Frequent pauses leading to a silent device. Power cycling is the only workaround.

Update…..! The initial support technician told me to wire all the speakers to the router. I did this but the problem persisted.

I submitted another diagnostic. This time the (excellent!) technician noted that many of the devices are suffering from low memory. Which fits the symptoms exactly as after a power cycle they function fine until the problem reoccurs.

Most of these devices are old and have less memory than the current models. He suggested that all the Connects and the Connect Amps should be wired with the wifi disabled. This would lighten the load on the problematic devices. He also suggested that the single wired "gateway" should be a Play One, which has more memory than the Connect/Connect Amps and so would be less likely to suffer the issue.

However, the only true solution would be to replace all the devices with current models, which have more memory. Unfortunately the Port and the Amp are considerably more expensive than the Connect and Connect Amps. Perhaps I need to bit the bullet and look for Black Friday offers today!

Interesting. I think that’s the first suggestion that even the 64MB units are beginning to run out of steam.

I understand the

Is it the Play:1 that only has 64mb of Ram?

I’ve plugged in every Connect/Connect Amps to ethernet and disabled wifi. That leaves five Play:1s. I’ve been able to plug in two of those. So I’ve disabled wifi on one, and left wifi enabled. So hopefully that leaves just four Play:1s on Sonosnet with just one of those ethernet connected. Fingers crossed.

According to this chart Play:1 has at least 128MB.

Thanks. So it’s the Connect/Connect Amp that has 64mb.

A further update. After wiring the majority of the devices, including all the Connect/Connect Amps (and disabling wifi) a few days later the problem returns. So it’s looking like the Connect and Connect Amps are nearing the end of their life! That’s going to be quite an investment for me to replace them all. I’ve taken a diagnostic and will contact support with it. But it looks like an unworkaroundable issue :-(  I wonder if I can switch to S1? I use SMB stored flac files for a music library, streamed radio, Apple Music and Spotify.

Here is an article about downgrading:

https://support.sonos.com/en-gb/article/downgrade-a-sonos-product-from-s2-to-s1

I finally found time to follow this up with Sonos, with fresh diagnostic reports after their advice to wire as much as possible to reduce memory usage on the older devices.

After lots of back and forth about not wiring speakers as it causes a broadcast storm, I was able to inform the representative that only one wired speaker had wifi enabled and I had not seen a broadcast storm for years! ..AND that is was sonos support that recommended me to do this :-)

The representative then said "a system update is the best way to proceed. But we do not have an ETA".

I asked for confirmation that this was “..the memory issue on the older devices” and the rep confirmed that this was the case and repeated that  "..At this time, updating your system is the best way to alleviate this issue. We do not currently have an ETA.".

So it looks like Sonos will hopefully reduce the memory usage for these older devices with a firmware update.

If they can. Since the amount of ‘dead’ memory may be a variable, it is possible that they can’t make every device work again. I wouldn’t be expecting a ‘silver bullet’ that fixes every issue.