Contributor I

Roam severe and frequent airplay stutter

13 replies
3432 views

The roam is my first Sonos product, a present by my kids, received two weeks ago. I have seen all the reports on playback stutter posted in the forum and elsewhere. I have that issue constantly, usually the second time i turn on the roam on any given day. I got the speaker for its airplay function and it because it does not have run on AC, not for bluetooth. I also have two HomePod minis in my house. While they only run on AC they have performed flawlessly in Airplay. All my iDevices are Airplay 2 compatible. I see no solutions to this Roam problem in the replies posted by sonos, other than „send a diagnostic“. But i see no synthesis of the diagnostics data obtained by sonos that tells forum posters whose speakers airplay-stutter what to do to solve the problem. As a result, I decided to that I will return my Roam and will ask my kids to get me a different brand speaker. It is disappointing because i do like the sound of the roam (the few times airplay actually worked) better than that of the HomePod mini. But for airplay, the Roam is totally useless. And after reading so many posts, I have no hope that So os has a fix for this problem.

Bernd Conrad

Northern Arizona University

Flagstaff, Arizona

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Ken_Griffiths

Really..!! My two Roams here work perfect with Airplay, you did read about the widely reported issue with HomeKit I take it🤔?

Did you follow the steps widely mentioned in other threads here in the community to correct the Apple issue? Apple have been working on the matter and I think the HomeKit issue fix is imminent. Anyhow perhaps see this thread and the information from Sonos Staff…

https://en.community.sonos.com/general-feedback-and-conversation-229090/suddenly-cannot-find-airplay-on-sonos-move-6879260?postid=16637363#post16637363

M

Microtitan

Lyricist I

I have the same problem. Shutting it off doesn’t help. Resetting seems to help sometimes but I would have to that frequently. I hope there’s a firmware update soon.

Airgetlam

My experience is the same as @Ken_Griffiths with no issues whatsoever. Have you called Sonos Support directly to discuss it? As a guess, I’d suggest that you’re experiencing some sort of wifi interference between your AirPlay 2 device, and the Roam. To my knowledge, and use, there’s nothing wrong with the firmware that would warrant an update.

Bruce

K

KKest

Lyricist I

I have the same issue as Bernd. Periodically my Roam will not work properly and starts stuttering the music. I have other Sonos speakers working at the very same time (One, Move, a newer Roam) with no problems at all. Turning the speaker off doesn’t help. Closing the Sonos app and restarting it doesn’t help. If I leave it overnight it’s usually working by the morning. We have a second (newer) Roam that this never happens to. Definitely seems to be a bug in that speaker. Really wish Sonos would fix it. They have to know it’s an issue.

buzz

Grand Maestro

As a reality check, have you swapped physical locations of the two ROAM’s?

If you go to “About My Sonos System…” there is a Hardware Version field for each device that reflects any production changes for this unit. If the versions are different for your ROAM’s, something has been changed. None of this change information is shared with us, but SONOS support might know some details.

Ken_Griffiths

I have the same issue as Bernd. Periodically my Roam will not work properly and starts stuttering the music. I have other Sonos speakers working at the very same time (One, Move, a newer Roam) with no problems at all. Turning the speaker off doesn’t help. Closing the Sonos app and restarting it doesn’t help. If I leave it overnight it’s usually working by the morning. We have a second (newer) Roam that this never happens to. Definitely seems to be a bug in that speaker. Really wish Sonos would fix it. They have to know it’s an issue.

Try switching it to the other WiFi band compared to the one it’s currently using - so if it’s currently operating on the 5Ghz band, then switch it to the 2.4Ghz band and place it on a non-overlapping channel (1, 6 or 11) and if the router allows also set the channel width to 20Mhz only and see if that fixes the issue.

SarahN

Local Superstar

Maybe your Roam is faulty?

I have 4 (crazy I know lol), but a year ago, I did have one that was faulty from new, so sent it back for a replacement.

Would be worth phoning the support team I think.

Can you have too many Sonos speakers? 🤔 😆

S

Saguaro7

Enthusiast II

@eifelbernd

Despite all the pro-Sonos responses here, this is a real problem as you can see by just two thread I’ve linked to below. I’ve experienced occasionally since I first got a Roam about 1 year ago. I suspected it was a weak wifi connection and restarting the Roam has usually (not always) fixed it. Tonight it happened again with a strong signal. I restarted; no help. I added another sonos speaker and that played fine while Roam stuttered. I switched to playing from iPhone via BT; again the stutter persisted. Finally, I asked Sonos to play jazz and it played without issue.

The issue is real. It seems to be isolated to Airplay2 and the Roam. It really makes the Roam disappointing.

https://en.community.sonos.com/portable-speakers-229130/stuttering-airplay-playback-6878786

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/sonos-roam-skips-when-added-to-airplay-through-ios-but-not-when-added-through-sonos-app-6869237

Ken_Griffiths

@eifelbernd

Despite all the pro-Sonos responses here, this is a real problem as you can see by just two thread I’ve linked to below. I’ve experienced occasionally since I first got a Roam about 1 year ago. I suspected it was a weak wifi connection and restarting the Roam has usually (not always) fixed it. Tonight it happened again with a strong signal. I restarted; no help. I added another sonos speaker and that played fine while Roam stuttered. I switched to playing from iPhone via BT; again the stutter persisted. Finally, I asked Sonos to play jazz and it played without issue.

The issue is real. It seems to be isolated to Airplay2 and the Roam. It really makes the Roam disappointing.

https://en.community.sonos.com/portable-speakers-229130/stuttering-airplay-playback-6878786

https://en.community.sonos.com/components-and-architectural-228999/sonos-roam-skips-when-added-to-airplay-through-ios-but-not-when-added-through-sonos-app-6869237

Try switching WiFi bands as mentioned in my post above and if then using the 2.4Ghz band, set the channel-width to 20Mhz only on a fixed non-overlapping channel of either 1, 6 or 11. That should stop the stuttering - most reports arise because of the local network setup and some users are not even using non-overlapping channels on their router and have interference due to their ‘unnecessary’ 40Mhz channel-widths. So it’s often a network wireless overlap issue rather than an issue caused by the portable speaker.

Anyhow perhaps try the suggestion and then see how that goes. I have two Roams here and not had a single issue with either one and quite regularly use Airplay2 audio sources, sometimes playing for many hours on a daily basis without any interruption.

O

ozsmac

Lyricist III

Sadly I’m having the same issues, with 20 and 40 MHz channels, with strong and weak signal. This is more than widely reported, even discussed on the ATP podcast this week. Come on Sonos, it’s time to take a look at this issue.

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