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Dead Speakers

  • 22 April 2024
  • 8 replies
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Our system is 6 years old…and in the past month 3 speakers ( 2 Play 1’s and a Play 3) have completely died.  Anyone else have this kind of issue?  Each have gone out on separate occasions…so no power surge issue.  Not happy this is happening…

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Best answer by Airgetlam 22 April 2024, 07:07

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No lights of any kind if you remove, then restore power?

If all of the speakers have failed (no lights), I suspect power issues. Make sure that the power cords are fully seated in the player.

Thanks…been there done that, even changed power cords with working speakers…still no light and no indication of power.  Love our Sonos system…but not happy we’re looking at a minimum of $800 to replace the speakers that have died…and nervous about the other 7 we bought at the same time.

Call Sonos Support directly to discuss it.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

it’s an extremely rare thing for the entire computer and speaker in a Sonos to fail. It’s possible that this isn’t the case here. Sonos Support will be the place to determine this, as well as cover any potential replacement options. They are more sensitive to power fluctuations than an average speaker, though, due to those computer aspects inside. 

I’ve seen power surges on separate circuits in my homes, in addition to whole home versions I’m dealing with in my current residence. Like many others, I try to put sensitive devices like my computers, TVs, and Sonos on power filtering systems, to help protect them. Pretty much any device that has a CPU in it. 

At least in this Community we are not seeing reports of this sort of serial failure event. That’s why I’m suggesting power issues. These can be difficult to diagnose and prove. Were all of the failed units on the same circuit? In the US power panels are usually arranged in columns. Were the failed units all in the same column? Have any neighbors experienced any odd electronic failures? Have there been any major power system events (outages) in your area?

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If you don’t have good quality power filters on every Sonos add them.

 

Thanks all.  Sonos Support has determined the speakers are dead and of course out of warranty so they basically offer their upgrade discount of 30% off any new speakers I want to replace them with.  I’ve ordered single outlet surge protectors just to add another layer of protection (though some speakers on the same circuits are just fine at this point).  Hopefully this will also help with any of my current speakers.  Also hoping this was rare to lose 3 speakers all within about 30 days.  

In addition to instant blowout, power surges can cause latent damage that will result in a future failure. A given model can withstand overloads to a certain level. A certain percentage can withstand 10% over that, and so on until 100% will fail at some level. This is the case for both instant and latent failure. Even on the same circuit, units can experience different levels of stress.

A surge suppressor can protect from a certain level of event. Higher event levels result in earlier failure of the surge suppressor and loss of protection. Most surge suppressors will not indicate when they are “done”.

As I said, power issues are difficult to prove. There are relatively expensive instruments that can log events, but only if they are connected at event time. Some areas are informally described as “lightning allies”. In these areas one should use industrial duty surge suppression and whole house protection.  When I was in my teens our house was struck by lightning, a section of wall was blown out, sofa damaged,  carpet damaged, and a radio on another floor was damaged. This was a vacuum tube, inherited radio not turned ON at the time. A more modern TV in the damaged room was spared. I still can’t imagine why the radio was damaged. Probably something was about to fail and the lightning surge pushed it over the edge — but the unit was not turned ON at the time.

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You don’t even need a lightning storm, a drunk driving into a power pole miles from your home can get you an appliance frying surge.

Here most everything not on a UPS is on a surge suppressor.

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