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Seamur88
Trending Lyricist I
October 21, 2023
Answered

Android Sonos app - Unable to find your Sonos system *please help!*

The Sonos app seems to become more unstable by each update. Almost weekly I need to uninstall the app and reinstall. I cannot connect to my existing system as it cannot find any speakers.

For example today it could not find my Arc so I setup a new install, waiting for the green light, it found the Arc, connected, connected to my network (2.4 ghz) and then I selected DONE. I go back to look at System and it is still greyed out. Nothing there. I have checked and restarted both my phone and modem 3 times. I repeated setup 3 times and the same process of finding and adding the Arc occurred by then System greyed out and cannot select it. 

 

My setup:

Samsung S23 Ultra

Sonos Arc with Sonos Sub Mini

2 x Sonos Move2’s set up as a stereo pair

 

I tried Sonos support and they don’t have a clue -- rarely can they fix anything from my experience. I am at the end of my rope having to reinstall and run setup so many times (i think I am at around 15 times now) and I have had to do the same on the Move2’s 6 times.

Looking for any help here as my last option before returning and moving on to a different system.

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Ken_Griffiths
Ken_GriffithsAnswer
October 21, 2023

Thank you. I appreciate the detailed response and valuable recommendations. I am not very technical but will attempt some of the areas you suggested to resolve. If anything it kindof reinforces I am a bit over my head and the simple system I was looking for is likely not Sonos. 

I will see where this leads me but I do appreciate your response which further confirms a product return will likely be in my near future. 

Much appreciated.

Yes, Sonos is a computerised multi-room wireless/wired network audio system and the players need to successfully communicate over the various LAN segments and speak with any controllers too. It works well if the network is setup correctly and robust, but if there are any networking issues, then it may require some network configuration, which I suspect is perhaps the case here. 

If you’re struggling to resolve these things yourself, the best option is to definitely go back and speak with Staff at Sonos Customer Support - they might even raise your case to a Level-2 engineer to get you back up and running, particularly if your happy to provide them with local network access, but just see what the Staff say.

I hope you can get things sorted.👍

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Seamur88Author
Trending Lyricist I
November 21, 2023

Thanks Ken. Yes they can still play except Sub Mini showed a question mark. Before I did a factory reset I closed the app and rebooted my Samsung s23 several times. I download the Sonos app again, reset the Arc and paired, then it said I need to re-register. I tried and it continually returned an error. I tried a factory reset on the Sub Mini. I closed and restart the app. First 2 times nothing showed, third time it recognized the Sub Mini. It added the Mini and then pushed me back to registering the Arc. Once that returned another error it didn't add the Arc or Mini. Patient wearing thin as this app seem very buggy and inconsistent. 

    buzz
    buzz
    Grand Maestro
    November 21, 2023

    The SONOS units are impatient. If there is a communication issue, perhaps due to WiFi interference or network traffic stalls, the SONOS unit or controller will give up. These events leave clear tracks in the diagnostics — unless you have Factory Reset before submitting the diagnostics. 

      Ken_Griffiths
      Ken_Griffiths
      November 21, 2023

      @Seamur88 

      This is what I think is perhaps the case…

      If the speakers are still playing audio, or capable of playing, without opening the Sonos App, then they are okay and probably all (from their perspective) is working as it should be - so (please) do not  factory reset them each time, as that’s not ever going to solve the issue. It’s likely doing more harm than good.

      The issue you appear to have is "SSDP Multicast Device Discovery” - in brief, your controller device/Sonos App is using SSDP (part of the UPnP protocol)  to initially discover the Sonos players, multicasting via UDP to 239.255.255.250:1900 and, for good measure, broadcasting to 255.255.255.255:1900. Thereafter communication is unicast. At least that’s my understanding.

      In your case, this discovery is failing across your network setup and it needs to be resolved - it can be something on the mobile device that is causing this. It can be the router and/or it’s settings, or it could be network switches, or other wireless access points that are not allowing the multicast packets to get through to the destination.

      If this IS your issue and I suspect it is, then factory resetting your Sonos speakers will never resolve this in the medium to long term. You (and others, myself included) need to try to find the cause. In some cases that may be a simple settings change, or in perhaps a worse case scenario, it might mean a new router.

      I think at the moment you’re looking in the wrong place, trying to solve this and I suspect the real answer lies elsewhere.

      Have you discussed this issue with Sonos Support at any point and has multicast device discovery been a part of that discussion? 

        Ken_Griffiths
        Ken_Griffiths
        November 21, 2023

        @Seamur88,

        Your comment mentioned earlier …. "Bizarre update. After 4 hours of trying to troubleshoot I restarted my phone (although I did this multiple times) and for some reason the pairing worked and the speakers are connected to the app again."

        ….this is a classic example of a ‘discovery’ issue - I’m wondering already if there are multiple wireless access points within your local network, as my initial thoughts here are, that the phone was perhaps connected to one access point, or WiFi band, one minute and things were not working ….and then later connected to a different wireless access point, or band, the next minute and the Sonos devices were suddenly discovered. 

        Another explanation perhaps is the phone was initially connected to a guest WiFi network, or using its .LTE connection, or using WiFi Calling etc. and later established a correct local network connection.

        The above are just some very simple things/suggestions/explanations to provide you with examples, but there are lots more things to consider before ever choosing to reset a Sonos device.

          Seamur88Author
          Trending Lyricist I
          November 21, 2023

          Thank you very much @Ken_Griffiths. I really do appreciate the extra time to reply with this valuable detail and help troubleshoot with me. I will try your recommendations hopeful that I am successful. Again this is very much appreciated.

            Ken_Griffiths
            Ken_Griffiths
            November 21, 2023

            Ah that’s okay.👍

            Just post back at some point in the future with a little detail about your local setup, such as…

            • Make/Model of Router (NB: an online link to user manual is quite helpful too).
            • Make/model of anynetwork switches, or wireless access points.
            • Channels & Channel-Width in use on each access point.
            • Make/Model/OS of controller device.
            • Sonos products (state if any are wired to the LAN and if so where to).

            Then we can perhaps begin to see where the issues may lie.

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