Era 300 cuts in and out when configured as surround speaker

Hello everyone. I’ve had my Era 300s for a week and I have exactly the same problem. I did a factory reset on both and the problem persists. Any fixes yet?

I have experienced this too. There have been a number of issues reported with the Era 300’s, but I thought I was alone on this particular problem. I never had this fading-out-and-in trouble with my lovely Ones or prior speakers. I am rapidly beginning to feel like I should have been paid the £875 to beta test the 300’s, not do it at my own expense.

@ProfessorPeach  @Sebkulu  @LuvMySono 

Did you set the Era 300’s to “Full” for music playback when used as surrounds?

Yes I did

I should also mention that I read the thread about fixing wifi issues stating it’s better to have 2 distincts SSID for 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, which I did.

So I had to factory reset all of the speakers connected to wifi in order to setup them using the new 2.4Ghz WiFi SSID.

Note that before doing so I checked my WiFi network and noticed that some speakers were connected to the 5Ghz band.

Anyway, that didn’t do the trick, and the issue persists.

@AjTrek1 : Please note that the problem also occurs when sending sound from the TV, not only when streaming music from phone or any other music streaming service.

@ProfessorPeach @LuvMySono Do you also have your sound bar (and sub) directly plugged in your network over ethernet?

I was wondering: Sonos states that when using era 300 as surround, the line-in is disabled, but does that also apply to Ethernet ?

If that’s not the case, would the Ethernet adapter solve the issue?

And do I have to buy the Sonos adapter (which cost a fortune) or can I use a regular type C to Ethernet adapter?

I must say that I’d rather not plug the era’s to Ethernet due to their placement (apparent cables…), but if I have no choice, I’m going to for sure…

Of course before buying, I’m gonna try every solution you guys advise me to test.

Just came back from work, and tried deactivating this setting, the issue still occurs.

All information says the “Line-in” is not available when used as a surround setup. Can’t find anything specific to the Ethernet portion as being an independent connection. However, since surrounds use the 5 Ghz channel between the Arc/Beam to receive their information; I'm not sure that wiring an Era 300/100 would make a difference. I guess I’m leaving toward some type wireless interference as the culprit 🤔

I just called the support and sent them the diagnostics.

They analyzed it, and apparently it was because I switched WiFi off on my Arc and Sub (which are directly wired to my network using Ethernet)

It did the trick and now I don’t have any cutoffs any more.

They also gave me 3 advice that make no sense to me:

• Plug the Arc directly into the router without going through a network switch
  1. it could cause firmware update problems
  2. it could cause problems to direct connection to other Sonos devices

It litteraly makes no sense to me as a switch is completely capable to send the signal to the target device. More over all my Sonos device are updated to firmware 15.2, and I don’t see why a direct WiFi connection between Sonos devices could be altered by a switch…

• From time to time, plug directly a Sonos product to the router to ensure updates

Again, I don’t see why that would be an issue

• Buy a Sonos Boost

I don’t see how that would change a thing, since it will create its own WiFi network dedicated to Sonos devices, and I can’t have it directly plugged into my router AND my Arc… So it will still have to go through a switch, or I won’t have any RJ45 ports available any more if I plug the other RJ45 port into my Arc…

My setup at home is the following:

• Internet optical fiber arriving in the garage
• ISP router in the garage to be plugged in the fiber channel
• 1x RJ45 port from ISP router plugged into 1 RJ45 port of my house
• 1x RJ45 port from ISP router plugged into a 8 ports switch
• 5x RJ45 ports from switch plugged into 5 RJ45 ports of my house

And in my TV Room, I have one of those RJ45 ports, but I also have a lot of devices to plug to my network (consoles, TV, Arc, etc...) so I can’t dedicate that port to the Arc.

Anyway, back to the original problem, WHY do I have to turn WiFi on again on my Arc AND Sub, when it was perfectly working with the One’s SL?

I really would appreciate a technical answer, and some insights about this issue.

You were forcing the connection to go a path not designed/intended, by forcing the connection through your router. The system is designed for surrounds to connect to the wifi signal on the sound bar. Sonos has poorly labeled the “turn off wifi” function on the sound bars, it really turns off all radio, which is used by the Sub and Surrounds, normally speaking.