Prodigy II

Investigating my wonky groups

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After deciding to sacrifice my unused Sonos speakers to the upgrade gods, it didn't take long to run into an issue.

Playing back music, I had repeatable on demand issues

If a group contained 4 or more devices, there is a delay of up to 12 seconds or music dropping in and out during the first 12 seconds on all devices except the group controller when starting music or changing tracks. By devices that includes a sub and/or stereo pairs, not 4 sonos rooms.
Changing group members in the app gets slow after the above and playing music. Track progress starts getting jumpy, cloud api calls take longer.

I have spent some time investigating and think I know what is causing my speakers to have issues while grouped, which also introduces random app behaviour, cannot contact messages, slow responding. More often than not, once the controller gets into a state it doesn't recover and requires fully closing and reopening to return to normal.

Why I didn’t instantly assuming it was my network

For the past 3 years my Sonos has been completely trouble free, unless I was fiddling in my network settings and broke something myself. I have visibility on data about most parts of my network, so it’s usually obvious when something is wonky

Changes of note during past year

I no longer have my Sonos amps, port or one of the subs - the lack of port may have contributed
I have added some Yamaha gear which uses multicast, including from my HT AVR → Sub, so it is obvious when multicast is playing up because the avr and sub separate.
I replaced my noisy all singing all dancing enterprise managed POE switches for more suitable, fanless managed SMB switches about a year ago. Far less settings to fiddle and break things with 😊
Following the upgrade was the first time I added a wifi network for a while. I’ve been on SonosNet for over a year. Maybe time to blame the missing port again 😁

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Fatima

Lyricist II

After deciding to sacrifice my unused Sonos speakers to the upgrade gods, it didn't take long to run into an issue.

Playing back music, I had repeatable on demand issues

If a group contained 4 or more devices, there is a delay of up to 12 seconds or music dropping in and out during the first 12 seconds on all devices except the group controller when starting music or changing tracks. By devices that includes a sub and/or stereo pairs, not 4 sonos rooms.
Changing group members in the app gets slow after the above and playing music. Track progress starts getting jumpy, cloud api calls take longer.

I have spent some time investigating and think I know what is causing my speakers to have issues while grouped, which also introduces random app behaviour, cannot contact messages, slow responding. More often than not, once the controller gets into a state it doesn't recover and requires fully closing and reopening to return to normal.

Why I didn’t instantly assuming it was my network

For the past 3 years my Sonos has been completely trouble free, unless I was fiddling in my network settings and broke something myself. I have visibility on data about most parts of my network, so it’s usually obvious when something is wonky

Changes of note during past year

I no longer have my Sonos amps, port or one of the subs - the lack of port may have contributed
I have added some Yamaha gear which uses multicast, including from my HT AVR → Sub, so it is obvious when multicast is playing up because the avr and sub separate.
I replaced my noisy all singing all dancing enterprise managed POE switches for more suitable, fanless managed SMB switches about a year ago. Far less settings to fiddle and break things with 😊
Following the upgrade was the first time I added a wifi network for a while. I’ve been on SonosNet for over a year. Maybe time to blame the missing port again 😁

thank for sharing

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

The group coordinator the needs to retrieve the file/stream and send to the other devices to play. The group coordinator isn’t streaming the source at playback speed it is retrieving much faster into a local buffer, while also trying to send data to the group members, who will most likely also have a buffer to fill.

Not quite, the stream is unicast to the coordinator, the other players in group on same AP channel will listen in in promiscuous mode, so there is extremely little increase in bandwidth, as the other group players are receiving the same packet. It is only sent to other players that are not on same AP or channel.

If you had say 6 players all connected to a single AP using 2.4Ghz, streaming Apple Music lossless 48/24, you would see a single ~3Mb/s flow to the coordinator.

Thanks for that makes a lot of sense than firing lots of streams around if they can just grab it as it comes in. It also means it was coincidence of bandwidth usage with the different formats.

Curious that Apple only send ~3Mb/s which is more than enough rather than Qobuz pushing at it’s higher rate.

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

Not all devices are created equal. If you have a mix of old and new and an old one is the group controller, it's going having a touch time with lossless and higher content. If your wifi design (quite possibly antenna) causes lower than max connection rates, then again the group controller will have a hard time.

An older device wont support higher bit rates from Apple Music

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/services/apple-music

Most Sonos products can stream lossless audio from Apple Music. However, some older products don’t support the required streaming protocol (HLSv7) and will stream audio at a lower quality. The following Sonos products won’t stream lossless audio from Apple Music:

Connect (Gen 1)

Connect:Amp

Play:1

Play:3

Playbar

Playbase

Sub (Gen 1)

If you recall when some of those products were released, it was around the same time as Apple iPhone 5s? Apple doesn’t support lossless on an iPhone 5s 😀

If you stream lossless to a group, then add an older product, it will downgrade the stream, you may hear a pause in the transition.

I don’t get many issues streaming using the Sonos Apple Music service, even with multiple streams. I have old and new products, when the stream changes due to adding an older product, I will get a short pause. Once you understand this, you can work around it.

Indeed, although my zp80 & 2 x zp100 when I first used Sonos are long gone. The zp80 and one of the zp100s died a slow hardware failure. The remaining one while still showing signs of life didn’t get used again.

The products I’m using are

2 x Symfonisk bookshelf gen 1
1 x Symfonisk bookshelf gen 2
3 x Symfonisk lamp gen 1
1 x Sonos Sub Mini

Of the above, the 2 x bookshelf gen 1 + sub were a stereo pair with sub. Regular usage pattern had them grouped with the bookshelf gen 2. My Qobuz account was setup for 24/48 for Sonos devices and never had an issue.

With a stereo + sub setup it is very noticeable when the right channel disappears even if the sub isn’t really contributing. It was used daily as they were on my desk working from home and used daily. Now just the bookshelf + sub setup becomes unstable changing streams, which previously never happened.

While the Symfonisk’s gen 1 were released 2019, that doesn’t provide a reflection of the board inside. Teardowns of both the bookshelf and lamp that I’ve seen suggest it is the same board that was in the Play One with the NXT chip. The chip itself is rev 4 of a system on a chip originally released in 2015.

With the pause in transition, does that occur on all speakers in the group? The behaviour exhibited with mine is that the group controller (receiving the stream) plays continuously and it is the group members or paired speaker+sub that are disrupted.

I don’t have an apple music subscription, although I could enable the trial they keep pushing 😁

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craigski

Local Superstar

With the pause in transition, does that occur on all speakers in the group? The behaviour exhibited with mine is that the group controller (receiving the stream) plays continuously and it is the group members or paired speaker+sub that are disrupted.

Pause is to all speakers, as they are grouped and ‘listening’ to same stream. I know what speakers can support lossless, so I know if I add an older speaker to higher bit rate 48/24 stream, I may get a slight pause as it reconfigures to lower bit rate.

In an optimum configuration on your wireless network all grouped Sonos devices on same channel and AP, they will listen in to the unicast stream to the coordinator, ie in promiscuous mode. eg 4 Sonos devices on single channel on single AP, will be 3Mbs total bandwidth for lossless 48/24 stream on the AP, as its only one stream to a single IP address.

If you have multiple AP and/or additional 5Ghz etc, with more Sonos devices, then that is additional bandwidth to those devices.

I don’t have an apple music subscription, although I could enable the trial they keep pushing 😁

If you are used to the new Sonos App UI, the Apple Music UI will be familiar/intuitive, and vis versa 😀

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

I haven’t had much time for testing anything further this week but will be able to sit down properly this weekend and spend time looking further into it.

At the moment there are two ways to bring instability to my setup.

Increase the complexity of the audio, ie old 128Kbps mp3 → 24/48 streams either pushed from Qobuz or read from my NAS. I have the downloaded version of Jessie Ware’s album on my NAS along with the stereo audio tracks from my own concert DVDs. With Qobuz I can set the maximum format of the stream they send as 330Kbps mp3, 16/44.1 CD or 24/48
Increase the size of the group.

The bookshelf + sub setup as a stereo pair + sub had been faultless prior to upgrading and the content I’m playing is the same as before the upgrade.

The lamps have been mainly single playback background music, but I did find time to quickly turn 2 into a stereo pair + sub and they played back without disruption the same things the bookshelf + sub struggled with.

My plan for the weekend it to completely remove the speakers from my main network into their own network to remove any potential outside interference from the network they had always worked on.

Best case they just work as before and the update + my existing network don’t work well together anymore.

Worst case they exhibit the same behaviour

I am certain it isn’t controller/app related because the same behaviour occurs regardless of whether I use the Sonos App, Sonos Web player, SonoPad or the basic play/pause, next/previous controls of the Ikea Homesmart app.

At idle there are no issues with discovery, creating/disbanding stereo pairs, moving the sub around or the Sonos App, SonoPad or the Ikea Homesmart App reflecting those changes as they occur.

An brief observation on SonoPad, was that the track time progress would stop and with a larger group the playback queue would disappear until playback stabilised as though it couldn’t retrieve it from the coordinator. If I change tracks while the group is unstable, then occasionally group members would play part of the previous track before trying to switch streams as though the control messages were delayed.

Completely isolated I should also be able to bandwidth limit the rate of the Qobuz stream, which is currently far higher than needed just to stream 24/48.

I have no idea what the cpu demands are within the speakers, but as the stream format complexity increases, the rate of network traffic increases, the group gets larger, the cpu has more to deal. With the music library on my NAS, rather than having to deal with whatever Qobuz is pushing, it changes to the speaker pulling what it needs, so maybe that will have an influence.

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

The bookshelf + sub setup as a stereo pair + sub had been faultless prior to upgrading and the content I’m playing is the same as before the upgrade.

The lamps have been mainly single playback background music, but I did find time to quickly turn 2 into a stereo pair + sub and they played back without disruption the same things the bookshelf + sub struggled with.

A brief observation on SonoPad, was that the track time progress would stop and with a larger group the playback queue would disappear until playback stabilised as though it couldn’t retrieve it. If I change tracks while the group is unstable, then occasionally group members would play part of the previous track before trying to switch streams as though processing the control messages was delayed.

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craigski

Local Superstar

Curious that Apple only send ~3Mb/s which is more than enough rather than Qobuz pushing at it’s higher rate.

48kHz x 24 bits x 2 channels = 2.3Mb/s

Sprinkle a little overhead in the mix, rounded up its around ~3Mb/s

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craigski

Local Superstar

A brief observation on SonoPad, was that the track time progress would stop and with a larger group the playback queue would disappear until playback stabilised as though it couldn’t retrieve it. If I change tracks while the group is unstable, then occasionally group members would play part of the previous track before trying to switch streams as though processing the control messages was delayed.

I have no issues with groups, apart from the pause when adding older products to a higher bit rate stream.

In the interest of science, to stress even more, I tried a non typical use case. I started a separate Apple Music stream to separate Rooms, 9 independent Apple Music 48/24 streams and an additional 5 independent Apple Music standard streams to older devices (P1s from 2013), including 2 P1s paired, I had no issues with skipping or control of the rooms using Sonos iOS App on iPhone (not SonoPad) during the test of about 5 minutes.

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

Maybe there's going to be a price to pay for the conscious lack of hardware progression prior to the last generation or two.

It’s a key thing to understand though… if that hardware is on the cusp of not being able to support the new ecosystem, and causes instability, then to be honest it strengthens the calls for the old S2 app to come back, and the new one be rebranded as S3, dropping support for that hardware.

Now I’m sure that would bring about further consternation and hand wringing, but at least people could get back to a working setup without then needing to go on an upgrade spree.

Maybe some of the apologists would change tack! 😆

@Ian_S it is certainly something useful to try to understand. While it is easy to say flac, for example, is a low overhead to decode, single digit Mbps network streams are nothing, dsp processing isn’t a huge overhead, it is not so easy for people to understand how much the multiple things going on inside an embedded device with a lower power system on a chip can be impacted.

Like the various why no gigabit conversations that go across many devices, not even Sonos specific, they rarely consider if the CPU needing to process the network traffic can cope with so much data, nevermind if the device itself ever needs that much bandwidth

@133133 People are people. Everyone has different experiences and backgrounds so has different views.

My intent with this thread is investigate into why my previously stable system is now unstable playing back the same music. Will I make mistakes or incorrect assumptions, sure. I will then adjust how I approach and investigate accordingly.

I chose to run on SonosNet previously because it kept the music playback traffic away from my AP, I have empty 2.4Ghz channels where I live and my WiFi AP has other demanding tasks to do. While there is a move away from SonosNet with new products removing all support, there is no obvious reason from the outside that my SonosNet setup which hasn’t given me any issues should become unstable to the point it can’t handle 3-4 speakers in a group or 2.1 setup.

It will play 1, 2 or 3 groups 2 speakers without issues, but then I run out of speakers. Add an extra speaker to a group to make 3 or 4 any things go wonky.

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sighAuthor

Prodigy II

A brief observation on SonoPad, was that the track time progress would stop and with a larger group the playback queue would disappear until playback stabilised as though it couldn’t retrieve it. If I change tracks while the group is unstable, then occasionally group members would play part of the previous track before trying to switch streams as though processing the control messages was delayed.

I have no issues with groups, apart from the pause when adding older products to a higher bit rate stream.

In the interest of science, to stress even more, I tried a non typical use case. I started a separate Apple Music stream to separate Rooms, 9 independent Apple Music 48/24 streams and an additional 5 independent Apple Music standard streams to older devices (P1s from 2013), including 2 P1s paired, I had no issues with skipping or control of the rooms using Sonos iOS App on iPhone (not SonoPad) during the test of about 5 minutes.

Interesting, maybe Qobuz should start pushing a lower rate rather than the far higher 12-15Mbps that I have previously seen coming down.

Within the first 12 seconds of playing or changing streams, it is only the additional speakers which aren’t receiving the unicast stream which are disrupted. Playing to pairs or individual hasn’t been an issue, but with only 6 + sub I soon run out of speakers to pair up 😂

Think I need to activate the Apple trial this weekend, maybe Tidal and/or Amazon as well.

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