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

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.

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)

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?

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.

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. 

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.
 

​@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!

​@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.

​@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.

There is a workaround, if you disable spatial audio in settings, you can listen to the lossless version rather than the Atmos version. Some lossless tracks could be argued as ‘better’ as they are lossless and higher bit rate stereo, rather than a lossy, over compressed, artificially re-mix, over hyped Atmos version, that you can’t listen to anyway, because it sometimes stops with a ‘no content’. 

It appears with this option checked, it does not affect Atmos content from video stream via eArc, ie you can still enjoy Atmos movies.

Thank you for your advice. However, if Dolby Atmos on Apple Music weren’t important to me, I wouldn’t choose Sonos. As you know, there are plenty of soundbars available these days.

Reported!

I’ve finished my interaction with Sonos support.

Unfortunately, the Sonos support team abruptly ended the conversation and handed everything over to the investigation department. They also mentioned that they were unable to reproduce this issue on their end.

From my own testing with other albums, I discovered that this phenomenon isn’t limited to this album—shorter tracks in the Dolby Atmos format can also trigger it.

However, since the support team couldn’t reproduce it and there are no reports from others in this community, there might be additional factors involved (such as device combinations, generation, settings, etc.).

In any case, it’s very disappointing that Sonos support didn’t take a proactive approach to address my problem. At this point, I can only hope the investigation team will handle it properly.

I haven’t tied this track but experienced the exact same issue on my Arc/Sub 3/Play:3 configuration on a few Atmos tracks the other day. Player doesn’t reboot, but something crashes, it recovers in a few minutes, and the player’s queue is cleared. 

Sure hope you submitted a diagnostic within 10 minutes, to capture the event, and then called Sonos to discuss it, so that CS has something to pass on to the coders. 

​@barrygster 

Thank you for your report. I think your caes is same as mine.

@Airgetlam

I’ve already called, send my diagnostic data,  and discussed with them. They analyzed it off-line, and then abruptly ended the conversation and handed everything over to the investigation department.

Delighted you provided them hard data that they can pass on. In my experience in code teams, having traceable data for bugs is an enormous help. Almost to the point where most engineers don’t like to work on anecdotal reports, even if they’re true. I’ve heard a lot of ‘but it works fine on my machine’ discussions. Harder to ignore verifiable data ;)

yeah I did actually just need to get around to dealing with support …. Diagnostic number ********** if an employee wants to pick it up from here

Moderator Note: Recorded and removed Diagnostic Number. Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

​@barrygster 

Please remove the diagnostic number. Sonos considers that confidential information related to your privacy. No one will call you. You need to call Sonos tech support to be actionable.

Actually the moderators are instructed to remove posted diagnostic numbers and we rarely see visits from the developer bunch. It may get passed up the chain as they are removing it, I'm not sure.

Sonos support doesn’t live in these forums, just Forum moderators. It might benefit you to read the Diagnostics - How do they work? thread. 

I also had the same issue with another Dolby Atmos album: Sabaton - The Last Stand

https://music.apple.com/album/the-last-stand/1463625294

I have also tried playing the album mentioned in this post:

https://music.apple.com/album/tchaikovsky-the-sleeping-beauty-childrens-album-piano/1825381287

I can so far reproduce this issue on both albums.

I currently have an open case with support on this; I’ll update here on how it progresses.

Forgot to mention my setup:

Beam (Gen2) + Sub Mini + Era 100 x 2