Chromatic Producer I

Is the Sonos ecology just too diverse now?

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
July 17, 2025
58 replies
809 views

So, many months on from that event and my Sonos system is still best described as “quirky and unreliable”.

I won’t produce yet another list of things that go wrong, there’s plenty on here already. But every time I open the app now I routinely expect, and get:

- players refusing to join an existing group “try again later”

- the app refusing to control an existing group

- music taking up to 30s to start playing across a group of players (I fondly remember the days when I heard the beginning of the first track in a playlist)

- etc.

All of these are resolved with patience and the digital equivalent of “jiggle it about and try again”. And I usually manage to have a working system that plays my music within about 5-10 minutes of frustration and annoyance at the beginning of every session of playing music. I’ve come to expect it now.

But I’m wondering if one of the problems is that I’ve now got over 20 different players, of pretty much every S2 compatible type, which spans several generations of technology. Am I really trying to get hardware to work together seamlessly that, frankly, just isn’t up to the job?

Now, I know there would be a huge backlash if Sonos came clean and said something like:

“Hands up. If you really want a responsive, controllable, reliable system then don’t mix products between generations. So, for example, never expect a Era 100 to play nicely with a first generation Sonos One, they just aren’t fully compatible”.

But, given that I have got used to there being some “problem” players in my setup and am almost coming to this conclusion myself, might it not be preferable to the current fiction where we’re told everything “should” or “will” work together and constantly being disappointed?

Sonos App

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N

nik9669a

Senior Virtuoso

I don’t have as many devices as you but have a mix of Gen1 and Gen2 Ones, an old Playbase, Era 300’s, Sub Gen1 and Sub Mini, and mine all play nicely.

Locking my wifi to a specific channel and setting ip addresses for my speakers helped overcome my reliability issues some years back, and since doing that have very rarely had any issues.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Aside from Sonos portables and components i have a fair selection from Play 1s, 3s and 5s to both Eras gen 1 Beams, Arc and Ultra.

You are going to hate hearing this...

And once I sorted out my networking issues (mutual interference, non-Sonos device interference, wifi settings incompatibilities and the hoary old IP Address assignment bug) my 20 Sonos device system is working great.

IanJShawAuthor

Chromatic Producer I

Thank you @nik9669a and @Stanley_4 . I really appreciate your comments.

I too have done my fair share of network tinkering over the years. My players all have assigned IP addresses and I’ve done my best to create the most Sonos-friendly electro-magnetic environment I can in my home.

However I’ve reached the limits of my technical capability and every new device I bring into my home seems to immediately want to connect to the internet to download an update (including, I kid you not, my clothes dryer and my fridge). Could there be network interference getting in the way of me having the Sonos experience I used to have? Absolutely. Do I know how to fix it? I do not.

Maybe it’s not my Sonos devices that have become incompatible, maybe it’s me! I’m no longer Sonos compatible!

I guess that leaves me asking for a different thing from Sonos then:

Either come clean and sell your products with a big fat health warning that says that unless you are prepared to learn how to create a Sonos-friendly network then they may not work

OR

Give me the tools, ideally built into your products, to clean my house to the point where your products will work.

Sound reasonable? Or am I just blaming a hi-fi manufacturer for not wanting to learn to properly operate the technology I chose to bring into my home?

Pools-3015

Prodigy I

I am in the same boat with a @nik9669a and @Stanley_4. I have a mixture of old and new speakers in my system and have not had any connection issues since assigning static IPs and configuring my UniFi network to work with Sonos since I have wired speakers: Play1, Connect S15, Arc Amp and Five. I also have a Play5 Gen 2 that is wireless.
The big app update last year only bothered me because of removed functionality.

There are many users willing to help here who may have similar networks as you do. You just need to ask.

Mr. T

I don’t have all the links readily available, but Sonos have in the past acknowledged the performance of older speakers.

For instance, here’s a quote from Tom Conrad’s interview with The Verge in May 2025.

There’s a category of issues that are particularly tied to the Play:1 and Play:3, which are 13- and 11-year-old architectures at this point. It’s sort of amazing to think that the iPhone in market when the Play:3 launched was the iPhone 4. Its halo feature was it had a selfie cam for the first time. So a lot has changed in tech since we shipped the Play:3, but fully a third of our households still have players from that generation that they love and they want to work, and we’re doing the hard work today of making sure that they have a great experience. This release that’s launching right now dramatically improves on the experience that they’ll have. In fact, quantitatively the experience is better than it was on those devices four years ago. So, far before the app itself. But we’ve got a bead on another set of enhancements that’s gonna take us even further over the spring and summer.

The monthly Office Hours on Reddit is another area where Sonos has publicly provided similar commentary on older speakers.

There was also a software update this month that specifically addressed the following:

Improved responsiveness during playback for Play:1 and Play:3.

The oldest speaker I have in my current setup is a One (Gen1) [technically I have Subs from 2014 and 2015 but I’m excluding them] and I haven’t really experienced any major issue with the app in relation to volume responsive, grouping, player discovery etc. My gripes on the new app are more around UI/UE.

I do have 6 older Play:1s and 3 Play:3s that I occasionally connect to the system just to update their firmware, which hasn’t given me any hassle and briefly playing to said speakers has worked successfully, but I haven’t used them for a prolonged period of time to determine if issues would surface from having them in the system permanently.

There are certainly things within your control that you can do to try and make sure your system as stable and reliable as possible, whilst Sonos continue to improve the performance of older speakers in the new app.

If you contacted Sonos Support they would be able to confirm if there was anything obvious relating to your network setup that was impacting on your Sonos system.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Once I exhausted my troubleshooting skills I waited for an issue to pop up, submitted a diagnostic and called Sonos support.

For me an actual call is far the best option.

C

craigski

Local Superstar

So, many months on from that event and my Sonos system is still best described as “quirky and unreliable”.

I won’t produce yet another list of things that go wrong, there’s plenty on here already. But every time I open the app now I routinely expect, and get:

- players refusing to join an existing group “try again later”

- the app refusing to control an existing group

- music taking up to 30s to start playing across a group of players (I fondly remember the days when I heard the beginning of the first track in a playlist)

- etc.

All of these are resolved with patience and the digital equivalent of “jiggle it about and try again”. And I usually manage to have a working system that plays my music within about 5-10 minutes of frustration and annoyance at the beginning of every session of playing music. I’ve come to expect it now.

But I’m wondering if one of the problems is that I’ve now got over 20 different players, of pretty much every S2 compatible type, which spans several generations of technology. Am I really trying to get hardware to work together seamlessly that, frankly, just isn’t up to the job?

If I was in your position, I would unplug your oldest players, Play:1 & Play:3’s, then test your system without them for a few days, that would prove if its the older players affecting performance/reliability of your system. You could then add them back in to the system gradually and monitor.

Also if grouping, always start from the newest player, and add older players, don’t start on an old player and add the new player(s).

I made a decision to replace my older speakers with new Era speakers beginning of year. Most have been sold on eBay for 50% of the cost price 10+ years ago. Good feedback received from buyers, so they must be working in the buyers environments OK.

G

Gaham

Headliner I

For me, my newer speakers cause more problems than my older ones. I find this strange.

I do think though that if Sonos are going to keep recommending reserving IP addresses they should implement the ability to configure a static IP address for each device. This would make so much more sense IMHO.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

Internally assigned static IP Addresses are often a nightmare for embedded devices. Trying to recover from a lost, wrong or outdated by LAN changes one is never pretty. Not so bad on systems you can log onto a console and fix the problem IP, but with no console, ouch.

The DHCP assigned Addresses do not have that problem as updates are made to the server on your router.

Not Sonos related but I still recall a bit of gear where you had dip switches to set the IP address, not only was that a massive pain but one co mon failure was the switches.

jgatie

For me, my newer speakers cause more problems than my older ones. I find this strange.

I do think though that if Sonos are going to keep recommending reserving IP addresses they should implement the ability to configure a static IP address for each device. This would make so much more sense IMHO.

Sonos has never explicitly recommended reserving IP addresses. That recommendation comes from users.

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