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Surrounds Flash Green


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I have an arc and have just purchased 2 Sonos one SL's to try and create a surround system. Initially,  all went well, everything was connected and working fine. I then became aware there was no sound coming out of the ones and they had  a flashing green light. I factory reset them,  re-added them to Sonos added them as surround speakers and they instantly flash green as soon as they are set up. I have totally factory reset the entire system and yet as soon as they become surround speakers they flash green. Any help would be gratefully accepted.

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Best answer by Corry P 7 July 2022, 11:54

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33 replies

Oh, my apologies. Yes, I agree, when muted, the speakers have always given an indication that they are muted, and to my knowledge, that can’t be turned off. When that’s an issue for me, I usually turn them down to the lowest level without muting it, and usually, because I’m listening to something else, any low level sound that might be coming from them is lost. But then again, my surrounds tend to be “behind” me, so I don’t really notice that light, unless I’ve darkened the room for some reason, and then turn my head. I have, for other LEDs such as the microphone, covered it with a piece of electrical tape, or a dot from LightDims

Not ideal solutions, in any case, but I think Sonos is more concerned about reducing support calls about how the speakers don’t work, when in fact they’re just muted. 

For your your third scenario, I’ve never had a time where I wanted to turn off the surrounds. In fact, I have them set to “Full” rather than “Ambient”, so that when playing music, they act as stereo speakers, and not just supporting to the sound coming from my Arcs.

Settings>System>(Room name with surrounds)>Scroll down to Hardware>Status Light - off (affects all speakers in that ‘room’)

When the status light is set to OFF. The ARC & surrounds white LED’s turn OFF.

However if the volume is muted the ARC & surrounds green LEDs come ON.

If the status light is OFF and the surrounds are set to OFF then the green LEDs will flash ??

Settings>System>(Room name with surrounds)>Scroll down to Hardware>Status Light - off (affects all speakers in that ‘room’)

I too have ARC with 2 x ONE SL surrounds. I have them OFF in the app settings- surround audio on/off option by choice during the day.

what is annoying is the flashing green LED. I’d like an option to turn the LED’s off

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Hi nik9669a - I’m afraid they didn’t just that they could see what the problem was!

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Did they say what the fix was? Just in case it crops up again for anyone else…

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Thanks to all who responded in an attempt to assist. The fault developed even stranger. With the surrounds (supposedly) set up, although there was no sound actually coming from them! When I switched the TV on, sound came out of the Arc but the surrounds switched off, When i switched the surrounds back on sound disappeared from the Arc. increasing the volume on the Arc switched off the surrounds. Anyway I took the advice of John B and Corry P and rang support. It was sorted in about 10 minutes. Wonderful service and I should have called earlier - it’s just that some support lines can be very hard work.

Thanks again all

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Hi @HarryTheB 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

If you still have this problem I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports. As both surrounds speakers are behaving the same, I believe efforts should be focused on the Arc. Other than after being factory reset, the only time any Sonos speakers should flash green is when they are configured as surrounds and are disabled. For some reason, the Arc seems to be forcing this.

I hope this helps.

 

We know you are connected to WiFi, which is all about the LAN side of your router. LTE is about how your system connects to the Internet. Is that by a landline or mobile connection?

Maybe the LTE symbol just indicates the availability of a signal, not necessarily a connection?

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Can you have simultaneous connections to multiple wifi networks? If so, try disabling all except the “Sonos” one. Then go through the power off everything, restart router, restart speakers process and then see how you get on with the setup. 

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Thanks for your replies, definitely connected to WiFi, the lte, 3g, 4g signal shows as well.

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@HarryTheB   Your screenshot suggests you’re on a LTE network rather than local wifi? Is that right, and if so, might it have any bearing on what’s happening? Or is that the name of your wifi? 

@HarryTheB  As @nik9669a pointed out. That is a question to be answered. It looks as thought you phone is connecting to a cellular tower and Wi-Fi simultaneously. Although I’ve never seen that before. Please reply to @nik9669a question.

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@HarryTheB   Your screenshot suggests you’re on a LTE network rather than local wifi? Is that right, and if so, might it have any bearing on what’s happening? Or is that the name of your wifi? 

I think you would now do best to contact Sonos Support, with the first thing to check being whether the 5GHz wireless radio on the Arc is OK. The Arc will connect to your wifi using its 2.4GHz radio then use direct routing to the surrounds using its 5GHz radio.  But anyway, I think you have tried as hard and as rationally as anyone could, and Sonos can take a remote look at your system.  You could waste hours on this yet, so I’d call.

I will also draw your attention to this thread, but I don’t really think your symptoms fit.  The flashing green lights suggest something else to me, but I could be wrong.

 

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Hi John B, sorry I didn't get back to you last night but tbh I was a bit frustrated with it all. I can play music through  each speaker individually if I use Spotify.  If I ask my Alexa to play music in the living room she says it's playing, but there is no sound coming out of the Arc, similarly if I ask alexa on the Arc to play music she says it's playing but there is no sound! I guess that's an Alexa thing rather than sonos. I still haven't re-tried to set up my surround as you will see from the picture below, when I added the One SL's to the system it added then as living room 2 & 3, previously all 3 were under living room.

 

So even the Arc won't play now?  It's beginning to look like a hardware fault  maybe with the.wireless radio on the Arc. If you just keep the Ones as separate 'rooms', not surrounds,  do they play?

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Hi John B. Ok, I disconnected the node to the router and disabled the 5ghz connection. I connected the Arc to ethernet and ensured it was selected to ethernet via the controller. I recreated the surround system via the controller and it is exactly the same. The Arc is working fine and the one SL’s are flashing green. I switched off the TV to play some music to see what effect that had and when I opened the sonos controller I got a Living Room not configured ?(+RS +LS) I had to go through the whole setup process again and, again, when I connected the surrond they flashed green. Back to the music I tried to pay musc from  my Spotify Account and Alexa said it was playing but there was no sound output (I checked the volume and it was turned up) when I checked Alexa the Arc was not visible, tried to connect it but alexa couldnt see it. 

Final thought - if you had said you had a non-Velop router I would have suggested trying Velop in ‘Bridge mode’.  But you don’t, so let’s hold off on that for now.

OK.  The thing that is puzzling me is that you have the +RS+LS yet the speakers don’t appear to be enabled (green flashing light).  It may be that the Velop router is struggling to give IP addresses to the surrounds, as these get their data from the Arc by direct routing.  But that is speculative.

You could also try turning off the 5GHz band temporarily.  But only if that is easy, as I doubt very much it would help with your issue.

Please post back when you have tried a few experiments.

If you had had another Sonos speaker with an Ethernet connection I was going to suggest wiring that instead of the Arc to make the logistics of connecting easier, but the Move doesn’t have one.

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Thanks for your advice John B. I’m at work at the moment so intend to crack on with it this weekend. I do have a Sonos move which works fine.

I will do as you suggest and disconnect the node.

I will also try connecting an ethernet connection to the Arc, which is what lots of peole are suggesting on other forums.

I have had my Arc for some time now and that has been faultless, it was only when I tried to connect the One SL’s that the problem started.

I’ll let you know how I get on with your suggestions. Thanks

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No, sorry again, my lack of understanding of this area. I have 3 wifi connections available, from my velop system. One is a 2.4 ghz, one a 5 ghz and one guest. My phone (and hence my Sonos controller is connected to the 2.4 Ghz)

OK.  I suggest the next experimental step is turn off the mesh node, assuming that the Arc can connect wirelessly to the main router.  Remove the surrounds from the Arc, and power them off and on again.  Add them again as surrounds.  Please then report back.

You don’t have any other Sonos speakers?

You should stop factory resetting as it won’t achieve anything here.

I am troubled by your comment ‘I am connecting wirelessly to the main router’  Does that mean you have a choice of wireless networks, main router and Velop?

Edit: posted before I saw your latest reply

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Sorry, John B, No it’s the main velop router. The one I initially set up before I added the mesh node.

By ‘normal’ router you mean not part of the Velop system?