250, 251, 252, 253. This makes sure the Sonos units are on clean IP addresses that have never been used by other devices. Never an IP address issue since. You need to do this with every Sonos unit not just one to insure you have stability across your mesh.

Once you go through all your Sonos units and assign them new fixed numbers. Reboot them all and your troubles will be gone and you won't have any issues after updates with IP address conflicts.
On my router I have it set to assign IP addresses between 100 and 300.

300 - Really?

I do it slightly differently, having everything important, including NAS devices, Sonos kit and controllers and PCs/laptops either reserved or static under .100 - dynamic from 101 to 199 - 200 onwards reserved for future use, if needed.

Reboot them all and your troubles will be gone and you won't have any issues after updates with IP address conflicts.
Agreed... Which is why when, after doing all that, and there is still a problem with the Sonos system, it's unlikely to be a network issue.
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Well.....tried fixing then .240 upwards but issue still happened shirtly after. Now done full power down reset and a factory hard reset of my router.....so far so good, but it's early days as it's been ok for a few days after other attempts. Fingers crossed though so I can just get back to enjoying my Sonos
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Just to put "duplicate IP addresses" issue to rest (at least for me), I have gone into my DHCP server and setup reservations for all 4 of my Zone Players, and power cycled each of them, one at a time, and identified that each Zone Player has picked up their respective reserved IP address.

I have done a "reset controller" on the Fire Tablet in question, and it found (as it always does after a reset controller) all four Zone Players (which are, btw, 2 x CONNECT and 2 x ZP100).

One thing I have noticed is that when the Sonos App loses control (switches room or stops refreshing the screen with the current song info, or just can't control the ZP any longer) that it always can still see the ZP100's and just the CONNECTS are missing from the list.

In any case, time will tell (not too much time, so today I should know as my issue is VERY FREQUENT and DAILY or HOURLY).
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One day later (after setting static IP's to all ZP's), I checked in on the tablet controller this morning and saw it was still on SHOP where I left it (although the Now Playing screen had dropped down like it always does by itself) so I tried pressing play on the screen and it sat there and sat there and sat there...finally the app just spontaneously closed. Crashed I guess.

I did a "Submit Diagnostics". Since no Sonos staff is following this thread, I will get with their support directly to follow up on the diagnostics.

In summary, for me, duplicate or conflicting IP's is NOT what is causing all this craziness that makes using my Sonos frustrating.
Well, please come back and let us know what they discover the issue is, so that we can learn more information about the potentials.
Encountering the same problem for weeks now, will get in the loop with diagnostics and support now, too.

Following the system update which sent my five CR100 to the recycling bin, I replaced them with Android devices (Nexus 5) and right away started seeing random switches and the app hanging. CR200 controllers seem to be not affected. Several carefully sequenced reboots did not help to resolve the issue.
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I spend an hour with telephone support last week trying to work out what was going wrong. We eliminated the obvious causes and I've disabled my CR200 by taking the battery out to rule that out as a potential cause.

I'm still getting this problem on my iPad and on my Android phone. It's not just one particular zone where it's happening either. On Monday I was using the Android phone in the office to control the office zone. The wifi router is in that office less than 2 yards away. It randomly chose different zones to display when waking the phone out of sleep approximately half a dozen times during the working day.

So today I've removed my router and put the Virgin Superhub into router mode (it was previously in modem mode) and I'm now using that for wired and wireless connections - this would rule out a problem with my router.
The problem is still happening.

This afternoon the following happened:-

Using my iPad I set Radio 6 Music (Tunein) playing in the lounge.

I left it playing for at least 45 minutes.

Woke iPad out of sleep - the Sonos app was full screen and displaying the Kitchen zone and saying no music selected. The Lounge zone was still happily playing the radio station with no interruptions.

Diagnostic submitted - 131808964
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I've just had word that there appears to be a bug in the software that can cause this to happen.
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JohnG666, thanks for the update. It certainly seems the problem is with the Sonos app. I've spent the last 3 days working with Sonos support also. They said my logs pointed to a connection issue. They asked me to change the ethernet cable at the ZP, so I did that. No change. I put in a new ethernet switch where the affected ZP is, but no change. Since I switched CONNECT units a couple weeks ago, and the problem stayed with the room, I knew it wasn't a defective ZP.

Day before yesterday, I was thinking what other device could I use as a controller, and remembered I had a couple-year-old LG Android tablet in the drawer. Pulled it out, charged it, and turned it on and brought it up to date. Updated SONOS app to the current version. Interestingly, it works flawlessly. So far (granted it's only been two days), it does not lose control, freeze, switch rooms, crash, or fail to update the current song on the Now Playing screen. It works normally. My issue with the Now Playing screen dropping down randomly (I leave it on Now Playing, but i'll come back and it's dropped down as though I've touched the "drop down" arrow on the upper left) is MUCH BETTER. It's only done it once.

Reading the recent reviews on the Google Play Store, it's obvious there is an issue with this app, yet Sonos Support acts like they've never heard of the issue before. Instead of saying they're aware of the issue, they make people waste time trying all sorts of unrelated things. Not cool.

In any case, for now, at least I'm working. Not sure why this tablet is working, when plenty of other people with Android are having the same problem, and my Fire Tablets run the same Android version of the Sonos App.

Still lots of questions with no answers. Could you elaborate on what "bug" is in the software and what you heard?
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It wasn’t specified what the bug was but it said that it was a software issue that was causing my problems of the app keep changing rooms etc. I’d tried all sorts - I’m glad I didn’t have to go to the expense of getting a new router to try and rule my router out of the equation- I would have been even more annoyed then. I have wasted many hours of my time though having to prove it’s nothing to do with my hardware.
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Well, it was too good to be true. I did get to enjoy a few days of trouble-free SONOS (the way it used to be), but alas, my android tablet has started doing the same things the Fire Tablet did. Changing rooms, losing control of the ZP, album info in the Now Playing screen getting stuck while the music queue plays on, etc.

Same crap. And, of course, Sonos closed the ticket I had open.

I'll just wait for the updated app. With any luck they'll have figured it out. (who am i kidding!)
I'm pretty sure you can just contact Sonos and ask them to reopen the ticket.
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I'm pretty sure you can just contact Sonos and ask them to reopen the ticket.

Having read through some of the many recent negative reviews of the Sonos app on the Play Store, most of which describe similar issues to mine, I've come to the conclusion that it's not me, it's them. And I think they know it's them, but they persist in wasting my time trying all sorts of things that they know aren't going to fix it. Now they want to call me and take control of my computer.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'll wait until the next revision is released. It's been a while since there was an update, so it should be soon.
My apologies for wasting your time.
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Well, I've left this a while to make sure I wasn't getting what was happening before when I thought the problem was fixed then re-appeared after a few days!

So basically done everything with the network, even changed my hub to another unit (same type), replaced switches and cables, done full reset on Sonos (careful everything goes, your favorites, music library, the lot - make sure you know your settings / file paths etc. if you do this. I was pre-warned so it was cool) - Anyway in the end none of this made any difference the problem came back after several hours.

Got really miffed again so deleted the Sonos app from all devices in the house, which consisted of Android and Apple devices. Then re-installed the app on only 1no device - Android phone and guess what it's been perfect since never missed a beat (litterally). Couple of times I've though "here we go" but it's just the app being a bit slow at times.

Not sure if there was some kind of bug on one device or cross platforms, but my issue has gone!!

I will add the app back onto other devices in time and see what happens - hopefully nothing will and I can get back to loving my Sonos.

I did in the past think the issue started when a certain device came home but couldn't pin-point it.
There is almost never a reason to do a factory reset on a single Sonos unit, never mind your entire system, thus trashing all settings and playlists.