Here's the deal, invest in your software development because it blows

With SONOS everything involves the network. The controllers don’t  play anything. You can think of the controllers as complex remote controls. All commands and music play are done through the players. SONOS Playlists, the music library index, music service registrations, and the Queue are maintained in the players. A copy of this data is stored in each player, a controller does not store anything critical. The controllers must access this data over the network. A controller will “Associate” with a player and fetch its data through this player. The Associated player is not necessarily playing any music. Once music play is started, you could uninstall the controllers and the music will continue. In the case of music stored on a computer, a controller will initiate play through a player and the player will fetch data directly from the computer. Obviously, in this case the computer must stay awake while SONOS needs the music data, but the controller could be shut down.

If you pair players, the left player will become the pair’s “Coordinator”. All traffic for the pair is initiated by the Coordinator. If Rooms are Grouped, the first player in the Group is the Group’s Coordinator. All Group traffic passes through the Group Coordinator.

As you can see a simple request to play a track in a Group of Rooms generates a blizzard of local network traffic. This is very different from displaying a web page or fetching and sending email. 

If the software were fundamentally flawed then everyone would be having problems. So how come I have been using my Sonos system for 12 years without pronlems?

IT'S YOUR NETWORK 

As long as you remain in denial about this you will not resolve your problems.

Ok. Then why has Sonos tech support repeatedly failed to fix it? And why does streaming work pretty reliably, but playing music from my computer does not?

There once was an actual problem with the software of a single Sonos unit, the Playbar.  The main thread on that problem hit 100 pages, which is over 2500 posts, and there were dozens of other smaller threads on the very same problem.  This thread hasn't even reached a whole page. 

In other words, IT'S YOUR NETWORK. Specifically, it sounds like duplicate IP addresses.  These often show up after an update or power outage because a reboot requires the device to request a new IP, and the router, having lost track of current IP assignments, issues a new IP that is in use by another device.  To cure this, do the following:

Reboot/power cycle your devices in the following order:

Modem
Router
Switches or hubs
Wired Sonos units
Wireless Sonos units
Computers/printers
Wireless devices - phones/tablets etc.

Allow each device to come back up before proceeding to the next.  Note you can prevent this from happening again by reserving IP addresses for your Sonos devices in your router setup.  See your router manual for instructions.

Also - power them all down first; then restart in the order @jgatie suggests. Make sure wifi is fully running before restarting any Sonos devices. 

And anyone that expects a Customer Service department paid at likely minimum wage, or close to it, to be experts in tech is deluding themselves. They’ll all be trained based on scripts / scenarios, some will understand better than others, but it can’t be consistent. Nor can any tech company afford to man their CS department with engineers. 

@Airgetlam is absolutely correct. The most successful tech company on the planet (at least by revenue) has Support Advisors literally plucked off the street. OK...not literally, but the qualifications only require a high school diploma.

Ironically, the people who call in for assistance think they’re talking to a tech guru when in actuality the person on the other end is following a script/scenario based upon “if this...then that”. Some are more adept than others.

IMO the people who participate in this community (on a regular basis) have more expert knowledge than the majority of so-called “tech support” personnel. The only compensation given is a “Like” or “Best Answer” accolade.

So count your Apples and be thankful for the free assistance given in this community. 🤣

When SONOS was very young, there essentially was no customer service department and the engineers would be taking calls. As product deployment expanded, an official support group was established and the job offers listed impressive requirements. Evidently, first line support was mostly offshored.

I know of another company that started requiring the design engineers to serve a stint on the support desk and repair departments immediately after a new product was released. Documentation and product serviceability suddenly improved dramatically.

How is your computer connected to your network?

In what format are your local music files?

What is your network setup?  Any extenders / access points?  Any wired Sonos device(s)?

S1 or S2?

By the way, thank you for providing evidence that the Sonos software is robust.  99.9% of what it does is identical whether streaming from the internet or from a local drive, and you say it is solid for the former.  The difference lies in how the music data gets from the source to the router.  Streaming from the Internet does not use your network for that. Playing from a local drive does. Go figure.

I always figured the software was an afterthought. I mean you’ve already bought the hardware. When it works it violates the whole “don’t make me think” principle. But it is very unstable. The support on the web site is very obvious stuff… yes I’ve checked the wifi signal. I did submit diagnostic info but, as somebody mentioned above, it’s just read by a call center person following a script. At least, nothing about the interaction ran contrary to my impression.

This sounds pedantic, but when you make software there’s something called “dogfooding”. Basically do you use the thing you’re actually making. Every time a tech savvy teenager in my house asks for my phone to put music on and just gets a spinner, it’s clear that nobody at Sonos tries this.

It’s too bad because once you have a few of these things you’re more or less locked in. But making software useable is hard, and this is clearly orchestrated by somebody who is only looking at what bullet points it can claim on a box.