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Help with One SL Stereo Pair L-R Balance

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Hi, thanks in advance for any help you can provide with this issue.

I have a stereo pair of One SL’s on my desk. I’m having an issue with the stereo balance between the two speakers. When I start a song playing, the stereo balance is centered, but over approximately 15-30 seconds, the center image drifts off to one side (one speaker is becoming louder or softer, but never drifting all the way to one side). When I pause the music, then start it again, the image is again centered but proceeds to drift off center again. What is perplexing is that this happens when using the Sonos app streaming any music service, it happens with Roon streaming Tidal or Qobuz, it happens with the Tidal app using Tidal Connect, but it does not happen when streaming via Airplay from any source. Here are the steps I’ve already taken to attempt to resolve the issue:

Rebooted both speakers. Unpaired, then re-paired the stereo pair. Swapped left and right speakers in the stereo pair. Rebooted my wifi router while also rebooting both speakers afterwards. None of these steps changed anything. One thing I did notice is that it seems the stereo image always drifts to the slave speaker, not the primary.

Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, what worked for you? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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Ken_GriffithsAnswer

It seems to me you have already tried most of the troubleshooting steps, apart from an actual factory reset of each device, but before suggesting to try that, it might be best to first submit a system diagnostic report immediately after you next encounter the issue and make a note of its reference. Then contact/chat to the Sonos Support Staff via this LINK, to perhaps see if they can glean anything from your report.

If you do decide to go it alone and factory reset your devices, then ensure you only do one speaker at a time and get that speaker added back to your existing system and working, before resetting the other one.

Ken_GriffithsAnswer

It seems to me you have already tried most of the troubleshooting steps, apart from an actual factory reset of each device, but before suggesting to try that, it might be best to first submit a system diagnostic report immediately after you next encounter the issue and make a note of its reference. Then contact/chat to the Sonos Support Staff via this LINK, to perhaps see if they can glean anything from your report.

If you do decide to go it alone and factory reset your devices, then ensure you only do one speaker at a time and get that speaker added back to your existing system and working, before resetting the other one.

J

John B

Is the drift something you perceive from the volumes, or does the balance slider in tbe app actually move off-centre?

A

acbarnAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

It seems to me you have already tried most of the troubleshooting steps, apart from an actual factory reset of each device, but before suggesting to try that, it might be best to first submit a system diagnostic report immediately after you next encounter the issue and make a note of its reference. Then contact/chat to the Sonos Support Staff via this LINK, to perhaps see if they can glean anything from your report.

If you do decide to go it alone and factory reset your devices, then ensure you only do one speaker at a time and get that speaker added back to your existing system and working, before resetting the other one.

Thanks, Ken. I took your advice and just finished a chat session. My case has been bumped up to the next level. I’ll be following up tomorrow with a call to phone support. We’ll see what happens!

A

acbarnAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Is the drift something you perceive from the volumes, or does the balance slider in tbe app actually move off-centre?

The balance slider doesn’t move. On tracks with a clear phantom center, where the kick drum, bass, and lead vocal start at dead center, I can easily hear them drift off to one side. It’s a shift in volume.

J

John B

Are you able to experimentally connect the two speakers together by Ethernet, and see whether the problem occurs?

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acbarnAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Are you able to experimentally connect the two speakers together by Ethernet, and see whether the problem occurs?

I might be able to do that. What do you think that would that tell me?

J

John B

It would depend what happens. I have never heard of a similar issue before, but I suspect it's just a weird effect of wireless communication glitches. It the problem disappears when the speakers are wired then that would support that hypothesis.

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acbarnAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Sonos 2nd level support told me I have too many speakers without having one wired (9 total). I’m adding a Boost to see if that solves it. I’ll report back here either way.

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acbarnAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Just another update. I took all of my Sonos products offline, rebooted my router, factory reset both One SL’s, set them up as new, re-paired them, and re-did Trueplay tuning. All of this before bringing the other speakers back online. Same problem as before, no change.

My Boost comes tomorrow. If that doesn’t solve the problem (doubtful now), I’m going to assume one or the other of the speakers is defective.

Ken_Griffiths

Just another update. I took all of my Sonos products offline, rebooted my router, factory reset both One SL’s, set them up as new, re-paired them, and re-did Trueplay tuning. All of this before bringing the other speakers back online. Same problem as before, no change.

My Boost comes tomorrow. If that doesn’t solve the problem (doubtful now), I’m going to assume one or the other of the speakers is defective.

Just curious, but did you try @John B’s suggestion of tethering/wiring the two speakers together to see if that made any difference?

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