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

Similar to the previously reported issue, they closed my support case and transferred the issue to be investigated by the engineering team. They aren’t able to give an exact resolution date. 

Here’s another album, during which the playback fails also:

https://music.apple.com/album/an-immersive-tribute-to-astor-piazzolla-live-ep/1833045274

​@Cant 

Thank you for your replies. It is so important information that not only Arc but also Beam has the same issue.

And I’m so sorry to hear that your support can’t fix the problem as mine.

The albums you shared contain very short tracks and I think they make Sonos system broken. From my experience, tracks shorter than 2 minutes make the problem so often.

I hope the Sonos managers and technical team recognizes this problem, and fix it as soon as possible.

I think your hypothesis is correct. To test it I created two playlists from this album: https://music.apple.com/album/the-last-stand/1463625294 

Playlist 1: Created a playlist from the full album

Playlist 2: Created a playlist from the full album, and then removed the 4th song (Diary of an Unknown Soldier) that’s just 52 seconds. 

When I play the Playlist 1, I can reproduce the issue, around 4th or 5th song it crashes.

When I play the Playlist 2, it plays through to the end of the playlist.

Indeed looks like the Sonos or the Apple Music app on Sonos isn’t able to handle (some of the) short atmos tracks.

​@Cant 

Thank you for your report.

Yes, this problem is easily reproducible for us. However, Sonos suppot told us it was not reprodcucible.

So there might be another factor regarding the problem.

I hope someone find it so that Sonos can analyze it easily.

My speculation is this:

Any song played thru Sonos is buffered. Short tracks leave little time for the buffering process between them hence the drop issues. Especially tracks with little to no dead space in between. Think drinking water in sips versus from a fire hose. Atmos tracks contain much more information versus a stereo track. However as I said in the beginning… this is just my speculation 🤔

I agree with you idea. But if so, w​​​​hy can’t Sonos support reproduce our situation? That’s why I guess there might be another factor(or, Sonos support is just lazy).

And the same Album on Amazon Music works perfectly even with Atmos format. The hardware buffer should be enough for Atmos, and I think this problem can be solved by software update.

Assuming that all Sonos devices have enough spare memory not in use, I’d agree. 

Evidently Apple Music uses a DD+JOC streaming codec vs Amazon Music AC-4 IMS streaming codec. The latter requiring less data processing to achieve the same immersive effect.

Now don’t ask me what all the above jargon means. Below is a link to a page that is partial AI Generated and human interaction with a Youtube video.

Take it for what it's worth or not. However, it does IMO shed some light as to why Apple Music Dolby Atmos streams require more processing vs Amazon Music thus resulting in drops/skips for the former.

• https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=dd%2Bjoc+vs+AC-4+IMS&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Here’s another link from 2021 that speaks to the differences between Apple Music Dolby Atmos streams vs Amazon Music/Tidal Dolby Atmos Streams

• https://www.production-expert.com/production-expert-1/why-your-atmos-mix-will-sound-different-on-apple-music

The conclusion IMO is that Sonos probably has little to no way to rectify the Apple Music Dolby Atmos issues; unless they can somehow introduce/free-up more available processing memory. Admittedly, IMO Apple Music Dolby Atmos streaming on Sonos isn’t a total failure as the issue seems to be most noticeable with short 60 seconds or less tracks.

Thank you for your explanation in detail.

I hope Sonos support members check this thread and solve this problem as soon as possible.