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Sonos Roam keeps disconnecting while playing

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Ken_Griffiths

Another similar option (for anyone perhaps not using an ISP provided router with their Google Nest WiFi Mesh setup) is to perhaps just run a separate WiFi router off the primary nest hub (or connected switch) and hang Sonos, plus a dedicated controller, off that router instead.

To transfer the system to the new router/WiFi see this this Sonos support link: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/connect-sonos-to-a-new-router-or-wi-fi-network

V
Userlevel 1

Great to receive some solutions but in my opinion Sonos Roam should be the easy to use carry on speaker. I mainly use it outside in my garden where I like to have the same stream as inside the house. I use Tune-in for streaming and because the Roam keeps disconnecting, I get the annoying ‘Tunein’ soundlogo followed by commercials every time the Roam reconnect. 
 

If Sonos does not take these issue seriously, I’ll start to swap all my Sonos equipment for another brand. 

Ken_Griffiths

Great to receive some solutions but in my opinion Sonos Roam should be the easy to use carry on speaker. I mainly use it outside in my garden where I like to have the same stream as inside the house. I use Tune-in for streaming and because the Roam keeps disconnecting, I get the annoying ‘Tunein’ soundlogo followed by commercials every time the Roam reconnect. 
 

If Sonos does not take these issue seriously, I’ll start to swap all my Sonos equipment for another brand. 

I can step 60 feet outside our home in the rear garden and the Roam stays connected to our routers 5Ghz band just fine.

After that distance, the Roam switches to the 2.4Ghz band in our case,  which has much longer reach and is far more penetrating through walls etc. so if you’re having difficulties outside your Home, then set your Roam to use the 2.4Ghz band - I recommend using the (least used) fixed ‘non-overlapping’ channel, either 1, 6 or 11 and set a channel-width of 20Mhz only. Perhaps see if that improves your network connection to the Roam. I find the Roams wireless adapter works well and has a very good wireless reach for such a small, compact, device.

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J
Userlevel 1

I’ve been having this problem now with Roam for the six months I’ve been using it. From where I’m sitting, it’s a Sonos Roam problem and anything said to the contrary is letting Sonos off the hook. My system -- 2 One SLs, Beam, Sub, Port w/cd player, and all Apple devices -- does not suffer this disconnection problem. If it did, I wouldn’t have purchased the Roam. So: I await a fix from Sonos. 

Ken_Griffiths

I’ve been having this problem now with Roam for the six months I’ve been using it. From where I’m sitting, it’s a Sonos Roam problem and anything said to the contrary is letting Sonos off the hook. My system -- 2 One SLs, Beam, Sub, Port w/cd player, and all Apple devices -- does not suffer this disconnection problem. If it did, I wouldn’t have purchased the Roam. So: I await a fix from Sonos. 

You haven’t outlined what WiFi standard, band, channel and channel-width you’re using, as it can make a huge difference if you have the portable device on an overlapping channel, or the channel-width is causing interference and as mentioned earlier, the 5Ghz band is certainly not as penetrating, or as far-reaching as the 2.4Ghz band. Try shifting the Roam to improve its connection (as outlined) and just see what happens.

J
Userlevel 1

Ken, thanks, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole, seriously, and I shouldn’t have to. Nothing else in my Sonos system is (mis)behaving this way, for one. And life is too short, for two. The Roam disconnects whether I have it right next to my brand spanking new MacBook Pro, or right next to the router, which is all of 10 ft away (10 ft of open living room space). It disconnects whether I use the Sonos app on my brand spanking new iPhone, or the Sonos app on my iPad Pro. To put it simply, it disconnects. And to judge by this entire comment stream, I do believe this is a Sonos issue. At any rate, as I say, I’ll await a Sonos fix. Absent that I’ll have to put up with the disconnect issue, as everyone else commenting hereabouts seems to have done.

 

 

Ken_Griffiths

Ken, thanks, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole, seriously, and I shouldn’t have to. Nothing else in my Sonos system is (mis)behaving this way, for one. And life is too short, for two. The Roam disconnects whether I have it right next to my brand spanking new MacBook Pro, or right next to the router, which is all of 10 ft away (10 ft of open living room space). It disconnects whether I use the Sonos app on my brand spanking new iPhone, or the Sonos app on my iPad Pro. To put it simply, it disconnects. And to judge by this entire comment stream, I do believe this is a Sonos issue. At any rate, as I say, I’ll await a Sonos fix. Absent that I’ll have to put up with the disconnect issue, as everyone else commenting hereabouts seems to have done.

I think the apt phrase here is ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’ - I don’t know why you think it’s a rabbit hole - it’s just good basic wireless network administration and the suggestions made, help to provide a robust operating environment, which greatly improves a connection for any such devices that roam (pardon the pun) in and around the Home and will even support the greater demands of TV audio, aswell as music audio. 

Anyhow, I’ve put my suggestions/recommendations on the table here - I do think though if you believe there’s some kind of Sonos fix due that will resolve your connection issues without making such ‘obvious’ local network changes, you perhaps maybe waiting for some time.

F
Userlevel 2

For someone who doesn’t know what the heck you’re talking about with bandwidth, 5Ghz—-it’s about Sonos. All i wanted to do was plug and play my SONOS.  I had no problem with my Bose, JBL speaker and i shouldn’t have to be a tech wiz to fix this problem. Nor do i want to learn- technology is not my forte 

Ken_Griffiths

For someone who doesn’t know what the heck you’re talking about with bandwidth, 5Ghz—-it’s about Sonos. All i wanted to do was plug and play my SONOS.  I had no problem with my Bose, JBL speaker and i shouldn’t have to be a tech wiz to fix this problem. Nor do i want to learn- technology is not my forte 

I completely agree and that plug‘n’play is perhaps everyone’s expectation - but there are a vast array of different network setups and devices on the market these days and sometimes not everything may always ‘play nicely’ together and when things perhaps don’t work as they should for the few, then some small adjustments, such as changing a routers WiFi channel are sometimes necessary (as an example).

I’m not talking anything too technical here.  However, if these things are still outside your own knowledge to make such network adjustments and you do not have any friends/colleagues who can assist you, then you can always seek advice from Sonos customer care, or your router manufactures support desk, or even your ISP providers technical support desk. 

As stated earlier, I wouldn’t sit and wait for a fix, as these few (reasonably easy) changes suggested, are more about giving your local network setup a better chance of being more robust and providing the wireless connection with a higher degree of compatibility with a good many wireless network devices …so not just Sonos products.

L

I have 3 Sonos Roam. Two stay connected and one always disconnects. Frustrating. I will continue to watch this thread.

Ken_Griffiths

I have 3 Sonos Roam. Two stay connected and one always disconnects. Frustrating. I will continue to watch this thread.

Are they perhaps operating on different WiFi bands on your network or maybe it’s an overlapping channel that’s causing you the ussue with the one device?

Try running all three on the 2.4Ghz band on non-overlapping channels 1, 6 or 11 and set the channel-width to 20Mhz only in the router configuration pages and see if it resolves the issue.

K
Userlevel 7
Badge +16

Just as an aside to help people troubleshooting.

I have no issues at all with a Move on our TP-LINK Deco S4 Mesh system, works perfectly.

M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Sorry guys… Did you get it sorted out somehow? Hmm! I’m still thinking that there is a possibility that it might be a firmware / hardware issue, rather than an issue with our networks    

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
M
Userlevel 3
Badge +5

It’s happening the same with my Sonos Roam and it's been like this for months,   no matter if I’m using Airplay or  Spotify, it stops playing randomly.   my router is the M5 from TP Link, rebooted several times, updated the app and reinstall the controller but it makes no difference, no matter if other devices work fine in my network, the Roam kips glitchin    

Same.  Doesn’t matter if I’m on wifi or Bluetooth, Spotify or from phone directly.  Always dropping out and/or failing to connect.  No other network issues in house.  Think it’s an issue with Roam that Sonos aren’t acknowledging.  Lots of reports of this. 
Perhaps call Sonos and ask for a replacement 

 

La discapacidad visual no es ningún impedimento, a disfrutar Bros
C

Agree with others--this is obviously an issue with the Roam. Like many, I have a mesh network with many devices connected and the Roam is the only one that exhibits this behavior. If I have to analyze or alter my network topology to suit the whims of one device, that’s just bad design. I also don’t understand why it won’t connect to SonosNet--why build a gadget that’s incompatible with your own proprietary networking scheme?

Let’s see a fix for this, Sonos.

Ken_Griffiths

Agree with others--this is obviously an issue with the Roam. Like many, I have a mesh network with many devices connected and the Roam is the only one that exhibits this behavior. If I have to analyze or alter my network topology to suit the whims of one device, that’s just bad design. I also don’t understand why it won’t connect to SonosNet--why build a gadget that’s incompatible with your own proprietary networking scheme?

Let’s see a fix for this, Sonos.

The reason the Roam (or Sonos Move) does not use ‘SonosNet’ & Spanning Tree Protocol is the fact the device is "portable" - anyone walking around the Home with one in hand, would cause the mesh network to continually make/break the connections between devices and cause interruption to any playing audio across one or more players.. 

Anyhow, that aside, I would also double-check in your case if the Roam is connected to the wireless LAN with an assigned IP address from the local router and just see if it actually is simply not showing up in your Sonos controller App. If it is connected, but not showing, it may not actually be the Roam - it could be an SSDP multicast ‘discovery’ issue across the different segments of your wired/wireless mesh network instead… there are plenty of things that may cause that issue. Perhaps as a quick test, you could switch all the mesh hubs to “Bridged AP" mode to a different brand of router (maybe even one provided by your ISP) and just see if that solves the multicast issue.

C

Thanks for the explanation of SonosNet--makes sense that it's not that dynamic. The mention of STP reminds me how old Sonos is; I got my first Sonos speaker over a decade ago, and the company was more than five years old then. To their credit, were it not for the S1/S2 switch I would probably still have it. Damn fine hardware. 

The rest of the above is informative but not helpful. I'm just not interested in dissecting my network to make one small speaker work. I've never had this "disconnect but not reconnect" issue with any other device--including my Move, although I don't move it much. 

I remember back in the 802.11b days when "roaming" referred to moving from one AP to another using the same SSID. It was kind of cool; who had two access points back then? Ironically, this seems precisely what my Roam is unable to do. 

I just want Sonos to make it work. 

T
Userlevel 2

My sonos roam keeps dropping out also. Plays a minute of a track and then stops. It's connected to a play 1 that is working fine. 

It's the first time it's happened and it's really annoying. 

 

Airgetlam

So, 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.

Bruce
V

Same issue here. Why did it connect without issues 3 months ago and disconnects now every so many minutes? Nothing changed in mu home.

Ken_Griffiths

Same issue here. Why did it connect without issues 3 months ago and disconnects now every so many minutes? Nothing changed in mu home.

  • Auto-channel-selecting WiFi router?
  • Router firmware update?
  • Neighbouring wireless channel change?
  • Band switching?

…Just ‘four of many’ quick things that might have changed automatically, without you personally changing anything.

B

I must admit I’m relieved to see so many of you with the same issue I have with my Sonos Roam SL. I bought this because I had purchased another one for a second home--which was PERFECT right out of the box. This additional one that I bought about 4 months ago constantly disconnects randomly, several times a day, and is not easy to reconnect. No other wifi items in my home behaves like this. Because the other one works so well, this has to be a defective product. Other than putting me through endless rebooting and trying to blame it on my router, Sonos has been no help. What a black mark on their good name. You take your chances buying this product.

Ken_Griffiths

I must admit I’m relieved to see so many of you with the same issue I have with my Sonos Roam SL. I bought this because I had purchased another one for a second home--which was PERFECT right out of the box. This additional one that I bought about 4 months ago constantly disconnects randomly, several times a day, and is not easy to reconnect. No other wifi items in my home behaves like this. Because the other one works so well, this has to be a defective product. Other than putting me through endless rebooting and trying to blame it on my router, Sonos has been no help. What a black mark on their good name. You take your chances buying this product.

Try switching the WiFi band in use. So as an example if the Roam is using the 5Ghz band SSID then switch it to the 2.4Ghz band instead. Set that band to use a fixed ‘non-overlapping’ channel, either 1, 6 or 11, with a channel width of 20Mhz only and see if that resolves your issue.

(PS - don’t forget to remove the 5Ghz SSID from the device using the App network settings). 

Hope that fixes things for you. 👍

B

Ken,

Can’t thank you enough for your help in vastly improving my Sonos Roam SL performance. Very rarely cuts out now and it was easy to fix. I really appreciate your help. I was a little intimidated with your instructions on what to do, but it was actually simple once I got on the Sonos app and checked “System.” Once the 5G option was de- selected, the problem was solved.

I take back everything I said about what I thought was a lemon product. It just needed a setting change. 

Thanks,

Beagle Mom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J

I must admit I’m relieved to see so many of you with the same issue I have with my Sonos Roam SL. I bought this because I had purchased another one for a second home--which was PERFECT right out of the box. This additional one that I bought about 4 months ago constantly disconnects randomly, several times a day, and is not easy to reconnect. No other wifi items in my home behaves like this. Because the other one works so well, this has to be a defective product. Other than putting me through endless rebooting and trying to blame it on my router, Sonos has been no help. What a black mark on their good name. You take your chances buying this product.

Try switching the WiFi band in use. So as an example if the Roam is using the 5Ghz band SSID then switch it to the 2.4Ghz band instead. Set that band to use a fixed ‘non-overlapping’ channel, either 1, 6 or 11, with a channel width of 20Mhz only and see if that resolves your issue.

(PS - don’t forget to remove the 5Ghz SSID from the device using the App network settings). 

Hope that fixes things for you. 👍

@Ken_Griffiths or @Beagle Mom, can you give instructions on how to deselect the 5G option?  I clicked on System but don’t see anything about 5G.  Thanks.

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