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Unable to group multiple speakers and play all the same music

  • 26 February 2022
  • 4 replies
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T
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Hi,

I’m starting to getting really desperate here.

I have a house full of sonos speakers, mainly Play:1 and One’s. For example you have the living room with a stereo pair of Play:1’s, on my desk there are 2 One’s in stereopair, and in the kitchen there is a Play:3. Every Sonosproduct I have is wireless connected, and connected to a professional Wifi-system. That last part is my actual job. I install professional wifinetworks. But to be honest, I never experienced that much issues with sonos, at any client, with the same wifi-hardware. Everything is Ubiquiti Unifi. I can garantee that every speakers has its own access point withing max 3-4 metres, and the connection is perfect.

 

The problem I have is that some speakers suddenly start, and stop playing. I haven’t been able to have them all play the same playlist. Sometimes it works to combine living room and kitchen. When I group more then 2 groups it never works. Very frustrating. So after half a year of trial and error, I can honestly say I’m running out of options here. Today I haven’t been able to play any music on any stereopair. So now I can officially say my sonossystem is broken. It starts playing, and stops after a couple of seconds.
I can guarantee that every speaker has a perfect wifi-connection. We don’t have any other issues with other devices connected wireless.

Also, and that makes it hard to troubleshoot, somedays I’m able to play some music, and somedays, like today, everything I try doens’t work.

Is there a maximum of speakers to stream hi res music to? I use Roon/Qobuz/local FLAC files as a source. It’s more like the system cann’t pull the stream of audio.

Playing music on each individual speaker (when I ungroup and un-stereo every speaker) isn’t a problem.

Please, is there anybody out there who can help me. I know my question is pretty generic, but I don’t know what to describe more. I’ve tried alle the other options and settings in the other online threats, but that didn’t help me a lot. They mainly focus on bad networkconnections but I can state that I have no issues with my (wireless) network.

If I just was able to create some kind of log files, like other people do here, and let somebody analyse it, I can actually understand what is going wrong.

 

Thanks in advance,

Thomas

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Best answer by Corry P 1 March 2022, 13:31

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4 replies

J

I suggest you use SonosNer.  It is usually the best solution with mesh WiFi. As an experiment, connect a Sonos speaker by Ethernet to your touter. Power cycle the other speakers. Check in About My System  that every speaker has WM:0 not WM:1 next to it.

See how it goes. 

T
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I can wire some speakers, but not all of them. Maybe it solves the issues downstairs, but then the sonos speakers upstairs have to connect to a wired speaker downstairs. I have a lot of clients complaining of speakers upstairs (bathroom is a classic) not able to connect since they switched to sonosnet (because the multimediaguy wired the soundbar for example). We always solve Sonosissues at clients by disconnecting all of them, and connect them to the wifi.

That’s why it feels weird to do the exact opposite at my own house.

The system is now playing after a full reboot, so I’m going to enjoy my evening as long as it lasts.

When the issue returns, I wire the speakers that I can wire.

It’s also very strange that my roon endpoints (raspberry pi’s using wifi) have no problem streaming hi-res files across the house, 4 at the same time, but a sonos speaker won’t play on the same spot with the same connection. That’s what strikes me with Sonos all the time. The speaker behaves differently then other wifi-clients, or even wifi-speakers. That’s what I try to understand. What is a Sonos One doing differently then a HEOS-speaker at the exact same spot streaming the same music..

J

Your call. IMO there is limited chance of achieving a stable system with your current approach. 

Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @ThomasVandromme 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Just to expand on what @John B said, if you wire just one Sonos device to ethernet, that will change the way in which all of your Sonos devices connect to the network - a new mesh WiFi will be created just for Sonos where every participating unit is a node for the next unit to possibly connect to, and rebroadcast. You will want to adjust SonosNet to a channel that doesn’t overlap with your UniFi system - Settings » System » Network » Change SonosNet Channel.

The speaker behaves differently then other wifi-clients, or even wifi-speakers. That’s what I try to understand. What is a Sonos One doing differently then a HEOS-speaker at the exact same spot streaming the same music..

Sonos speakers communicate with each other directly, bypassing the router, as well as communicating via the router with rooms out of range and any devices running the Sonos app, as well as with the internet. This is not how a typical device utilises WiFi, and as a result, some settings/features of your WiFi system and/or router may interfere with these communication routes.

The following steps may help:

  • Log into the UniFi controller.
  • In the Settings tab, click Wireless Networks.
  • Click Edit next to the network SSID.
  • Expand Advanced Options.
  • Uncheck Block LAN to WLAN Multicast and Broadcast Data.
  • In the Settings tab, click Sites.
  • Disable Auto-Optimize Network.

If you still encounter playback issues, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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