Contributor I

[Solved] Sub disconnects from Arc frequently

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
July 29, 2024
25 replies
1000 views

Setup: Arc, Sub Gen 3, 2x One SL surrounds. All on wifi. Router about 25’ away from Arc. Sub about 2’ away from Arc. Surrounds about 12’ away from Arc. Router is configured with one SSID available in 2.4 or 5 ghz. Router system is Asus: one primary and two wifi-mesh nodes. Throughout my house, about 8 other Sonos speakers (mostly era 100).

Issue: Configuration was working fine until the new app release in May or so (don’t remember exactly when I updated). After that, the sub kept disappearing from the app and network and the surrounds would show up as connected, but then not operate (i.e., no sound comes through them).

Solution: Ran ethernet wire from router to Arc. Everything’s been working perfectly since.

Although I don’t believe this is a “good” solution, it certainly seems to have fixed the problem.

I believe Sonos needs to fix this more broadly though - part of the value proposition of Sonos (for me) is how well they work over wireless connections. I’m obviously not the only person who experienced this.

Note: This same issue was raised and addressed in another thread here - but it was closed for comments, so I couldn’t add anything other than a thumbs up.

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I

Ian_S

Prodigy III

Adding an ethernet cable is potentially a big network topology change…

According to here:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/supported-wifi-modes-and-security-standards-for-sonos-products

It looks like the Soundbars only use the 2.4GHz WiFi as they use the 5GHz channels for bonding to surrounds and subs if connected, which in your case they are.

So all interaction with streaming services, Sonos cloud, local files and all your other speakers, will be via the 2.4GHz channels at those speeds. (Not fast, congested.) Your Era’s and One SL’s will presumably be on the less congested 5GHz channels.

When you plug in your ethernet cable to the soundbar it changes to:

All streaming, local libraries, and interactions with your Era speakers will take place over ethernet (And be a hell of a lot faster with no congestion as far as the soundbar is concerned). The 2.4GHz interface will probably be dealing with just your non-bonded One-SL’s via Sonosnet, so a different 2.4GHz channel now to before, so less congested but possibly still subject to more interference.

5GHz remains bonded speakers only.

If as we suspect, the new Sonos ecosystem is more chatty than before, it’s possible that this could be why it behaves better as the soundbar is no longer potentially being held back by a busy 2.4GHz network.

There are a lot of unknowns as we have no idea really what Sonos have changed in the app or firmware that makes it more vulnerable to stability issues, and also don’t know if soundbars behaviour is permanently changed once their firmware is upgraded. Can third party apps control surround systems? I don’t have one so have no idea. Audio here can come from HDMI/optical as well as more traditional Sonos sources.

On (just) speakers there’s evidence to suggest that the old API’s for starting music from 3rd party controllers and the Sonos desktop apps are more stable than the ones the new app where speakers can vanish etc. appear to use.

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Ian_S

Prodigy III

I guess if you have a spare WiFi router that can run in bridge mode, an interesting experiment would be to move as much non-Sonos 2.4GHz stuff as you can onto that router, and then see if running a soundbar wirelessly improves at all. If it did, that would point to 2.4GHz congestion.

The reason I say move the non-Sonos stuff is because I’m not sure how well Sonos speakers respond to different WiFi networks (albeit on the same subnet) and also I would not be confident of mDNS being broadcast correctly between different WiFi routers either… With all Sonos speakers, 2.4 and 5 on the same WiFi, you would hope discovery etc. would be handled better.

EDIT: Of course the elephant in the room remains the question of what has changed to make a system that previously worked not work on the same networks? And are systems with soundbars more susceptible to issues due to the soundbars reliance on the worst network in any home, the 2.4GHz one? This would make the feature request to be able to disable Sonosnet but keep WiFi on, quite important on Sonos soundbars IMO.

S

SoundAndFuryAuthor

Contributor I

My POV: Sonos should be investing the time and resources to do the testing and resolution. It’s shocking to me that Sonos does not have an Asus mesh wifi set up in their testing lab - to reproduce exactly the issues we (many many of us) are experiencing. Frustrating (to under-state) that it isn’t happening, and every Sonos person I’ve engaged with - including tech support - has zero experience with Asus routers (Asus is a market leader - though I’m not sure I should have to convince Sonos this.)

I

Ian_S

Prodigy III

My POV: Sonos should be investing the time and resources to do the testing and resolution. It’s shocking to me that Sonos does not have an Asus mesh wifi set up in their testing lab - to reproduce exactly the issues we (many many of us) are experiencing. Frustrating (to under-state) that it isn’t happening, and every Sonos person I’ve engaged with - including tech support - has zero experience with Asus routers (Asus is a market leader - though I’m not sure I should have to convince Sonos this.)

Don’t disagree!! 😉

H

hilander911

Lyricist III

Don’t ASUS routers allow you to downgrade their firmware? So that could be a simple way to eliminate the firmware as being responsible?

I have done just that, and no difference, the firmware is not the issue.

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