If you can give some information about your network that would be great.

I have many of the same speakers in my home as you do that total 11, with 6 of them hardwired to my network with ethernet. I have always had a main speaker, like a soundbar and Amp, hardwired. Even from the day the new app was released, I have had very minimal issues. I did experience the sluggish volume issue for a couple hours, but everything else I use, has not stopped working for me.

If you bet the latest app release, it has solved much of the lag issues for most folks.

You could try the Sonos Wi-Fi FAQ on reducing interference or submit a diagnostic and call Sonos.

Hi thx for that I believe I have the latest app,  the arc is wired the rest are wireless. It is currently on network channel 1. I have reset everything ( well a power cut sorted that ) . I am on virgin with 1gig broadband.

Think I’ll have to call Sonos I’ve submitted a diagnostic report. I recommended Sonos to my nephew who has a bar he bought 4 x Sonos 5s and he’s getting loads of connection issues too. Can’t skip tunes can’t stop playing etc. seems like the whole system is very poor at the moment.

Would it be hugely difficult to make one or two more devices hardwired rather than wireless?

Sonos used to publish a guide that recommended one hardwired device per 5 units installed, and I suspect that this is still a good policy - especially if you play higher-resolution material.

On my system, this made a positive difference to the delays in re-synchronising after (for example) jumping from one track to another.

With newer Wi-Fi Sonos is no longer recommending wired setups in most cases as Sonosnet is older/slower tech. They even dropped Ethernet ports on some devices and made it an extra cost option on others. Many now don't even support Sonosnet. 

It does make you wonder whether the most recent firmware updates have made network performance worse by removing Sonosnet features. As I understand it, Sonosnet used to allow individual speakers to (in effect) “relay” content to adjacent speakers, which could under some circumstances extend the range of wireless coverage.

But, at a simpler level, each hardwired connection means one less devices needing bandwidth from the limited capacity of a wireless network, freeing up capacity for other devices to use.

The issues aren't from removing Sonosnet as it hasn't been removed, new Sonos are just set n9t to use it. 

In the old days of one central Wi-Fi point the Sonosnet mesh was handy, today it just means you need an additional Wi-Fi channel. One that will be slower and lower tech than most current hardware.

Today most Wi-Fi supports much better range and throughput making Sonosnet a second class transport.

For Sonosnet v1 and less so for v2 bandwidth was an issue, modern Wi-Fi rarely has issues with the small amounts of data Sonos uses. If your channel utilization is under 50% (from my li,ited testing) Sonos should work.

Wired is still an option as is disabling the radio but both are best reserved for special situations. 

This will only work for older Sonos gear that supports Sonosnet.

Not true - as I said above, every hardwired connection is a connection that doesn’t need wireless bandwidth.

If wireless capacity is limited (for a number of reasons, some of which may not be “visible” to the owner of the property, such as what their neighbours’ wireless equipment is doing) then removing traffic from the wireless side of the network may help, even if Sonosnet is “there but not being used”.

But the bandwidth used is tiny so cases where that makes a difference are rare.

Much rarer than folks having two good channels to use.

Anyway I've told you what is recommended so I'll leave it at that.

I don’t really understand the “bandwidth is tiny” argument.

When a track starts playing from scratch on a dozen-unit system like the OP’s, the first thing that has to happen before any music can start playing is that the first buffer’s worth of audio data has to get to all twelve devices. I don’t understand any case that says that this data is “tiny”. You need twelve copies of that data to traverse the network, and you will have silence until that’s done.

If you make it so that (say) a quarter of that traffic goes over hardwired connections, that frees up bandwidth for the remaining nine devices to get their data quicker via wireless connections.

Have you looked at the data requirements for various audio streaming formats?

FLAC / CD quality is only about 1500 Kbps.

My old Raspberry Pi is happy to stream at least four FLAC streams while showing very low CPU use so minimal load.

My not fancy Wi-Fi does 400 down, 250 up to my tablet I'm posting from and that is in Mbps not K.

Sonosnet is limited to under 100 Mbps by the Ethernet ports, the older tech Wi-Fi it uses is also fairly slow. I didn't see any gain here in wiring multiple Sonos or adding a Boost device. I do still have several wired Sonos here, I was ready to unwire and move to Ethernet after wor,ing with support but the new app mess hit so I'm holding off for now but it will get done once things are a bit more stable.

Thanks for the info, I’ll try wiring q or 2 others , however this goes against the wireless system principle on which Sonos prides and sells itself. Just embarrassing when you have people round playing music and all,of a sudden your great system just doesn’t perform. 

Hmmm… perhaps you are right about the data requirements. I’ve just checked some file sizes - a random example here is a 6-minute track, FLAC encoded which is 40MB in size, give or take.

I suspect that neither of us know the buffer size that Sonos use but if we say that they take a 30s buffer, that’s ~4MB with network overhead. For twelve units that’s 50MB, which is 400Mb. We can’t know how much contention there is on the wireless network, but in theory that should only take a few seconds before the music can start playing - even via Sonosnet.

But… the thing is that it doesn’t accord with my own experience on my network. Before I changed mine to have four wired network connections, I was getting significant delays when jumping tracks - maybe ten seconds before things sorted themselves out. Now that I have the additional hardwired connections, I typically get (just) sub-second delays with FLAC content.

Perhaps there is something unusual about my network, but it’s hard to think why it should have a problem but still deliver the improvements I am seeing when hardwired.

I’ve never been able to escape the suspicion that a large part of the problem with playback delays and stuttering is more to do with the way in which Sonos attempts to synchronise playback than raw bandwidth, but that’s not something that is provable, given that Sonos don’t publish how they achieve synchronisation, as far as I’m aware.

Are you playing hi-res content? If you have the option of lower resolution (i.e. smaller data = lower bandwidth requirement) then it might be worth trying that. I notice very little delays when playing lower-res content (and to be honest, most of the time I’m not listening carefully enough to notice the difference in sound quality).

Hi ​@cressy2607

Thanks for your post!

Sorry to hear about the multiple issues you are having with your Sonos system - this is not at all what we want for you.

There are multiple possible reasons for what you are experiencing, and the best way of determining which it is is to ask the speakers - I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system and what it reports.

I hope this helps.