Usually all may go through the wired Sonos ‘root bridge’ (directly or indirectly) as I’ve tried to show with my matrix attached - a little blurred, but you should hopefully get the idea, but which of your Sonos devices are actually wired here?

thanks for the explanation. In mine the mancave is a wired device… but I turned the wifi off as it’s so far from everything else it can’t really be useful. 

THe living room is at one end of the house and is wired…. Everything else is wireless… I thought the device nearest the living room would connect to that… and then the next device would connect to that one and so on… daisy chaining around… I didn’t realise they’d all connect back to the living room, even if there’s a nearer device with a better connection. 

Is there millage in adding more LAN connected sonos speakers around the house in the hope that a wireless speaker will connect to a nearer LAN speaker than the initial one? I didn’t; realise one would be a root 

Have you been experiencing audio drop-out issues then? I assume you have reasons for both wiring and switching off the adapter on Man Cave - how far away from the rest of your system is it?

You may want to look a little closer perhaps at whatever is near to the ‘Living Room’ - just wondering if it is close to your router, or a WiFi access point? - if so, then perhaps move that further away from things to try to reduce the noise around it. 
 

It is possible to change the Sonos ‘root bridge’, but if all is working ok, then I would just leave things as they are.

@haverer2  Acquaint yourself with the Spanning Tree Protocol before rushing to further conclusions. 

Followed link and refamiliarised myself with my computing A level!!! Thanks