Play 3 Powersupply fault.

jamietaylor13,

First post! Welcome to the forums.

SONOS does not support DIY service in any way. I know that this policy chaffs some, but it probably eliminates some legal risk and saves a lot of time supporting DIY's of various skill levels. SONOS is not unique for establishing this policy.

Burnt traces and capacitors are usually the victim of a larger drama.

Thanks Buzz,

Yes I guess its probably the best policy for them.

I guess I will be getting my multimeter out and spend some time figuring it out. Doesn't look like a complex supply so should be pretty easy to find the fault.

I will keep posting my findings

J

In continuation to the above,

Upon stripping down the play three which proved pretty easy due to its modular design, the issue with the power supply board was the capacitor (C306) had exploded. This is the smoothing capacitor post bridge rectifier. When this exploded it also took out the PCB track sandwiched between the board (multilayer PCB).

After bridging the broken track and replacing the Capacitor with another 33uF 4ooV from RS, the supply was tested and all good.

My Play 3 is now back in action.

jamietaylor13,

Thanks for the follow up.

Did you monitor the temperature of C306 for a while after the repair? I doubt that the original capacitor was the generic type that one would expect to find at Radio Shack. If the ripple current is beyond the replacement capacitor's capability, you'll be repeating this exercise again.

I expect that there are small capacitors across the bridge rectifier. Did these look OK? If you have a second PLAY:3 and a portable AM radio, place the radio near the repaired PLAY:3 and compare the emissions with a never repaired PLAY:3 (this is tricky, be sure to use identical relative positioning for each test) If emission from the repaired PLAY:3 is substantially higher than the never repaired unit, be suspicious. Of course you could have more emissions because of a simple re-assembly issue, but there might be more.

Having soak tested my play 3 for a few month, I can confirm that the fix worked with no other issues. Thanks Buzz for the useful tips. I managed to source the same capacitors and looked at the balancing of the old verses new. All seems fine and not problems with noise etc.

I have recently been contacted regarding the above issue happening to another Sonos user. Unfortunately, as i have only posted 3 times I cannot reply to you privately however I hope that you can view this link to a few photos of the circuit diagram and damage to the board.

Let me know how you get on.

cheers

J

My sister has several Sonos components, but when her relatively new (but out of warranty) Play 3 died she has become concerned about overall Sonos reliability and Sonos support.
She contacted Sonos who told her it would cost her around £120 just to look at her Play 3? Interesting approach to customer support for a high end product!
As I am a bit of a dab hand with electronics I agreed to take a look for free! Having dismantled the Play 3, I discover part of the PSU board is burnt out, sounding familiar? Is this a common mode failure for the Play 3 or Sonos units in general?
I was interested to read this post as it seems to follow a similar trend, are there more out there?
I will investigate further and advise what I find with regards to the actual fault.

Is this a common mode failure for the Play 3 or Sonos units in general?
Not that we're aware of, and some of us have been hanging out around these forums for a number of years. We're pretty familiar with the main failure modes for each unit, and PSU burn-out is not one of them. In fact, I'm not even sure that there's any consistent pattern of failures for PLAY:3 at all.

That's reassuring to hear, although this does surprise me seeing the nature of the failure, which looks remarkably similar to the photos posted by Jamie! I will try to post some of my own. Better these things are brought out into the open!

Each unit has its own failure signature and signatures vary over the life of the unit. Actually, repairing units (of any type or manufacturer) when something turns color is easier because this is a broad hint about what's wrong. (It not as much fun if the printed circuit board is damaged) The burnt part is usually a victim, not the cause, but it is still a helpful hint. The wost type of failure is a low duty cycle intermittent. It takes forever to locate the failure and verify the fix. Once the signature is known, if one sees enough of this intermittent model, you'll just apply the fix whenever one of these units is encountered.

Servicing is quite similar to a hospital. After a quick walk through it's easy to come away thinking that "everyone" is sick -- and they might all have the same problem. Even if a very small percentage of a given model fails, there can be quite a pile of a popular item in the national service center.