Unpair your stereo pair in Living Room, and put one into each of 2 new rooms called Temp1 and Temp2. Then go to the remaining Living Room - with the Arc. Select add surrounds, and you should be offered Temp1 and Temp2.   

If you group rooms and have tv as the source, there will always be a delay in the room(s) other than the one with the tv connected. That’s the echo effect you could hear with your incorrectly configured setup. 

Thank you, I was told to do this earlier, I did it, went through the process ok, then the app showed this 

Yep, definitely, that is exactly what is happening but I’m powerless to get it working any other way

Factory reset the Eras. Then add them to your system, assigning them to the temp rooms. Then add surrounds to the Arc. 

Thank you, I’ll try it that way, when shall I add the Sub

I think I’d be quite frustrated by now as it’s not exactly cheap… 

Let’s try and break it down, one component at a time. When you get to this stage,  do you have a solid white LED on the Arc and flashing green on the two Era’s and Sub? 

Also, what is the exact make and model of your WiFi router? Is the Arc connected only via WiFi and not ethernet? 

Ha, Ha, it’s literally taken over my life, so obviously in pairing mode all the leds green, sorry really hard to put in a message, the arc isn’t showing any leds at all when operating, when I connect eras, they also don’t show any leds, the sub will not connect to the arc at all, only an era, that also shows no leds when connected to an era, the only thing I’ve ever seen a white led on is the sub, and that is when I’ve tried to operate it with the arc, but app says not connected, I have a Vodafone Ultra Hub, arc is connected by WiFi, not Ethernet as in different rooms, when I first went down this dark path, the Sonos tech support had me plug the arc into Ethernet and to be fair the sub then worked, all way too much for me, but I really appreciate your help, it’s literally taking over my life 

I can imagine. 

Does your Ultra Hub look like this? 

Yes it does, please tell me you know something

Under settings for WiFi on your router, does it have a WiFi Compatibility mode and is that on or off? 

It does have a WiFi compatibility mode, and yes it is on 

Ok, was hoping that would be off… 

If you change the box on the red bar at the top from basic to advanced, and then go to WiFi, what does it say for WiFi Mode, Bandwidth and channel on the 2.4 and 5 GHz boxes? 

Thanks, but where do I find the box on the red bar 

Sorry, it’s just above the red bar right hand side, should say basic mode. Switch to advanced. 

Sorry, I’m so thick, and I’m not at home, is this on the router itself

Yes it is on the router itself. No worries… 

So when you are home, what I would try is… 

In the Sonos app, go to settings, manage, and then do forget my system. Then close the app, and delete it and all its data. I wouldn’t rule out that by now it could have gotten horribly confused. 

Next Factory reset all the Sonos speakers including the Arc so that they are flashing green. Then unplug them. So they are off. 

Re-install the Sonos App, and when it prompts, select create a new system. 

Power on the Arc only, and run through the setup. When it shows as connected, look in the settings to see if there is an option to turn on the LED, this may help us understand what is going on. 

IF that works, turn on ONE of the Era300’s. 

When you add it, do not add it to any of the pre-defined room names, and change the speaker name to something like Era 1 so it is all unique. Create a room name like Surround 1. Do not attempt to add it as a surround speaker. 

This will hopefully verify that the Era 300 can now get onto the app and your WiFi, as it should just show up on it’s own as connected. 

If we can’t get this to work then there’s no point going further until we find what the basic issue is. Then we can see if different WiFi settings help get the Era300 connected or not. 

You are an angel from Heaven, will update later, thank you so much

If you’re doing that full system reset/restart, it’s worth restarting the router as well. 

The danger of rebooting the router is that you potentially increase the risk of duplicate IP addresses without rebooting everything else in the house. Stuff should have settled down from a DHCP perspective now. 

At this point we seem to have a fairly fundamental issue just getting the Era speakers to show up individually on the WiFi… before they are even bonded to the Arc. If that issue doesn’t go away, then I don’t see how we ever get to the bonding stage as surrounds. 

If the router does need to be rebooted then I think a DCHP lease value that is say 1 day needs setting first, as I think the default on here is forever, which may not be ideal. Having the lease as 1 day should at  least mean the DHCP server should get to re-evaluate what’s allocated where on a more regular basis. 

Hi Ian, I have been on the router settings and it does indeed say forever, shall I set that to 24 hours

In my view it’s not worth changing until the router needs rebooting as to get all the clients on the new lease time means they may need rebooting as well. 

Great, thank you, can’t wait to get home and try the things you have advised 

Don’t get too excited, this is all best guess stuff!!

If the Era doesn’t connect after initial setup, try changing the WiFi mode on 2.4 and 5GHz to remove the support for the ax modes from the list. Reboot the Era only. (Reboot is just pull the power, count to 5 and plug it in again, not a reset.)

If the above makes doesn’t work, also under 5GHz if DFS is enabled, disable that too. Reboot the Era only. 

You’re looking for the Era to just show as connected in the Sonos App. 

See this YouTube Video for a run through of the screens on your router for most of the above. 

If that makes no difference, then my thinking is that the Vodafone router is not passing the discovery protocols used by Sonos between the different frequency bands correctly. The reason I suspect this, is because the Arc on its own appears to work, and it *only* connects to the 2.4GHz band. You have also had the two Era300’s and the Sub all working together, but I suspect that was in the 5GHz band, as all three of those support that. 

What I don’t know how to do on your router is split the bands on the WiFi so that you can call the 2.4GHz band one name and the 5GHz band another. If you could rename the 5GHz band by say adding _5G on the end, and set all the Sonos stuff up on 2.4GHz, then it might work. 

Once the Arc + other speakers can see each other and they are properly setup, then you might find they continue to work even after you go back to the same WiFi name on both bands… as they’ll be using the dedicated Sonos connection between the Arc and themselves and not your WiFi. It’s getting them to that point that seems difficult and shouldn’t be for something that cost £2k. 

Well, you’ve still been far more help than anyone else, especially Sonos support so still, I’m very grateful,