Hi Corry,

OK, I did the actions requested, but the problem still occurs so I submitted a diagnostic.

Usually the other input sources will work in stereo immediately after creating the stereo pair and fail later in the day but this time immediately after recreating the stereo pair Sonos radio worked fine as stereo but immediately on trying Bluetooth input one speaker dropped out. It was back to where Bluetooth played on only one speaker and Sonos radio played only on the other immediately when I tried Bluetooth connection.

Network topology:

A Fiber modem feeds hardwired to a Telus router which is hardwire and Wifi. This router has the WiFi split into hyperbole (5G) and hyperbole-24G (2.4G). This Telus router is Cat5 wired to another router at the other side of the house which also has separated 5G (hyperboleLR5) and 2.4G (hyperboleLR) WiFi bands. There are several devices hardwired to the routers, only phones and tablets and one Nvidea shield (almost never used) are on Wifi, so the WiFi is not heavily used.

The Telus router used to have 2.4 and 5G bands on a singly named network “hyperbole” but I changed this in response to suggestions from Polologt above and it did at least seem to help with the fixing of the echo development while I stayed in stereo with just Sonos radio.

 I was not aware you could Bluetooth to a stereo pair.  If you can let me know how.  I’d like to do that with my Move stereo pair.

Hi @MoPac 

Playing a Bluetooth feed to a stereo pair is possible (when on WiFi) with all Sonos speakers that support Bluetooth, apart from the original Move - it is not capable of communicating via Bluetooth and WiFi concurrently, and therefore cannot stereo-pair when playing Bluetooth.

 Bummer!  My Moves are the originals.  Of course if I had WiFi connected why would I want Bluetooth?

Hi @joeser 

Thanks for trying those steps. Looking at your newest diagnostic, however, I am seeing the same errors as I saw before. This is probably good news, as it implies that there is no fault with either of the speakers - if there was, I would have expected different results with a different speaker now in charge of the pair.

So, it does seem that the cause of this issue may be due to the topography of your network, or the configuration of a device forming part of it. The reason that I asked about your topography is that we did see evidence of the second WiFi broadcast (presumably from your secondary router). Although it is probably a long-shot, could you possibly try removing the connection between the two routers temporarily, reboot the main router and the speakers, then test? When in doubt, we like to try simplifying things where we can, and this seems like an obvious way to do so. If there is no change, by all means please reinstate the connection, but I do recommend ensuring that the second router is put into “Bridge” or “Access Point” mode regardless - if it is not, countless weird issues can arise as a result (due to Dual DHCP).

I’m currently about the only person working on this side of the Atlantic, but I will show the diagnostic to a colleague tomorrow - I may come back with some more advice for you after doing so if you have not already replied here by then.

I hope this helps.

Hi @MoPac 

We did learn a few things from our first foray into portable speakers and Bluetooth (the original Move) - those lessons were applied in our later models. The restriction of the Move’s capability is hardware in nature (the radio chip cannot “do” Bluetooth and WiFi simultaneously), so cannot be reprogrammed differently. Our later Bluetooth speakers have different radios.

Bluetooth is actually a pretty handy way of bypassing any Music Library issues - if your entire music collection is backed-up to your phone’s storage, it’s just one more method by which it can be played (apart from Music Library via SMB, AirPlay, Plex, YouTube Music, Apple Music and iBroadcast.com and any others I have not though of).

Definitely the second router has been set to access point mode since it was installed to avoid address conflicts from DHCP.

I tried removing the second router (powered it off), but still the problem occurred with dropping out of one speaker.

I noticed that my phone setting up the network seemed to take much longer to reconnect to the 5G network (hyperbole) compared to the 2.4G network after router rebooting.

So, I have reconfigured the Sonus system to be on the 2.4Ghz band (hyperbole-24G) as something to try out. I guess the ERA100s prefer to use 5G, I had to disable the 5G band to get the speakers to use the 2.4G band when re-configuring.

The system did at least stay in stereo through trying all inputs again. (Sonos radio, Spotify service, bluetooth, line-in). The test will be later tonight to see if the drop-out occurs when I use the system again in different modes.

@Corry P:

 I fortunately have never lost connection to my library, but I can see why some might like to use Bluetooth in their WiFi environment.

 My wish for battery powered speakers is to have WiFi memory, for lack of a better description.  When I connect to a friend’s or relative’s WiFi with my phone that connection is automatic when I return to that WiFi location.  Would be cool if my Move speakers could do the same.  Then Bluetooth in a WiFi environment makes more sense.

Hi @joeser 

Great! I just wanted to be sure.

Thanks for trying that - I knew the engineer I’ve been consulting would bring it up, so it’s good I can now say “we tried that and it wasn’t the answer”.

Interesting. It doesn’t look like the issue is interference - there are a few 5GHz broadcasts around you, but they are all weak.

I’ll feed this back to my colleague, but please let us know how you get on after a bit of longer-term testing.

Hi @MoPac 

This is already the case. Portable Sonos speakers can keep up to 16 different WiFi credentials in their memory and will automatically connect to any of these that they detect.

However - there is currently a known issue with being prompted to connect to a new network in the new Sonos app. It may help to sign out of the app and sign back in again, resulting in the Update Network prompt becoming available.

I hope this helps.

Just curious here… to get the Move’s onto another WiFi, does that mean they become part of a new system? What happens if there was already another Sonos system on that additional WiFi? 

Hi @Ian_S 

It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want the Move to be a part of the system on the new WiFi, you would need to factory reset it - a speaker can only “belong” to one system. When you take Move home, you would need to reset it again.

If you do not want the two systems to integrate, don’t reset anything and the Move and your app will operate independently of the other system. When you take Move home, it will join your home WiFi and still be a part of your overall system.

I hope this helps.

Hi @joeser 

I think you might have found the answer - looking a bit deeper, there is significant interference detected on 5GHz. I don’t know the source (perhaps the speakers are close to a router, access point or another WiFi device), but switching to 2.4GHz may well bypass that issue.

If the speakers are on or very close to a tile, glass or metal surface, the speakers may be picking up reflections of their own transmissions and detecting that as interference - if this is the case, please try relocating the speakers.

I hope this helps.

So far so good!

This morning I tried all sources and they all still worked.

I find it a bit strange that I have to be connected to the same WiFi network (2.4G) to use the Sonos app, it doesn’t see the system if I am on the 5G network. The IP addressing should be the same no matter how I am going into the network, so I have to guess the Sonos system isn’t just using regular TCPIP networking? Or somehow the router is blocking traffic between the 2 WiFi bands?

Also I am not sure how to “find” the system on my PC app now after moving the WiFi band. I don’t want to mess with the setup I have, but the PC app isn’t finding the system even after I do a “reset” on the PC app and “Search for existing system”.

Hi @joeser 

Great! Glad to hear it!

Yeah, I find this strange too - but I don’t think we have reinvented TCP/IP! We are aware and looking into it.

Well, that is strange. If you find the IP address of a speaker from About your System (under Settings, Manage) and ping it from the PC (open Command Prompt and type “ping <IP address of speaker>”), is it able to do so?

Usually, a PC being unable to connect to a Sonos system means the PC thinks the network connection is Pubic and other devices on it should not be trusted - the fix is to tell Windows that the network is Private, and so trusted:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/73866/how-to-change-network-settings-from-public-to-priv

I hope this helps.

Yes, I can ping both speakers.

I think the Telus router is doing strange things maybe. I know before I switched the network bands the the Sonus speakers did show up as a network device on my PC, but now they are not there. The network setting for my PC was set to “Public” before, but still I could use the Sonos PC app and see the speakers in Explorer. I tried setting the PC network to “Private” but the Sonos speakers still aren’t appearing in “Network” browsing.

If they aren’t showing as on the network, that would explain why the PC Sonus isn’t finding the devices, and likely also why I have to be on the same WiFi network to have the app work. It sounds like the router is isolating the 2.4G band, but I don’t see anything to change this in the router settings. (Actually I do see an “SSID Isolation” setting on the router configuration, but it is greyed out and the default selection showing is “disable”).

I confirmed this is some kind of issue with the router isolating networks.

I disabled the Ethernet connection of my PC, and turned on the WiFi and connected to the 2.4G band.

Suddenly the Sonos speakers appeared in the network, and the Sonos PC app could find the system.

When I enabled the Ethernet back again and turned off the WiFi on the PC, then the connection to the speakers was lost again.

I don’t know why the 2.4G band would be isolated and the 5G band is not. Maybe I need to call my ISP tech support now to complain about their modem/router. Maybe they will send me a 6G capable unit to replace this old Actiontec T3200M. :-)

I see there is a problem still even with newer Telus routers, so I will try a commercial router to replace the Telus problematic one and report back.

Search this Sonos topic heading for confirmation the newer router ( Arcadyan ) from Telus is still not working well with Sonos (or at least 1 year ago).

“Telus Wifi Customers and 2.4GHz vs. 5GHz Network Band”

and also found this topic regarding issues with Telus routers and Sonos.

“Connection to new router” from 6 months ago.

Hi @joeser 

Apologies for the delay - I had a long weekend.

I concur - it does sound like your router is isolating the bands erroneously.

One thing that gives me pause is that I have heard of a few other people reporting much the same since the new Sonos app came out. Having said that, I have not personally looked into their systems sufficiently enough to make the call that it was just Sonos that was affected, and I do not understand how we could (or why we would) make that distinction. 

But, if you have seen reports of this behaviour with your router model that pre-date our new app, then there’s the answer - band isolation would certainly cause problems.

I hope the replacement works out for you!

I installed a new Asus tri-band router to replace the Telus Actiontec, using “Tri-band Smart Connect” (all bands have the same SSID and password), and the Sonos speakers were reconfigured onto this network and have been working without issue so far.

I can access them from any device connected via 2.4G, 5G, 6E, or Ethernet cable.

So definitely the Telus Router has been the source of my issues.

Hope this helps someone else who is having trouble using Telus equipment.

Hi @joeser 

I’m glad to hear that you have seen significant improvement! Enjoy!

And, thanks for updating the thread!