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cannot set amp as surround for arc on wifi. can amp be used as surrounds when amp and arc are wifi ?

  • 28 August 2021
  • 6 replies
  • 1199 views
B

I have an arc, with a sub bonded. Works fine via WiFi.  I added an Amp, also on WiFi and tried to bond it as surrounds to the arc via WiFi. It would not work after many attempts to bind as surrounds.

The amp is less than 8 feet away from the arc.  (Note that I had two OneSL used as surrounds via WiFi with the arc and it worked fine  but I need to use the in ceiling speakers  )

Then I  wired the amp, not the arc. I was able to get it to bond, with a warning that the arc should also be wired, but I ignored it and it successfully bonded. However there seemed to be little to no sound coming from the amp speakers. (This might be a bug I imagine - or the warning is really an error outright that should stop the binding. )

So I then wired the arc and the sub too, then rebonded the amp as a surround. Now all is working , but everything is wired ( I disabled WiFi on amp, sub and arc  after it all worked wired to try to avoid stp problems in my network which is Ubiquiti ). 

I would really prefer not to have this wired. It’s very inconvenient,

So : should the arc and amp be able to bond via WiFi ? I realize they may need to still use the sonosnet for the sound distribution… but that should be fine based on how far they are apart. 

if they should work via WiFi, what should I do differently? Note I did it all in the correct order ( multiple times ) and set the amp up first then bonded it, and my home WiFi is excellent. 

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Best answer by Corry P 1 September 2021, 14:48

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6 replies

G
Userlevel 7

Have you tried it with just the Arc wired to the router with WiFi enabled on all speakers?

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
buzz

I wish that we could move away from the idea that equates “wireless” with “WiFi”. Keep the wireless enabled on your SONOS units. ARC prefers to use a private 5GHz link with the surrounds and SUB.

If you are using Ubiquiti managed switches and have more than one SONOS component wired to the network, make sure that the switches are set for STP, not RSTP (the default).

B

Yes - understand the stp issue stuff. Turning off the wireless was a precaution and I certainly can reconfigure the rstp. But it worked the same either way. I think that the use of sonosnet  or not isn’t the issue. At least not right now. Since I had everything fairly vanilla. Mostly plug it in   Connect to Wi-Fi and pair the sub and surrounds. Didn’t work with Amp.  Did with One SL.
 

can an amp be surrounds with an arc when everything is wireless?  That didn’t work. 

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @BlueSunset 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Yes, the Amp can operate as surrounds with an Arc (or any other HT Sonos products) while on WiFi.

I presume your issues are to do with Ubiquiti, but not necessarily STP settings. Please try the following:

 

  • Log into the UniFi controller.
  • In the Settings tab, click Wireless Networks.
  • Click Edit next to the network SSID.
  • Expand Advanced Options.
  • Uncheck Block LAN to WLAN Multicast and Broadcast Data.
  • In the Settings tab, click Sites.
  • Disable Auto-Optimize Network.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
B

That’s excellent. You are right - the Auto optimize setting was enabled.  ( not my choice. Thanks ubiquity 😏 ) 

I will try it out. 
 

any idea about the other issue I found when trying various troubleshooting? — needing the arc and the amp to both be wired if one (the amp) was ? It allowed the bonding with a warning but the sound of the amp was not working. 
 

many thanks ! Will let you know if it works!

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @BlueSunset 

any idea about the other issue I found when trying various troubleshooting? — needing the arc and the amp to both be wired if one (the amp) was ? It allowed the bonding with a warning but the sound of the amp was not working. 

The Amp would normally connect directly to the Arc via a dedicated 5GHz link, not to the router. When the Amp is connected to ethernet, that is not possible, therefore we must get the Arc to feed the surround playback data to the network instead, and we do that by also wiring the Arc to ethernet. So, if the Amp is wired, the Arc needs to be too.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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