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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

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.

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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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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

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.

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

Report Apple Music playback issues on Sonos here:

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

Reported!

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

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.

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barrygster

Lyricist II

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.

Airgetlam

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.

Bruce

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CCCarlAuthor

Trending Lyricist I

@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.

Airgetlam

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 ;)

Bruce

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barrygster

Lyricist II

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.

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.

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