Hi @Captain Kevman 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I think the main source of the problems you are experiencing is the fact that your WiFi is split between channels 1, 3, and 5. All of these channels overlap and interfere with each other. Additionally, Sonos units communicate directly with each other, using the same WiFi channel as the WiFi - this mismatch results in them looking for each other on the wrong channels. Finally, it looks like you are using WiFi extenders (though I may be wrong) which are not supported by Sonos due to them generally doing such a bad job.

In addition to all this, grouping for TV audio is not expected to work well (and is therefore unsupported) due to the systems inability to delay the audio enough for buffering (as the audio must play immediately to stay in sync with the TV pictures), and Kitchen is completely missing from the diagnostic. Right now, you seem to have two offline devices.

To remedy most of this is easy, however. Please connect any one of your Sonos devices to the router with an ethernet cable, permanently. This wired unit will create a private WiFi called SonosNet just for your speakers to use. Each speaker will rebroadcast this WiFi, so the more speakers you have, the further the WiFi coverage stretches. This WiFi will be on channel 6, which overlaps with channels 3 and 5. Once you connect a unit to ethernet, wait a minute or two, then reboot any speakers missing from the app. Once the whole system is visible in the app, select Settings » System » Network » Change SonosNet Channel » 11.

I also recommend you move all of your WiFi Access Points on to channel 1 or 6. Having multiple APs on one channel is better than having 3 on overlapping channels. If these APs are indeed WiFi extenders, I can only recommend you swap them out for a more robust mesh WiFi system (configured in Bridge or AP mode if you retain your current router). The only channels that do not overlap are 1, 6 and 11.

There’s an article I wrote that you may find useful:

Please bear in mind, however, that we do not expect grouping TV audio to other rooms to work well unless your network is extremely robust and free from interference - you may see an improvement, but I expect you may not get perfect playback. Grouping for music playback should be faultless, however.

I hope this helps.

Thank you for the detailed response Corry, I’ll work on moving a speaker to where it may remain wired to the network.

It’s tough to run wires in this house and I did upgrade to what I thought was a robust mesh network.

The home is a long narrow two-story structure.

The parent router is a Linksys Max Stream Dual Band Mesh Wi-Fi 6 Router (MR9600), and is located on a shelf in the downstairs garage - back of the house.

The child router is a Linksys Max Stream Mesh Wi-Fi 6 (MR7350), and it is located on a shelf in the upstairs laundry - connected via wired backhaul - middle of the house.

The final child router is a Linksys Velop Mesh WiFi Extender (WHW01Pv1), this is the wall-wart style device and is connected wirelessly, it is located in the downstairs Dining Room and was effective at eliminating a dead zone in the living room - front of the house.

To my knowledge the Linksys setup determined on its own what channels to use...I’m not sure if they provide an interface to override them.  Instead they provide a ‘channel finder’ feature on their mobile app where the iphone app will ‘scan your environment for the WiFi channels that will give you the best performance’.  I could try running that after performing the sonos steps you suggested above.

Thanks,
Kevin

Hi @Captain Kevman 

That’s great that you have a mesh - as devices running the app are still connecting to the WiFi, non-meshed extenders can still cause problems even once Sonos is running on SonosNet.

Please be sure to wire a Sonos device to the main router, not to a mesh node (unless you don’t really have a choice - but be aware the whole system will depend on the quality of the mesh node’s backhaul if you do wire to a node, so the wired node would better than the wireless node). If you really can’t get a speaker to the location of the main router, you could get a Boost to ethernet-wire instead, but I’d only recommend this as a last resort - a long ethernet cable to a speaker would be much cheaper.

Mesh systems don’t often seem to offer an option to override the channels, for some reason. I would be very surprised if the “channel finder” feature left your mesh system on over-lapping channels, however - if it does, it’s worth feeding back to the manufacturer as a bit of an issue. But yes - performing this scan after SonosNet is up-and-running on channel 11 would be a Good Idea.

If you have any trouble with missing rooms after connecting to ethernet then reboots may help, but I’d recommend you get in touch, via phone, with our technical support team for some real-time troubleshooting steps.

I hope this helps.