New bug - sonos zones drifting out of sync

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I seem to have acquired a new bug over the last month or so.

I have a large (18 unit) installation made up of several generations of Sonos players (all S2 compatible)

Recently, one zone has consistently drifted out of sync with other zones when part of a group. The “drifty” zone is a pair of Play: 1s. It’s a bit of a problem child anyway, often becoming unresponsive to the new app until rebooted.

I have a mesh (TP Link Deco XE75) mesh wifi system that provides solid coverage over the whole house. The zone that drifts is connected to the same access point as the adjacent zone that continues to play nicely.

I have tried rebooting the router and then the APs. The problem returns almost immediately.

Anyone else experiencing this? Is it confined to the older players?

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R

RhonnyAnswer

Prodigy III

@IanJShaw

Have you manually assigned your drifting Zone to a specific Deco access point and have you got Mesh Technology on or off for the Sonos speakers, in your Deco app? The reason I ask is whether the speakers (or the whole Zone) is fluctuating in terms of the access point it is connected to - ie. if Mesh Technology is on and it continually seeks a better signal and switches to another access point, a regular fraction of a second shift in AP change could add up to cause drift. Maybe?

Hi @Rhonny

Thanks for taking the time to suggest this.

I’m afraid I wouldn’t have the first idea how to start doing any of this.

I count myself as reasonably technically competent. All my Sonos players have reserved IP addresses on the router, for example (the Decos are all in Access Point mode). But a quick glance at the Deco app doesn’t offer anything that looks immediately obvious to start addressing this. Also (and this may or may not be relevant), all of the Sonos players just show up in the app as clients named “Sonos”. I suspect, if I have to do any client-level configuration I’ll need to match MAC addresses to player names and…. well, that once again feels like Sonos outsourcing unfinished development work to me.

Your suggestion is not wasted though. If I find myself with enough time to start researching how to do this I’ll definitely explore it. Every day’s a learning day, after all!

Thanks again for your reply.

In the Deco app (if it has the same layout as mine), if you tap on a device in the list, on the screen that comes up should be a Mesh Technology toggle switch to allow a device to either 1) move seamlessly between the Deco access points (if toggled on), or 2) to remain fixed to one access point (if toggled off).

On that same screen is Connection Preference where you can select the specific Deco access point that you want the device to connect to - usually the closest access point to it.

So in short, you can ensure a Sonos speaker connects to a certain access point and remains fixed to it. This might not solve your problem, but specifying the access point does no harm for a device like a speaker that doesn’t move around the house.

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C

craigski

Local Superstar

- the badly behaving players announced themselves as “SonosZP” to the Deco app. They are Play:1’s The remaining players in my setup announced themselves just as “Sonos” or “Sonos Inc”, including another pair of Play: 1s. So, clearly, all Play: 1s are not created equal!

The layer 2 network will see the hostname ‘SonosZP’ for all devices, the ‘Sonos’ or ‘Sonos Inc’ will be the vendor associated with the MAC prefix. I assume the Deco software is displaying the MAC vendor if it hasn't revolved the hostname. This is normal.

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