Seems like there might be potential wifi interference between the Beam and the surround speakers, although it could be just an audio signal change from the TV to the Beam, or even a duplicate IP address issue.
Have you submitted a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and called Sonos Support to discuss it.
There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.
When you speak directly to the Support staff, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.
How is your Beam connected to the Internet? Is it wired to Ethernet? Have you turned off the Beam's WiFi?
Thank you for your replies.
The Beam is wired ethernet, so the WiFi is disabled. I can do the same with the surround spkrs, but only through EOP adapters, which is really not any better imo, as I am sure the problem still existed when I tried it that way round.
I will submit a diagnostic and see if they can come up with anything.
Thank you.
WiFi on Beam shouldn't be disabled. If so, there's no direct connection between the Beam and your surrounds and it needs to travel thru your LAN, then to you WLAN and then to the surrounds. This adds up to latency and that's why your surrounds are occasionally dropping.
Best option is to turn the WiFi back on Beam. It will allow the Beam connect to the surrounds thru a dedicated 5GHz network. At the same time, it'll create SonosNet. If you wan't to disable SonosNet, unplug the Ethernet from the Beam.
Other option is to wire the Beam AND the surrounds. Try avoiding hops, so if possible connect the Beam and the surrounds directly to the same switch / gateway / router.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you, I will try that. Cheers.
I type too slow but I'll leave this anyway.
The option shown as disable WiFi doesn't disable the WiFi. What it does is disable the radio, the one used for WiFi but also used for the hidden 5 gHz link to the Surrounds and Sub.
As the Sonos documentation shows, do not turn that off until you have consulted Sonos support and are aware of the issues and needed solutions.
Understood. Thank you Stanley_4.
Thank you one and all, that seems to have done the trick very nicely. So simple when you think about it really….
Wouldn't it be nice if Sonos made it clearer just what that option does?