Hi @jwsg 

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear you had such trouble! Factory resetting your Sonos device(s) is not recommended unless instructed by our technical support team, or if selling the unit(s). Resetting your entire system (be it 1 speaker or more) will indeed irreversibly erase all your favourites, playlists and settings - none of these are retained by the Sonos app. I can only recommend that should you experience problems again - related or not - you should get in touch with our technical support team, who will do all they can to resolve any problems without resorting to a reset. I suspect a reboot of your router would have helped. We would also have liked to document your issue, with diagnostics, seeing as you were badly affected by a function new to that model.

5GHz may well sound tempting, but in the case of streaming music the increase in connection speed barely matters - the 5GHz connectivity has been added to increase compatibility with routers that insist on band steering, and to improve playback on larger groups (if one speaker needs to distribute a stream to 8 other speakers, for example, the increase in available bandwidth could help).

In fact, a couple of months ago I removed my 5GHz credentials from my own Sonos system because 2.4GHz can get through walls more effectively and I was thus able to reduce my network packet error rate, making playback more reliable in the rooms further away from my router. Not that I am in any way saying that you should undo what you have done - if your Play:1 plays without issue, please leave things just as they are. I just mention it for anyone else who comes across this thread.

Thanks @Corry P 

The new 5GHz option works so that’s not my worry - it’s being unable to change network settings until the Sonos was factory reset and flashing green

In the past I’ve been able to update Play:1 network settings after pressing play/vol-up to start a flashing LED but this setup step isn't mentioned any more

I did try connecting by wired but got exactly the same problem

The “Searching for your system” loop I get is similar what is posted here https://en.community.sonos.com/troubleshooting-228999/sonos-play-1-on-dualband-wifi-with-same-ssid-6872038?postid=16603771#post16603771

Some of the time spent configuring a reset speaker could be mitigated if services and settings are account linked in the app or cloud

Wireless network routers/devices for both WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 connections seem to now mostly come from factory with both the 2.4Ghz band and 5Ghz bands broadcasting the exact same SSID/name by default and the ‘band steering’ is handled by the router.

So this sort of change by Sonos, merely encourages me to not change anything within my Sonos setup, but instead to just leave my router/WiFi set at their default settings, with each band now having the same SSID, rather than trying to separate out the bands with differently named SSID’s - so that where I have decided to head towards with this type of announcement. 

I hope that’s the thing that we should perhaps be considering here ..and we simply just leave the router to now do its job?

Thanks @Ken_Griffiths 

I use a split SSID to let me choose which devices are on 5GHz and which 2.4GHz, but the problem was I couldn’t change the existing network settings with the app - either when connected wireless which may be  tricky - or wired which should be straightforward. I might have just wanted to update SSID or password.

After a factory reset the app did detected the speaker, offered the 5GHz SSID and added the speaker - I was just left with the task of restoring settings and services but at least I had a working system

So it’s just a warning that although 5GHz 802.11a works, changing network settings might not be easy on some network setups.

Once Sonos devices have ‘settled’ around the Home, on their various bands, it will be interesting to see how well all this works, particularly when perhaps two Sonos speakers in a stereo pair have each settled on different bands (and channels).

There is no way within my own router configuration (at default settings) to force devices (manually) onto a selected WiFi band - it’s all automatic in my case (sadly).

Also, with some WiFi mesh Hub networks these days, I guess it’s perhaps the case that it might not be possible to even select the same WiFi access point too for such ‘paired’ products.

Its interesting to see that Sonos are likely having to consider these type of network connection issues, going forward. It sounds like quite a difficult task for those developers/engineers who are undertaking these type of network connection changes.

From my perspective, there’s greater value in maintaining my system on the 2.4Ghz band, due to the nature of the frequencies, and better reach and penetration. And the speed of a 2.4Ghz channel is more than enough to carry music, so there really isn’t any benefit to me to push it on to 5Ghz.

I can see how people who prefer to have one band used by their router might desire it, but then I start to wonder why they just don’t go the SonosNet route by wiring a device directly to the router, and let Sonos handle it all, not on the WiFi bandwidth (albeit still on the LAN) at all. 

Well it’s also true I guess that the Sonos HT master devices will only use the 2.4 GHz band as their 5Ghz adapter is used for bonding purposes, but maybe that could change too at some point in next generation hardware (perhaps?)

Home WiFi is certainly continuing to improve, that’s for sure.

I should have made the thread just about what my problem actually is - that even after connecting wired the Android app wouldn’t let me change network settings - and not the pros/cons of different bands.

Even though the app was happily controlling the speaker over wired going in to Manage Networks → Update Networks just failed

Worryingly it also wanted to enable Bluetooth - irrelevant for a Play:1 and for a wired connection. 

Only a factory reset (flashing green) put the Play:1 into a state that it would allow me to re-connect to the wireless network after deleting the old SSID from the settings - unless someone knows and can verify the correct steps.

So trying the 5GHz band was just the reason I had to be changing network settings - so at least I can warn against making network changes as this looks off with the current firmware/app with the Play:1 at least

This is what the App says about the Bluetooth requirement you encountered on the controller device…

Sonos uses Bluetooth to:

• Find and connect to nearby Sonos products and receive diagnostics from them.

• Transmit information, like your WiFi password, between your mobile device and Sonos products during setup.

• Provide access to some product configuration settings for Bluetooth streaming products.

• Provide access to playback data for Bluetooth streaming products.

What if I don't turn on Bluetooth?

The Sonos app won't be able to find and connect to all nearby products. This means some products can't be set up wirelessly and troubleshooting will be affected.

—————————-

So it’s likely needed as a ‘general requirement’ for the network setup process and is not anything to worry about … you just cannot go onto complete adding the new network credentials via ‘update networks’ without first enabling BT on the controller device, despite the case the Play:1 may not use the feature, it’s still likely used by the more modern Sonos products and presumably the App doesn’t at that point know what products you will be looking to update.

I’ll try and test the ‘update network’ process here too at some point and report back on what I see in the App.

Note too that microphone access on the controller device is also a setup requirement.

@jwsg,

Well I did have a couple of minor difficulties getting the Play:1 to accept the new network credentials initially, but a quick restart of the speaker quickly resolved things and I was able to add the new WiFi network. I grabbed a few screenshots along the way, which I’ve redacted in places for privacy purposes and put into two groups of 4 images (attached) just for reference here.

I guess if the initial issue had persisted, I would have taken the easy option of wiring a single speaker to the new router and running things in wired (SonosNet) mode, until maybe trying another device (if I had another, that is), or spoken/chatted to Sonos Support online, but the power-cycling of the device was the thing that sorted it.

HTH

@Ken_Griffiths Many thanks for taking the time to test this

On mine after clicking ‘Find System’ it stays on ‘Searching for your system’ for several seconds before looping back to the ‘Find System’ button - now as as it did before.

I tried the wired connection which really should have worked but still didn’t - it just wouldn’t advance to ‘Select a product to change...’

After I deleted the existing SSID hoping that might trigger the next stage of the wizard that I had to resort to a factory reset as it then had no way to connect wirelessly

It’s hard to understand what with my setup that if the app can control the speaker OK it won’t advance to the ‘Select a product to change ...’ stage - even when wired

I didn’t see the issue you mention (obviously), the app ‘update networks’ feature scanned and found the system here and I got the screen where you can then usually slide left and right to step through the devices and select a product to add a trusted network to it - maybe a reboot of the network ‘might’ have resolved the issue, but I guess the horse has bolted now, it might even be a router setting too, perhaps?

Rather than opting  to reset ALL, post your decision to remove your WiFi credentials from the network settings, it might have been easier to leave one device cabled to the router and then reboot the others, forcing all to then use the in-built SonosNet connection instead of the routers WiFi signal. At least that would have saved you resetting everything and starting over from ‘factory’.

Its all done now though I guess… ‍♂️

I do think, personally speaking this ‘update networks’ area of the App however could be made easier to use for the end-user and perhaps Sonos might at some point take a look at how to make it work well - I did find it a bit ‘flakey’ and had to reboot the Play:1 speaker to get things to work.

Anyhow, what’s done is done, I guess. 

Thank you again @Ken_Griffiths for your time. I only have one speaker.

As you and @Corry P suggested I tried online chat

We tried changing phone WiFi band and using wired connection and sending diagnostics.

I think I was able to put across the issue that the app is able to fully control the speaker but the network settings wizard is unable to get to your 3rd screen to choose the speaker and change network settings

Even after a 1 ½ hour session nothing was really resolved except perhaps that the router might be to blame but I do now have a case open to move on to phone support

In fact telephone support suggested the network settings issue is instead with the controller app and is under investigation and the IOS app or a different Android device may work OK in the meantime

This appears to have been resolved in the Android app / Sonos firmware with release 14.16 - the app now finds the system in Update Network. There’s also an extra step - as well as needing Bluetooth enabled on the phone it now asks for NFC.

See @Corry P’s comment yesterday on this thread:

Surprised the Release Notes haven’t been updated to include 14.16, which you’d expect such a fix to be mentioned.

Hi @jwsg 

I’m glad to hear the issue has been resolved - 14.16 did indeed address quite a few.

Thanks for updating this thread!