Sonos Beam fails to find Sonos Ones for surround sound set-up

By any chance, do you have the WiFi turned off on the Beam?

Interestingly, I have the exact same problem as Stu. I just purchased two Sonos Ones. I have a Beam and it works fine with my TV, The app sets up and configures the speakers but as soon as the app prompts these to be surround, and it pings a left or right, and attempts to configure I get the same error message as Stu. Reset, doesn’t work, it only seems to pick up one, but can be paired as stereo as mentioned. Very frustrating, I’ve tried a reset on both and restarted from scratch a number of times but no go. Wifi on the beam is on so too my IOS device and the Ones. On an app reboot, fix surround, doesn’t work either, haven’t try a beam reboot but will try that..shouldn’t have too..it shouldn’t be this hard and requires hardware restarts.

Any  other suggestions will slow be appreciated.

Bender1

Hi Airgetlam,

WiFi is turned ON for my Beam, so I don’t think that can be the issue.

As Bender1 says, this really shouldn’t be that difficult - I’m doing a pretty standard operation here, with great WiFi, new Sonos products, using their latest S2 app - this should just work!

Stu

Thanks, @Bender1 - useful to hear what you’ve done and the results (or lack of!) you've managed to achieve. Sounds like the whole wi-fi/network set-up with Sonos is a bit fragile. Luckily I didn’t get the Beam specifically for the surround sound option. I saw this more as a ‘nice to have’, given I already had the Ones. I’m not sure if I can now be bothered to jump through all the hoops to try to overcome this bug, or just accept the limitation of using the Beam on its own. I’m thinking I’d only care about the surround sound on certain movies anyway, so maybe it’s not worth messing up what I already have!

I’m sure you are aware of this, but one thing I’ve found - using the S2 app you can tell the system to play TV audio through both the Beam and the Ones (though I’m supposing this isn’t in true surround mode). When I do this, and set the Ones volume at 75% of the Beam, you get a kinda pseudo surround sound effect anyway - music and certain effects seem more prominent on the Ones and the dialogue and main sounds seem to come from the Beam. This might just be an audio version of an optical-illusion, but actually works OK (given I can’t get proper surround mode to work). E.g. when watching The Mandalorian on Disney+ using this psuedo-surround set-up, the action sequences definitely had more atmosphere and depth (from an audio perspective) and was better (in my opinion) than just using the Beam on its own. So, I might accept this as a consolation prize!

Stu

Have you unpaired the One’s, before trying to set them up as surrounds?  I believe I had to do this in the process.

Hi Stu\khaz22,

Stu, thanks for your comments much appreciated. khaz22, thanks for you input, yes I did do this on a number of occasions but to no affect. Like you Stu, I didn’t really didn’t start down this path as a surround sound solution. The Beam was just to enhance the TV output which it does adequately. The main selling point of this system and those similar is as wireless solution. Unfortunately, given the potential complexities of wifi and networking, it can be seamless for some and a nightmare for others as each networking environment can be different with its own set of challenges. My Ones, and Beam has an issue with my network, the Sonos app won’t even hold the joined net work when reconfigured via Ethernet cable, it wants to hold onto a 2.4Ghz configuration even after it joined my 5Ghz, I have extenders so that doesn’t  help. To cut a long story short, I’ve moved my Ones to my family room as a stereo pair and they work fine. I had a sub ordered, which I canceled.

I have many wireless devices, all running happily, so I don’t want to mess with my environment setting. As a high fidelity surround solution, there are much better options, hard wire is the way to go. If you choose wireless just be aware of the potential pitfalls. I won’t bag Sonos, but I think the have a ways to go, with codex support and other connectivity options, Bluetooth Sonos, new 5.2, think about it, it’s sufficient for most systems and gets around wifi configuration issues.

Anyways, these things happen and we learn, unfortunately Sonos does fit my needs nor has it been a great user experience.

good luck to all and thanks for the replies.

Cheers,

Bender1
 

I agree with @Bender1 - I also don’t want to mess up my existing wireless set-up or have to set-up again my Beam from scratch (I’ve seen other threads that basically claim the solution is reboot everything, reboot router, create your whole set-up from scratch so IP addresses are properly re-assigned, etc - NO WAY! LOL!).

One of those times I think acceptance is better than meddling! At least for me 😃  Thank for the inputs, everyone.

Stu

I can attest you do need to UNPAIR the PLAY1 stereos before your Beam/ARC will play nice and pair it as a surround. Took me about an hour to figure all this out. Now nobody touch anything!

I still have yet to find any satisfactory resolution to this issue that I too am facing.

Rebooting Sonos devices is one thing, double checking configurations, but restarting network devices as well isn't an acceptable answer in my opinion without root cause to accompany that suggestion (this sucks for multi-family Internet, ppl working from home, multiple APs, Ubiquity router, managed switch, etc.). Sometimes not even a readily available option for business applications of Sonos systems. Knowing exact issue here could help ppl look at executing a targeted and maybe non-intrusive solution (maybe even proactively). 

I would rather see this be acknowledged by Sonos and know that they're working to resolve the root cause through more reliable software. 

What are the possible technical reasons for needing to restart APs and/or router devices in this particular case?

For the price of Sonos I would expect a much better, reliable and consistent experience. Kind of embarrassing investing in best in-class software-driven audio equipment and friends and family see me struggle to make it work as expected.