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I have 11 Sonos speakers around the house, all play flawlessly except for the 4 speakers making the home theatre setup (playbar, sub1, two 3s). The theatre setup plays perfectly while viewing the TV, the problem occurs when I listen to either radio or streaming music to the room. While doing this the music will cutout from a few seconds to about 30sec before continuing. If the home theatre setup is grouped to other rooms all speakers work fine except for the ones making up the home theatre setup. This is a new phenomenon to me. I think I’ve changed the Sonos channels, I’ve  rebooted all appropriate software in more ways then one, nothing seems to work. All home theatre speakers are not wired in and can’t be done. There is one Sonos 1 wired into router at main box. What bugs me is that when watching TV there is no issues, it’s only when listening to music or radio.

Diagnostic reports during event is 312130465 or 1098444261

Thanks for any help on this

With the Sonos wired to the router you are in Sonoset mode. You might try switching to WiFi mode and see if it is better.

As it is new, I’d look to something you added that is causing interference with the Playbar’s connection back to the Wired Sonos. Suspect everything, my problem came from a USB hard-drive that didn’t even have a radio in it!

Ok ill give it a try. Was on wiFi before and changed to SonosNet when the problems started. That did not change anything, so maybe I go back to my original setup.

Why would my hometheatre work fine on watching TV and no longer work on music and radio streaming?

TV is local, going directly to your Sonos device on a wire. Streaming is your Sonos device reaching out across the internet to a server that is outside your network. 

Hi @exit106 

Thanks for your post!

Is your TV a Sony model? And does the issue go away if you disconnect the optical cable while playing music? If so, please follow these steps:

Enable IP Simple Control & Adjust RS232C Control on Sony TVs

Enabling IP Simple Control

  1. Open the Sony TV's Settings.
  2. Navigate to Network and Internet.
  3. Select Home network.
  4. Select IP control.
  5. Toggle Simple IP control on.
     

Setting RS232C Control to "Via Serial Port"

Note: Some Sony televisions do not have RS232C Control options. In these instances, the following steps are not necessary.

  1. Open the Sony TV's Settings.
  2. Select Remotes and Accessories
  3. Select RS232C Control
  4. Select Via Serial Port.

Once done, please reboot the TV by disconnecting power for a minute.

In addition, when grouping speakers together, please select OB1Office first, and group other speakers to it - this will minimise unnecessary bandwidth utilisation.

I hope this helps.

Hi Corry,

Well yes I have a Sony TV. So I unplugged the optical cable. No problem with the sound seem to appear. I have gone through the steps you defined above and all seems to be OK at this time. So if all holds up this is great news to me.

If you have an opportunity can you define what I just did, at what it solved in my problem.

Many thanks  

Hi @exit106 

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure - I just looked up the description of the problem and found those steps.

RS232 is an old serial communication format/socket. As I understand it (though I didn’t really find an answer when Googling it), it’s used by Sony TVs for supplying commands - perhaps so you can link up an external IR remote sensor or similar.

It seems these settings prevent the TV from sending erroneous command signals through the optical link - signals that confuse the Playbar when it’s trying to play a non-TV source.

Why this happens in the first place, I don’t know.

I hope this helps.

I have seen posts suggesting that the SONY TV’s can cause trouble if the TV’s RS-232 is enabled. You should experiment with RS-232 ON and OFF.

RS-232 is often referred to as “serial communication” through a “serial port”. RS-232 is used extensively for control in industrial products. It’s a very old technology that requires at least three conductors in the connecting wires. Some schemes might use up to 9 wires. Slowly, RS-232 is being replaced by network wiring because network connections are much faster than RS-232. A few decades ago RS-232 was much cheaper than networking, but at this point the hardware support costs are about the same. In industrial uses the RS-232 connector is more expensive and much larger than a network connection. In home use, a 3.5mm 3-conductor phone jack is often used. Controlling multiple RS-232 devices can become expensive because there is no RS-232 equivalent to a cheap, generic network switch that can connect dozens of units. 

RS-232 works well for controlling basic function, such as ON/OFF, input selection, channel selection, etc., but it is too slow for transmitting audio and video.

Most home automation systems that have been around for a while can control a few RS-232 devices. Newly designed home automation systems don’t usually bother with RS-232. Occasionally this creates issues if it is necessary to control a legacy RS-232 device that does not support network control. To some extent it depends on the company and design engineers. Newly trained engineers might need to look-up “RS-232” and then feel that it is ancient, stale technology. Older companies and engineers might ask “why re-design something that works well and gets the job done?”. RS-232 does have its own set of quirks. Some controllers cannot deal with a simple 3-pin connection.

Ok ill buy that.
Your remedy seems to have solved the problem with my home theatre setup

 

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