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Arc Surround Unreliability

  • 9 October 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 152 views
G

Arc + Sub + 2 One Surrounds

Love the sound, love the system (when it is paired and working as expected).

Beyond frustrated with the unreliability with the system to remember the pairing settings after a power outage. I’ve had this system for a little over a year since the Arc hit the market, and have repeatedly run into issues of having to remove and reinstall/pair the surrounds and the sub when a power outage or something occurs that causes a reboot of the router. 

I don’t have any issues with any other of the 20+ wireless devices on my network when an outage occurs, only problems with the Arc surround system remembering the rear surround and the sub.

Each time this issue occurs, my first step from the app is to go through Support > Find Missing Products. The app successfully identifies the two One speakers and the Sub as missing from the system, however walking through the device and router restarts has never been successful and continuously ends with a message saying the devices were unable to be added to the system.

I’m then left with manually hard resetting each device and going through the process of adding them back to the system in the app. This process is successful, but the problem seems to be each time I try to pair the devices to the Arc in a surround mode, an unknown error occurs which then places the devices in an unknown state. 

I’ve been working on this over the better part of the entire day and usually find the magic set of steps, but am out of luck today. Beyond frustrated with the unreliability and the expensive paper weights and furniture decorations that these things have now become.

Looking for advise on the proper way to remove and reset devices from my system and consistently achieve a successful surround sound pairing process.

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Best answer by buzz 9 October 2021, 03:36

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4 replies

Airgetlam

Sure seems like a good reason to do some investigation regarding wifi interference , as I would guess that the Arc is having trouble maintaining the 5Ghz connection it needs with both the Sub and the surrounds. Neither the surrounds or Sub connect directly to your wifi, but to a “hidden” signal created by the Arc, so something near either those speakers, or the Arc itself could be causing enough interference to occasionally block the system from speaking to each other. And it doesn’t have to be a wifi device, either, as all electronics create a certain amount of “spillover” into radio frequencies. 

It’s much less likely to be an issue with the Arc itself, but not impossible. I’m assuming you’ve not turned off the wifi on the Arc itself, which would be bad. If you have, turn it back on.

But if you think there could be an electronics failure in the Arc itself, you should submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and network.

Bruce
buzz

Avoid Factory resetting any SONOS units without further consult. This reset creates extra work and will not cure fundamental networking issues. Rebooting ARC might work through this.

Which model Router are you using? Are any of your SONOS units wired to the network?

Somewhere in your router is a means to “Reserve” or “Fix” IP addresses. This prevents many issues associated with power failures and updates.

G

Running a Netgear Nighthawk RAX120 router. I’m not using any wired devices for the network.

Trying to figure out does the Sonos system works better on the 2.4 or the 5 Ghz networks. Which should I have my phone with the app connected to while setting up the system? Because it seems regardless of what my phone is connected to, the devices want to connect to the 2.4 network.

There are a number of other IOT devices on the 2.4 network, which I don’t really want to go down the route of disconnecting them each time the router resets to try and avoid interference. 

buzz

I recommend that you reserve IP addresses for all regular network clients, especially SONOS units. See page 72. Also, limit 2.4 GHz to 574 Mbps (page 78)

There are two discussions on the NETGEAR  Community (1), (2) that may be relevant for your firmware.

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