Sonos Beam and 2 x Sonos Play:1’s failing to create surround sound

I am having the same problem, everything was working with surround at first and then I disconnected the surround connection to name each of the Play:1's to a different room. Now they will not connect back to the beam as surround speakers. Troubleshooting and reseting the Play:1's has not worked. Nothing has worked and this is very frustrating.....

That's basically my problem. I noted that when I Remove Surrounds for another try, they are removed and the app shows this note: "When you remove a surround speaker that previously used in another room, it becomes a standalone player with its original name and any alarms will be restored."
First, what exactly is a Play:1 name, and what is an alarm?
And another note says: "When you remove a surround speaker that was not previously in another room, it will become an unused player, and can be set up from the Rooms menu."
I should think that resetting the player would place it in the second quoted paragraph, but apparently it doesn't. Is that the problem?

Sonos support got back to me via twitter. I ended up having to go into my router settings and removing the 3 sonos devices from the DHCP Reservation list. Once I did that I tried pairing the play:1's with the beam for surround and everything worked perfectly!

Same for me. I didn’t use it, so I just disabled DHCP on my modem and everything’s running smoothly.

My problem persists, whatever I try. From the last two replies, I suspect it lies in the Charter/Spectrum wireless system installed in our building. I don't have a router; I have access (via charter.guestinternet.com) to a table that contains the MAC addresses for all of my current wireless devices. I can add a device (such as printers or speakers) by adding their MAC address to the table. So I started my Sonos install by adding the addresses of the Beam and two Play:1 speakers.

Please, any comments?

Is there any wired connection at all? Part of my solution was contingent on removing wireless info so that my system is managed through a Play:1 acting as a Sonos Bridge. I’m experiencing a lot less latency in the app and with the speakers too.

Similar experience here, go round it by factory resetting the surrounds and the sub. Added the surrounds first then the sub.

Even though my system is a ‘Boost’ set up I found that connecting the App to the router WiFi rather than my AirPorts seemed to give a better connection experience.

When I go my Beam I had to connect it over Ethernet to add it to my system, it’s been perfect since the initial connection issues.

Same stuff, this only works for me when I connect one of the speakers using an ethernet cable. This way the speakers connect to eachother using Sonosnet (closed wifi network only for your Sonos devices).

I did some troubleshooting and called support. We basically found that the Sonos Beam sends a DHCP request for the Surround/Subwoofer using the mac-address of the Beam itself. This causes the DHCP server to reply with the info: You already have an IP, you will not get another one.

I think the setup process should be changed, because no "normal" DHCP server will let this system work.

Mine connects fine and sets up fine, just NO sound bloody comes out of the two LS + RS Sonos Play 1 Speakers. What the hell?
They connect through a Sonos Boost and were originally on their own as speakers. I don't get it???

Mine connects fine and sets up fine, just NO sound bloody comes out of the two LS + RS Sonos Play 1 Speakers. What the hell?
They connect through a Sonos Boost and were originally on their own as speakers. I don't get it???

Hi there,

You can test things out by playing some music from an online source, or your own music library. The rear speakers by default are set to low volume for music, but you can head into the settings menu and choose room settings for your Beam, then head to the surrounds menu to set the playback mode for music to full, rather than ambient.

If the rear speakers are working for music in full playback mode, the issue is likely a setting on your TV. Please turn your TV to a channel that you know is playing 5.1 audio, then submit a diagnostic report and reply with the confirmation number.

You can also see what type of audio your Beam is receiving by looking at the about my Sonos system menu when playing TV audio. The Beam should show you what type of audio it is receiving. If it is not receiving Dolby Digital 5.1, you should take a look through your TV's audio output settings to make sure it is set to output Dolby Digital 5.1.