Sound cuts out of wired PlayBar

Note that only Forum moderators have the ability to see diagnostics. Sonos support folks don’t frequent these forums, so if @Ken_Griffiths suggestions don’t work, I’d suggest that you call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

I plan to hit up chat support tomorrow, just getting started ahead of time.

Update: The TV input does drop out from time to time, but it does kill all audio for 2-3 seconds, including others in the group.  This is not what happens when streaming music.

As for changing SonosNet channel…that isn’t really a great option.  I have 5 APs across the house all on channel 1 or channel 11.  SonosNet is the only thing running on channel 6 at my house.  I will go back and take a look at what my APs think channel 6 looks like as far as how congested the airspace is.  

I am a Network Engineer by trade, so fairly fluent in WiFi/RF geekery discussions.  My house network is not the standard basic combo router/modem/switch/wifi.  But overall, they all work the same.  Cisco and Ubiquiti switching and Ubiquiti for WiFi.  This hardware has all been in place for several years with the Sonos gear.

I am perplexed at why SonosNet dorking would cause issues with the wired device?  I get it on the SonosNet connected devices…my kitchen Play:1 cuts out from time to time and I have always assumed that is a WiFi gap, but the majority of the other speakers across the house never hiccup.

I can probably get one of my Beam’s to be hardwired.  I think I have an Ethernet jack near the one in my Master, but really worry about signal quality there since that is on one end of the house while the Playbar is smack dab in the middle.

I have rebooted the Playbar this past week, that was one of my first things I tried.

You mention “paired” do you mean the other speakers in the Playbar’s room (sub and surrounds) or do you mean ones in other rooms grouped to the Playbar?

If it is the multiple rooms case, does the music drop when you start by creating the Group with the Playbar or only when you start creating the Group from another Room?

In the second case you are sending the music to the Room you started the Group with and then back to the Playbar, giving it 2 network trips. In the first the Playbar sends the music to the other Room(s) with just one wireless trip.

I don’t have Pandora but my Amazon music will glitch from time to time with just one Room stopping while other Rooms continue to play without issues. I’ve never seen it come back from that failure without intervention but a quick selection of a different Amazon stream gets the problem Room playing again and I can switch back.

@RubberBand Man

When playing the TV Audio to the ‘grouped’ rooms have you tried increasing the audio buffer in ‘Group Audio Delay’ in the PlayBar settings - it defaults to 75ms, but it can be increased to as much as 2s - that usually solves TV Group Room playback.

A chat session with support sent me to call.  Called in and the first thing they wanted to do was change WiFi channels...which I refuse to do due to the amount of known interference on the other two channels.

Support did notice I use Ubiquiti and had me make two adjustments there.  So enabled “Multicast DNS” and “IGMP Snooping” at the global network layer.  We all know Ubiquiti has a checkered past regarding their firmware updates and introducing different problems in every “fix” they issue.  I have yet to correlate if any updates have happened that line up with my “issues” with the Sonos environment.

What drives me wonky is trying to understand how SonosNet impacts audio output of a wired speaker?  Support was unable or unwilling to explain this.  The Playbar is wired to Ethernet and audio input was via Optical.  I guess I could also unplug the Ethernet and see if behavior changes any.

@RubberBand Man 

Perhaps this link below might prove to be helpful to you too…

https://github.com/IngmarStein/unifi-sonos-doc

I have the very same issue. The Playbar is wired and all other speakers I have are wireless. The Playbar is linked with a pair of rear surround speakers and is often grouped with a pair of speakers in our kitchen. When dropouts occur, they affect only the Playbar, the other speakers continue to play. This problem has been going on for a couple of months now. I’ve had the Playbar for years and never before had this problem. 

I also called support and sent them diagnostics. They instructed me to enable Wifi on the Playbar (didn’t help) and to play around with the SonosNet channel (also didn’t help). They gave me a ticket #, but there’s no way to follow up on the ticket and I’ve heard absolutely nothing from Sonos support since.

My guess is that there’s a bug in the Playbar firmware and being an old product it’s very unlikely they’ll do anything to track the bug down and fix it. If I only had a couple of Sonos speakers I probably would have discarded them by now, but I’m heavily invested in their “system”. I’m sure replacing the Playbar with one of their new products would fix the issue, but I’m not biting. Not happy.

So your Playbar surround speakers were not working before this support call, or did you have them wired to the LAN? - might it be a wired network latency issue, perhaps? 

The surround speakers and kitchen speakers are working fine via Wifi.