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TuneIn BBC Radio Shows “song not encoded correctly”

  • 1 October 2021
  • 45 replies
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I have issues connecting to BBC Radio shows as “listen again”, I keep getting “unable to play ‘Steffen Peddie: **/**/2021’ - the song is not encoded correctly.”

They were playing fine this morning, but they don’t play this evening.

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Best answer by castalla 3 October 2021, 20:23

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45 replies

The “song not encoded correctly” message is often a symptom of a stream corrupted by packet loss. In other words there are likely to be network issues, quite possibly local due to wireless interference.

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Same issue  with me    the shows i listen to worked last week but not this weekend     what is different?

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Same issue  with me    the shows i listen to worked last week but not this weekend     what is different?

It’s got me stumped, there has been no changes to any of my wireless setup in the house. So I would very much doubt it has anything to do with wireless interference, we live far enough away from any neighbours for them to impact my wireless network.

I am hoping that Sonos can provide answers/solutions.

Did either of you submit a diagnostic, and contact Sonos directly?

Or, for that matter, try something other than TuneIn, to see if the BBC isn’t playing games again with TuneIn, as they appear to have done in the past?

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see this from Tune in 

 Please be advised that for this particular podcast, the stream was recently updated thus I suggested you directly reach out to the podcaster to let them know of your experience. This will prompt them to reach out to us to update any streams that may need updating so that it works for the listeners.

it was in relation to shows i listen to on 6 music  Gideon Coe , Marc Riley and others   all same message.

will Sonos contact the BBC?

I’d assume they will, but as they don’t pay any money to TuneIn to carry the stream, it would likely be more helpful if you were to add your voice to the chorus of complaints. And frankly, not to TuneIn, but to the BBC , who is responsible for the server that TuneIn gets the feed from.

It’s splitting hairs but TuneIn doesn’t get the feed as such. It points the Sonos client player at the feed, which it then pulls directly.

Ah, excellent point, all of these systems are being told by the BBC where to access the stream. The BBC owns the servers. 

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Works fine on BBC Sounds.  

Unsurprising. I would expect the BBC to be much more concerned about their own streaming applications than any of the external applications/servers. 

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Same issue here - every single BBC Listen Again show, across stations, that I’ve tried is showing as “not encoded correctly”. It’s about 80% of my listening during the day, so a challenge. 

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The “song not encoded correctly” message is often a symptom of a stream corrupted by packet loss. In other words there are likely to be network issues, quite possibly local due to wireless interference.

Stop it. This “oh, must be your network” nonsense is a classic from the Sonos playbook and absolutely meaningless - just a way to blame the end user rather than spend any time whatsoever investigating why their own products don’t work consistently with a range of average consumer setups. 

We don’t build the products or develop the software, and we’re not tech experts; the onus is not on us. 

The “song not encoded correctly” message is often a symptom of a stream corrupted by packet loss. In other words there are likely to be network issues, quite possibly local due to wireless interference.

Stop it. This “oh, must be your network” nonsense is a classic from the Sonos playbook and absolutely meaningless - just a way to blame the end user rather than spend any time whatsoever investigating why their own products don’t work consistently with a range of average consumer setups. 

We don’t build the products or develop the software, and we’re not tech experts; the onus is not on us. 

“Stop it”? I’ve seen how this “nonsense” plays out countless times.

The vast majority of Sonos problems -- probably well over 95% -- are caused by network issues. Sure, these could be issues at the distant server end -- which might be the case here with the BBC -- or the internet in between, but the weight of evidence is that local network gremlins, usually wireless, are to blame. The laws of physics are immutable.

Sonos provides FAQs to assist with diagnosing wireless problems. Moreover such issues leave clear tracks in the diagnostics, so Support should be able to help troubleshoot.

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Same issue here - every single BBC Listen Again show, across stations, that I’ve tried is showing as “not encoded correctly”. It’s about 80% of my listening during the day, so a challenge

I would be inclined to point at TuneIn... Their integration with the BBC is flaky. 

 

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Works fine on BBC Sounds.  

It does work fine on BBC Sounds, but that app has to be Airplay(ed) from my iPad to the Sonos speakers. Meaning it drains the battery of the iPad.
I want to use the TuneIn Service inbuilt in the Sonos App to listen, so that once it is playing I can turn the iPad off and not have to worry about the battery being drained.

Well, it does appear that all the BBC podcasts accessed via TuneIn are now incompatible with Sonos. 

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Well, it does appear that all the BBC podcasts accessed via TuneIn are now incompatible with Sonos. 

Thanks for checking that out ratty. I am currently laid up in bed recovering from surgery that I had earlier today. I will hopefully be able to do more investigating myself once I am able to get out into the other rooms of my house 😀, and also read these forums more thoroughly. Sorry for wasting everyone’s time.

Well, it does appear that all the BBC podcasts accessed via TuneIn are now incompatible with Sonos. 

Thanks for checking that out ratty. I am currently laid up in bed recovering from surgery that I had earlier today. I will hopefully be able to do more investigating myself once I am able to get out into the other rooms of my house 😀, and also read these forums more thoroughly. Sorry for wasting everyone’s time.

I should qualify my comment. BBC News items and BBC London podcasts do play. The rest don’t. Mysterious.

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Just to add on this - Friday Night Comedy podcast does work fine through TuneIn; but no other shows I’ve tried. So is there a distinction between shows defined as podcasts vs listen again?

The “song not encoded correctly” message is often a symptom of a stream corrupted by packet loss. In other words there are likely to be network issues, quite possibly local due to wireless interference.

Stop it. This “oh, must be your network” nonsense is a classic from the Sonos playbook and absolutely meaningless - just a way to blame the end user rather than spend any time whatsoever investigating why their own products don’t work consistently with a range of average consumer setups. 

We don’t build the products or develop the software, and we’re not tech experts; the onus is not on us

“Stop it”? I’ve seen how this “nonsense” plays out countless times.

The vast majority of Sonos problems -- probably well over 95% -- are caused by network issues. Sure, these could be issues at the distant server end -- which might be the case here with the BBC -- or the internet in between, but the weight of evidence is that local network gremlins, usually wireless, are to blame. The laws of physics are immutable.

Sonos provides FAQs to assist with diagnosing wireless problems. Moreover such issues leave clear tracks in the diagnostics, so Support should be able to help troubleshoot.

Ugh, not sure how to quote only part of this. 

The fundamental point stands that most Sonos customers are *consumers*. They have a Wifi setup that they plugged in and it worked, they’re not IT professionals. And 9 out of 10 of them have a wireless network that’s fairly average - it’s not some obscure mesh approach with huge backhaul or enterprise hardware. If a Sonos product doesn’t work on their average wifi setup that works well enough for them, whose fault is that? 

It’s like Microsoft saying “Windows won’t update - it must be *your* driver issue”. I just bought the computer, I didn’t set up the drivers; why is it my fault that Windows won’t play with fairly MOR drivers??

The fundamental point stands that most Sonos customers are *consumers*. They have a Wifi setup that they plugged in and it worked, they’re not IT professionals. And 9 out of 10 of them have a wireless network that’s fairly average - it’s not some obscure mesh approach with huge backhaul or enterprise hardware. If a Sonos product doesn’t work on their average wifi setup that works well enough for them, whose fault is that? 

It depends. It could be due to interference sources outside the user’s control. On the other hand the market is awash nowadays with promotions aimed at consumers whose WiFi is underperforming. It’s not as if poor WiFi is some kind of arcane technical subject; it’s gone mainstream.

Of course Sonos has long offered a solution which dated from the days when WiFi really was pretty indifferent in quality and coverage, namely SonosNet. An extensible mesh, designed from the outset to carry audio traffic on a separate channel, away from other traffic. It remains a mystery why this original operating mode isn’t used more.

It’s also worth reminding ourselves that the demands of a Sonos system significantly exceed that of a single device that simply needs to connect out to the internet. Sonos components and controllers have to reside on the same IP subnet, with good intercommunication quality as they need talk to one another locally.

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I would like to point out that BBC sounds is not available to those whose Sonos components are not upgraded to S2  - we cannot afford to .   Therefore the answer is not use BBC Sounds. 

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Works fine on BBC Sounds.  

what about those who cant use BBC Sounds ?     :frowning2:

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Then you are pretty much stuck with TuneIn.  Hint: there are ways and means... 

I have this issue currently too and appears to be the same timeline as others.  Working fine until just over a week ago and now no ability to access any listen again content.

I am in Canada so no access to BBC sounds app and TuneIn was the only source for this in Sonos.

I also just changed my internet set-up in the last 3 days (after the problem was here) and reset all network components.  The issue still persists.