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Reproducible Playback Failure on Sonos Arc+Sub+Era300 with Apple Music Dolby Atmos Album

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I'm using Apple Music with a Sonos setup consisting of Arc + Sub + two Era 300 speakers.

When I play the following album, playback consistently halts mid-track, and the Sonos system becomes completely unresponsive—as if it's frozen. After a short while, it recovers as though it had rebooted.

https://music.apple.com/jp/album/tchaikovsky-the-sleeping-beauty-childrens-album-piano/1825381287
(Tchaikovsky: The Sleeping Beauty; Children's Album; Piano Sonata, Op. 80; Theme and Variations, Op. 19/6 – performed by Danil Trifonov)

If you're using Apple Music, could you try playing this album from the beginning and see if the issue occurs?(not via AirPlay, but directly from Sonos App) In my case, the problem happens 100% of the time, although the timing varies. It usually doesn't take long to reproduce.

There have been reports in this community of similar issues with Sonos + Apple Music—such as tracks skipping, audio dropouts, or playback stopping unexpectedly—and I believe this may be related.

From my experience, music encoded in Dolby Atmos tends to trigger these failures more easily. This album is in Dolby Atmos and features very short tracks (most of the early ones are under a minute), which I suspect creates an especially unstable playback scenario for Sonos systems.

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craigskiAnswer

Local Superstar

Report Apple Music playback issues on Sonos here:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music/

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craigski

Local Superstar

Interesting. I don’t use my Arc Ulta for music playback.

I did try your Apple Music link above, and it drops after 2 or 3 tracks, doesn’t pause, it just stops, then I get ‘No Content’ on the room. I repeated, and same again.

I do listen to Apple Music Lossless in other rooms (not HT / Atmos), but don’t get issues with Apple Music non Atmos content in other rooms.

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craigski

Local Superstar

When I play the following album, playback consistently halts mid-track, and the Sonos system becomes completely unresponsive—as if it's frozen. After a short while, it recovers as though it had rebooted.

My Arc didn’t reboot, I had a network ping running, and there was 0% loss. Could be a crash/dump of one of the processes specific to Atmos running on the Arc, which causes a restart of that process(es)

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Dear craigski,

Thank you for your trial, and I’m happy(or unhappy) you had the same result.

Yes, “No Content” is exactly the same result of the album with me.

Since you had the same result, I think this is a highly reproducible failure. Do you know the best way to report this to Sonos?

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craigski

Local Superstar

I would contact support in your region:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/contact-global

The album tracks played fine to a none Atmos speaker 48kHz/24bit, with the Arc Ultra grouped. Just failed repeatedly on my Arc Ultra when the stream was Atmos.

Maybe someone else will report back here if they get a chance to try the album you listed above.

AjTrek1

The experience is the same on my Arc Ultra with Sub and Era 300’s the pause is consistently at track 6 in Dolby Atmos streamed via Apple Music. However, the experience is the same with Spotify. I even purchased the first 8 tracks and downloaded to my iPhone (so not a stream from Apple Server) and the experience is the same.

As with @craigski streaming Apple Music on non-Atmos speakers specifically Era 100’s x 2 and Sub-Mini the tracks played with no issue.

My thought is this:

When streaming from Apple or Spotify servers the server is looking for the most stable stream. You may notice that upon first playing any track the codec (Dolby Atmos or Lossless) doesn't immediately appear until after a few seconds or sometimes a minute into the track. If the tracks are of sufficient length the server decides that a particular stream can be maintained for all tracks.
The tracks in the subject album are very, very short and the server is most likely negotiating at each beginning for a Dolby Atmos stream. Since for me it was consistent at track 6; on Apple Music and Spotify I’d say it’s a server issue with this particular recording when playing through Arc and/other Arc Ultra.
As my Era 100’s are not Atmos capable the server quickly determines that CD quality is the best stream giving the number and shortness of the tracks.
FYI, I've streamed Apple Music in Dolby Atmos consistently for songs of sufficient length for hours at a time.

The above are just my thoughts and I could be completely wrong in my thinking. I welcome any other theory on this.

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Dear AjTrek1,

Thank you for your trial.

Actually, the album on Amazon Music plays without any problem, even in Atmos format.

So I think there may be something specific to Apple Music that is causing this issue. Maybe it is a streaming server issue.

AjTrek1

@CCCarl

I’ll have to try it via Amazon and report back.

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

@CCCarl

I’ll have to try it via Amazon and report back.

Thank you!!

@craigski and @AjTrek1

I’ve called Sonos and reported this issue. I hope it will improve the compatibility between Apple Music and Sonos system.

To others: And I think more reports about this issue are welcome to make the analysis by Sonos faster!

AjTrek1

@CCCarl

I was able to stream the tracks on Amazon music in Dolby Atmos with no issues. So there is definitely something going on with the Apple Server and the API with Sonos.

Mind you that the API integration is an Apple design that they provide to Sonos. So the fix is not entirely with Sonos which means they (Sonos) will have to communicate with Apple techs to resolve the issue and work jointly.

That said I would not hold my breath in hopes of a fix in the immediate future. But you may want to add the discovery of Amazon Music to your support ticket.

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

@AjTrek1

Thank you for your trial and comment.

Yes, I’ve already told Sonos about the Amazon Music trial.

> So the fix is not entirely with Sonos which means they (Sonos) will have to communicate with Apple techs to resolve the issue and work jointly.

I can only hope that Sonos and Apple will resolve the issue as soon as possible.

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