Nothing fixes intermittent cutting out

  • 3 December 2023
  • 11 replies
  • 677 views
J
Badge +4

I read many threads on here about issues when various Sonos groups/speakers are played simultaneously. Everyone always says “it’s the network.” I had an older google mesh system putting out 100mb DL speeds and 10mb UL with a latency of about 25. Alas, because I listened to the people here, I bought a WiFi 6 eero mesh network thinking the community knew something I did not. The internet speeds went up to 250mb dl/10UL and 21 latency. But the problem didn’t go away. None of my other devices in the house have any glitching issues. I can stream UHD TV with no stuttering, but somehow my Playbar and two play:1s surrounds can’t keep a music signal going.

 

I am at a loss and have spent so much money and time trying to fix this. I know people say to try unplugging the the Playbar, but yesterday the power in my house went out so all the Sonos devices automatically restarted. 
 

What could possibly be left?

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11 replies

Airgetlam

A power outage doesn’t allow the router to restart first, and reset the IP addresses as potentially necessary. Since both devices start concurrently, it’s possible that old IP addresses are held on to…if that is the problem you’re experiencing. 

Your upload and download speeds don’t really matter, those are indications of speeds of downloads from the outside world to your router, and not a true measure of the connection of the Sonos speakers to your router. 

I’d try two things, at least initially. Power off the Sonos, all of them. Reboot your eero system. Give it a couple of minutes to reinitialize, then power back up your Sonos devices.

Second, I’d try wiring, at least temporarily, your PLAYBAR to the ‘base’ of your eero system, not an extension puck, and see if that makes a difference. If it does, I’d suggest a read of the wifi interference FAQ. 

Finally, if neither of those work, I would submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

When you speak directly to the phone folks, they have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your network and Sonos system.

Bruce
J
Badge +4

I spoke to the team on chat for over 90 minutes and they were useless and told me to call in later during weekdays, which is tough for me to do because of work. They said one of the issues is that the surrounds are showing up as 2.4ghz when it should be 5ghz. I thought that it’s supposed to be 2.5GHZ when bonded as surrounds? 

Regardless, what I did determine is that if I separate the three surround speakers, only the Playbar cuts out. It is at random intervals. Support told me to turn off “client steering” on my Eero and that did nothing (and defeats the purpose of my Eero.

I asked about creating a Sonos Net in my three story townhouse (1400 sq ft) and they said it’s not recommended because I’d have to wire at least three Sonos devices. I wasn’t clear on why that would be necessary since I’ve read that only one needs to be connected for the rest to work.

It’s weird that the Playbar is the only culprit, as it’s roughly equidistant from the Eero as the other two surround speakers. And it was doing the same thing with the Google Mesh system too.

I hard reset the playbar but that did not fix the issue.

I submitted a diagnostic but all they got from it was that the surround should be on 5ghz not 2.5 (but every time I re-pair it as surrounds it goes from 5 to 2.5). And even so, they are currently separated, all off 5ghz, and the issue on the playbar persists.

Tech support asked me to also try changing channels from 6 to 11, but Spectrum routers and the Eero don’t have that option. So I have no way of changing that interference. Will hard wiring remove this issue?

Airgetlam

Surround speakers connect to all Sonos soundbars on the 5Ghz channel, so the soundbar needs to connect to your router using a 2.4Ghz channel. 

Hopefully, your eero isn’t within 3 feet of the Spectrum gateway. I certainly had to separate my Spectrum device from pretty much every other device, as it tended to leak radiation. They really wanted me to use their WiFi, but ultimately I turned the Spectrum’s WiFi  off completely, and used my own router…something like you, with the eero. 

I’m not familiar with the eero interface, but it does seem odd that you don’t have the ability to change channels on the WiFi, perhaps someone else more familiar will comment. 

Hard wiring the PLAYBAR is always an option. If you have no other wired devices, it will make the PLAYBAR the root of a SonosNet signal, which takes a majority of the Sonos traffic off of your WiFi, and on to SonosNet (on a 2.4Ghz signal that can’t be seen, or joined, other than other a Sonos devices).

There’s nothing at all wrong with wiring a PLAYBAR, or a PLAYBAR and any number of other Sonos speakers, the system should still ‘just work’. 

Bruce
J
Badge +4

Okay, so I reset my modem, router and Eero. I then moved the Playbar down to my bottom floor from my top floor and it works without skipping. Now I have no idea what to do. It needs to be in that upstairs room because it’s part of a surround system in my bedroom.

I really don’t understand how the 3 play:1s on the floor work flawlessly and the Playbar isn’t. The surrounds are maybe 8 ft from the Playbar on each side. So if the Playbar isn’t working up there, the surrounds shouldn’t either.

I thought maybe I could hardwire the Playbar using my Eeros, but just realized that unlike my google mesh, the eero hubs don’t have a WiFi slot except on the main node. That’s just horrible design. Why would they make it worse than a device that was years older?

Anyway, what’s my best option given the circumstances.

 

 

Airgetlam

Wi-Fi is challenging. Even movements as small as 3 or 4 inches can make a wild difference in the radio (Wi-Fi) signal, and frankly, there are tons of non Wi-Fi electronics that can affect a signal…including things outside the home, up to and including solar flares. 

Remember, the PLAYBAR is connecting on a 2.4Ghz signal, the surrounds of that device are connecting (to it, not your router) on a 5Ghz channel. 

I’d probably reread the wifi interference FAQ, and look around where the PLAYBAR needs to be for potential sources of interference.

And if that is unsuccessful, I’d wire a Sonos device to that root hub, and let the Sonos system work on SonosNet, since you then can control which band the SonosNet is using, in the controller. 

 

Bruce
J
Badge +4

Surround speakers connect to all Sonos soundbars on the 5Ghz channel, so the soundbar needs to connect to your router using a 2.4Ghz channel. 

Hopefully, your eero isn’t within 3 feet of the Spectrum gateway. I certainly had to separate my Spectrum device from pretty much every other device, as it tended to leak radiation. They really wanted me to use their WiFi, but ultimately I turned the Spectrum’s WiFi  off completely, and used my own router…something like you, with the eero. 

I’m not familiar with the eero interface, but it does seem odd that you don’t have the ability to change channels on the WiFi, perhaps someone else more familiar will comment. 

Hard wiring the PLAYBAR is always an option. If you have no other wired devices, it will make the PLAYBAR the root of a SonosNet signal, which takes a majority of the Sonos traffic off of your WiFi, and on to SonosNet (on a 2.4Ghz signal that can’t be seen, or joined, other than other a Sonos devices).

There’s nothing at all wrong with wiring a PLAYBAR, or a PLAYBAR and any number of other Sonos speakers, the system should still ‘just work’. 

The main Eero (the only one that has a plug for ethernet) is right next to the Spectrum gateway - otherwise it wouldn’t be close enough to attach an ethernet cable. All the devices in the room where it’s connected (including a Arc+2 300s+sub) work fine.

There is then an Eero in my bedroom about 8 feet from the Playbar and 8-10 feet from the two surrounds. The playbar in that room is the one skipping.

I moved the Playbar to my basement, which has another Eero hub. It keeps the same IP, but it doesn’t skip down there.

I have no way of hardwiring the Playbar in my bedroom because the Eero hub no ethernet port. The only way I could accomplish this is by reverting back to the Google mesh system, as each of those hubs has an ethernet port. I did ask customer service about hard-wiring the Playbar and they said:

It is not advisable to your system, because when you connect one of your speakers to your Router or main hub of the Eero It will gonna act as a Root bridge just like an access point for the Eero. 
And base on the numbers of your speaker on the system you will need to hard wire at least 3 speaker that is located on the house. 

Obviously his English is not very good, so I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I don’t have the ability to plug in three different speakers, and really shouldn’t have to since I have an Eero.
 

I don’t think Eero allows channel changes because it has built-in software that monitors network congestion and automatically changes the channel when necessary.

 

Stanley_4
Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Sonos doesn’t need a fancy new networking hardware, older gear built to older standards works fine. Folks are still using Sonos Bridges that are positively antique at this point.

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/supported-wifi-modes-and-security-standards-for-sonos-products

An older network that is operating properly is perfectly capable of supporting many Sonos devices.

If you have WiFi or other radio frequency interference (microwave, baby monitor) that is disrupting the channel you are using (1, 6 or 11 in the US) no hardware will overcome that problem.

Ken_Griffiths

One of the suggestions from Support Staff here in the community, with an eero mesh WiFi network is to try it the eero setup in ‘bridged’ AP mode to a 3rd party ISP provided router.. See this link:

https://en.community.sonos.com/speakers-229128/troubleshooting-sonos-on-wifi-6856334?postid=16520976#post16520976

So you could switch things over and give that a try to see if it perhaps improves things. It’s certainly an option I would consider, as much of a pain as it is to do that switch.

The other thing mentioned, was that the Playbar ‘surrounds’ are using the 2.4Ghz WiFi band when ‘bonded’ to the Playbar - well that should not be the case when they are playing audio, but they can (correctly) fall back to a 2.4Ghz wireless connection when idle, but that connection is not to the local WiFi signal, but is an ad-hoc link to the Playbar - So you might have perhaps misunderstood what the Sonos Support Staff were saying to you, but I would certainly explore that matter further, as the connection should be an ad-hoc 5Ghz connection when in use/playing and if not, then either there is likely something wrong with the WiFi adapter on the Playbar, or surround, (I’m assuming you have not switched off the adapter on the Playbar here too). This all depends though on what the Support Staff were saying at the time. I would certainly dig further here, to see what you can discover about the surrounds.

I would not wire anything at this stage, it’s a shame the eero router cannot be forced to use a particular WiFi channel - that though will not be the case, I suspect, if you ‘bridge’ the system to your Spectrum router and I recommend using channel 1, 6 or 11 with a channel-width of 20Mhz only if you do go down that route. If not, then a network and Sonos system reboot might just sort things for you automatically perhaps, but that’s a long-shot and keeping wireless devices 1 metre apart is always a good idea too, wherever that’s practical.

J
Badge +4

One of the suggestions from Support Staff here in the community, with an eero mesh WiFi network is to try it the eero setup in ‘bridged’ AP mode to a 3rd party ISP provided router.. See this link:

https://en.community.sonos.com/speakers-229128/troubleshooting-sonos-on-wifi-6856334?postid=16520976#post16520976

So you could switch things over and give that a try to see if it perhaps improves things. It’s certainly an option I would consider, as much of a pain as it is to do that switch.

The other thing mentioned, was that the Playbar ‘surrounds’ are using the 2.4Ghz WiFi band when ‘bonded’ to the Playbar - well that should not be the case when they are playing audio, but they can (correctly) fall back to a 2.4Ghz wireless connection when idle, but that connection is not to the local WiFi signal, but is an ad-hoc link to the Playbar - So you might have perhaps misunderstood what the Sonos Support Staff were saying to you, but I would certainly explore that matter further, as the connection should be an ad-hoc 5Ghz connection when in use/playing and if not, then either there is likely something wrong with the WiFi adapter on the Playbar, or surround, (I’m assuming you have not switched off the adapter on the Playbar here too). This all depends though on what the Support Staff were saying at the time. I would certainly dig further here, to see what you can discover about the surrounds.

I would not wire anything at this stage, it’s a shame the eero router cannot be forced to use a particular WiFi channel - that though will not be the case, I suspect, if you ‘bridge’ the system to your Spectrum router and I recommend using channel 1, 6 or 11 with a channel-width of 20Mhz only if you do go down that route. If not, then a network and Sonos system reboot might just sort things for you automatically perhaps, but that’s a long-shot and keeping wireless devices 1 metre apart is always a good idea too, wherever that’s practical.

 

I’m not clear what you’re talking about re making the eero a bridge. How would that allow me to select a channel? The cable operator router doesn’t even allow a channel to be selected. Nor did my google wifi mesh system.

 

I used a network analyzer and it shows the channels under my network name but not particular to devices. How do I know what channel my Playbar specifically is on? It doesn’t make sense that it wouldn’t work if the play:1s work in the same channel.

 

This issue persists with a Google mesh and Eero. But it worked when I moved the device to my basement. That would indicate some issue with the WiFi upstairs, where I need the Playbar to work. But again, the surrounds, which are mere feet away from the Playbar, works fine. 
 

This wasn’t a perfectly controlled study because I reset my cable operator router and modem, as well as the Eero before moving to the basement. I’ve now moved the Playbar upstairs again and it appears to be working, but it’s oddly connecting to my middle floor hub, despite there being a hub about 7 feet away. The surrounds are connected to the hub 7 feet away. No idea if having the surrounds on a different hub make a difference at all. Sonos needs to do a better job making diagnoses easier. If these newer expensive devices don’t allow channel changes, Sonos can’t just leave the user in the dark. And after spending so long on tech support chat, I’m now being sent to a tier 2 person. The chat people should be able to help on their own, not waste my time and then force me to call in on a weekday. I’m close to just giving up on Sonos.

 

Ken_Griffiths

@Jonnydrama32,

I’m not sure if the eero hubs are that configurable in ‘bridge’ mode - it’s not a mesh system I have used, but it’s really not that important, but nice to have, if they do allow a user to change/fix their wireless channels and channel-width, but things should be fine these days with the Hubs selecting their own channels. I had just noticed that the Staff in that other thread suggested using the eero system in ‘bridged’ mode, so it might be worth considering it at some point. Note if you use that configuration anyway, the Spectrum routers WiFi adapters (both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz) should ideally be switched off anyway, although in some instances it’s okay to leave them enabled with the same SSID’s, but personally speaking. I would leave them ‘off’ as it ‘might’ cause a problem with multicast discovery of your Sonos devices and so just leave the eero hubs in charge of the wireless segments of your local network. 

All that said, as you’re case is being elevated to Tier 2 Sonos Support, I would just put the suggestions here on the back burner for now and go through the troubleshooting with the Sonos T2 Support Staff and see if they can assist to resolve your issue first. If no joy with that, then perhaps try the eero Hubs in the suggested ‘bridge’ mode (as mentioned in the earlier linked thread) to see if that may fix your issues.

There is a link in that other thread explaining how to switch the eero setup to bridge mode should you need any guidance with doing that, but just ensure you switch off the spectrum WiFi, post setup.

Anyhow I hope you manage to get things sorted. 👍

Jamie A
Userlevel 7
Badge +16

Duplicate thread of:

Closing this topic, refer to the thread above.

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