Grand Maestro

investigating the Sub and Surround connection

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I'm going to try to figure out the Sonos connections to surrounds.

I'm starting with my main Rooms powered up and updated. I also have a Home Theater Room that has been powered down for a month or so which is what I'll be working with first. It has a Beam gen 1, Sub gen 2 and two One SLs.

Initially the Room and speakers aren't visible in the Android app, main Room lists or the About page, they have been powered down long enough to be removed.

Powering up just the surrounds, they are still not visible in any app lists, but if I do an update check I am told one is needed. I do not have the 2.4 gHz Sonosnet enabled here and the Beam is powered down so they must be connecting to my home Wi-Fi on my 5 gHz band in order for the app to see the update status. The AP access log confirms this connection and shows it became active soon after I powered the surrounds up. The log also shows they are communicating using the link.

Running the update, both One SLs go through the update/reboot LED patterns. At the end of the process the AP logs show the names are no longer the DHCP assigned/reserved ones, instead both show as "Sonos ZP" but still using the DHCP reserved addresses. The MAC addresses appear to be correct in both DHCP and AP logs.

The One SLs still do not appear anywhere in the app.

Power cycling the One SLs causes the AP logs to return the DHCP assigned names. They still do not appear in the app.

Rechecking the update status shows all are updated.

Next, powering up the Beam and Sub. The AP logs show the surrounds disappearing soon after the Beam appeared. The Sub briefly appeared in the AP logs but did not pass any data, I did not see if it used the default name originally but I do show two sessions, one before and the other after the update.

So two interesting things here, the non-HT connection for updates and the DHCP/DNS oddness on update.

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Show previous replies

melvimbe

Maybe the surrounds will respond to a “Remove Surrounds” command while the soundbar is down, but I don’t know what the soundbar’s response might be when it comes back up. I would think that it will wait for the surrounds. Then there is the question as to being able to remove non existent surrounds that will be visible in the system, but not as bonded surrounds.

Perhaps there’s the technical equivalent of a ‘Dear John’ letter.

Dear Soundbar,

While you were away, I found somebody new.

I am mostly joking with this, but it does seem like that soundbar could be informed that the surround(s) are no longer bonded as they should be able to see that mac address is being used elsewhere on the network. She’s not coming back.

Danny

melvimbe

I would assume that voice commands (that are not requesting music playback) would also work when the soundbar is powered off.

If true that would most likely only apply to Era series because as far I know they are the only speakers when used as surrounds that can also be setup with a voice assistant.

I didn’t see a Sonos support article on this, and don’t fully trust my memory, but I thought Sonos Ones worked for voice with the playbar.

edit: the the ‘Ray, Playbar’ link is here

Danny

AjTrek1

I would assume that voice commands (that are not requesting music playback) would also work when the soundbar is powered off.

If true that would most likely only apply to Era series because as far I know they are the only speakers when used as surrounds that can also be setup with a voice assistant.

I didn’t see a Sonos support article on this, and don’t fully trust my memory, but I thought Sonos Ones worked for voice with the playbar.

edit: the the ‘Ray, Playbar’ link is here

Okkkk…hadn’t seen that one 😊

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