Playing from Spotify starts on all speakers for a split second, then goes to just one

F

I’m running into an issue playing music from Spotify both through the Spotify app as well as the Sonos app.  I have 2 rooms, each with 2 Sonos One Ls and 1 Sub mini.  I combine those together to be “Bathroom + Bedroom”.  I will start playing a song from Spotify through Sonos, select both rooms together and when I hit play I get a split second of the song on all speakers and subs, and then it goes down to just one.  It will eventually come out on all of them but can take upwards of 30-45 seconds.  And if I skip a song, the whole process starts over.

It is not possible for me to run ethernet to any of the speakers at their locations, so I bought a boost and put it just one room away.  This exhibited the same behavior (all speakers were showing as WM: 0).  So I unplugged it and just went back to wireless.

Today I tried using both Sonos Radio and YouTube Music.  Neither of these services exhibit the same behavior.  They are extremely fast and responsive to starting, pausing, and skipping music.  It’s a massive difference from the laggy Spotify experience.

I’m confident I’ll get told there’s wireless interference happening, but I just don’t see how that’s possible.  Two other music services work just fine, and I can see all of the speakers connected to one of my access points with signal strengths between -32 dBm and -50 dBm.

Has anyone else experienced this?  The experience is so bad using Spotify with my system that I honestly may give up and just use YouTube Music.

 

Diagnostic number: 307704793

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12 replies

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I see that you’re using a UniFi WiFi system. I recommend you try the following steps:

  • Log into the UniFi controller.

  • In the Settings tab, click WiFi

  • Click WiFi under the Settings page

  • Click on the network SSID. Note: if there are multiple SSIDs that the players and controllers connect to, the same will need to be done for each SSID. image.png

  • Scroll down to Advanced Configuration and set it to Manual

  • Scroll down to Multicast Management and click on Show Options image.png

  • Disable the following options by unchecking the Enable option:

    1. Multicast and Broadcast Control (blocks all multicast and broadcast for non-listed devices).

    2. Multicast Enhancement (converts multicast to unicast when possible).

    3. Client Device Isolation (prevents wireless client on the same AP from communicating with each other).

    4. Proxy ARP (converts broadcast to unicast when possible). image.png

  • Click on the Apply Changes button at the bottom of the page.

  • Once completed, allow up to a minute for the AP to provision (apply the settings) and restore online connection, then proceed to rebooting or regrouping the Sonos Players.

As your new Boost didn’t help at all, I recommend you return it for refund, assuming that’s still an option for you: https://www.sonos.com/mbg 

I hope this helps.

Edit: It’s certainly strange that only Spotify exhibits this behaviour, so if these steps do not help, please let me know.

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
F

I had actually gone over all of those setting with a phone support rep before purchasing the Boost.  I was hoping it was some odd combination of unifi stuff (phone support rep kept demanding to know more about my “router” and eventually insisting that my ISP was to blame), but the behavior was the exact same when using the Boost and WM showing 0 for all devices. 

So again, I don’t believe it’s a wireless strength/interference issue.  I don’t believe it has anything to do with Unifi (as it was the same on Boost).  And it only happens using Spotify.  Been playing around with YouTube Music all day yesterday after posting here with no issues.  YouTube Music is incredibly quick, responsive, and shows up on all speakers at once.  Spotify is laggy, does not show up on all speakers at the same time, takes 20+ seconds to skip or seek often with some speakers playing the previous song while others play the new.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

While it is certainly strange that you don’t experience these issues with other services, there are a few possible explanations that relate to local conditions that I see evidence of.

First of all, all of your speakers are reporting significant wireless interference, which is not surprising as there are 19 WiFi broadcasts on channel 6, including your own. I recommend that you shift your WiFi over to channel 1 instead, as there are less broadcasts, and they are mostly weaker. Please consult your router manual as to how to achieve this. Please also read our Reducing wireless interference help page and look to reduce interference near your speakers and near your router and/or Wireless Access Points. Ideally, keep other devices at least 1m (3 feet) away from your speakers and WiFi points.

There’s also some significant bursts of multicast flooding - I recommend enabling IGMP Filtering/Snooping, also in your router’s settings.

It may also help to change the room that is in charge of the group - currently, it’s Bedroom, but if you were to ungroup, then select Bathroom, then regroup, you may see some improvement.

I hope this helps.

 

 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
F

I moved the AP over to channel 1 as suggested and verified all speakers were connected to this AP and this AP only.  There’s no other WiFi devices close to the speakers and all of them are at least 3+ feet apart.

I found your note about the group/regroup interesting so figured I’d play with that a bit.  I tried playing in Bathroom all on it’s own.  Music started on both speakers and the sub almost instantly, and then about 2 seconds after went just to the left speaker for another ~20 seconds (pretty close to same behavior as when they were grouped).  So it doesn’t appear to be related to whether the rooms are grouped or not, the music starts on all speakers and then gets reduced down to just whichever one is “controlling” (I’m assuming there’s one of them controlling, I don’t know this for sure), and then eventually comes back to all of them in the room.

IGMP snooping has been enabled this whole time.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

It makes sense that the issue is not just with grouping, considering what I was able to see in the diagnostics.

The speaker in charge of a stereo pair tends to be the left speaker, so if it’s the left speaker that continues playing, that would indicate that the pair are having trouble communicating. 

All of your speakers are reporting significant amounts of “garbage” WiFi being received, meaning that although it’s being picked up on the 2.4GHz frequency that WiFi uses, some of the data (~40% of it, which is significant) the speakers receive cannot be interpreted as proper WiFi packets, but will take up the speaker’s reception bandwidth nonetheless. This could be due to mobile (cellular) phones, DECT phones, smart meters, baby monitors, microwave ovens, CCTV cameras or many more. For this reason (and because SonosNet made by the Boost also used 2.4GHz and did not help), I’d like to see how things go if you get your Sonos system connected to 5GHz instead. Please let it know the 5GHz credentials and then remove the 2.4GHz credentials, or tell the router to combine the bands into one and activate band steering (often labelled Smart Connect or similar). Settings » System » Network » Manage Networks » Update Networks. Doing this should also improve the system/app responsiveness.

With IGMP Snooping enabled I’m really not sure why I’m seeing multicast flooding as it should be getting filtered out, but if you can find the source, I recommend telling it to stop. You would need a packet sniffer to determine the source, however, so you’d be getting into some fairly technical networking wizardry. The multicast flooding does not look consistent enough to be causing the problem you describe, however, so please don’t concern yourself too much about it.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
F

I changed the wireless network everything is connected to to a network that has both 5GHz and 2.4GHz with band steering enabled.  Responsiveness improved greatly.  I see most speakers are connected to 5GHz, a couple are not.  The AP they’re connecting to is a floor away, thus my original decision to try and keep all of them solely on the 2.4 GHz only SSID.  

Now if I skip, pause, play, start, stop music with Spotify (was so good I only tried from the Spotify app) they all seem to get into sync within 2-3 seconds.   Much improved from the sometimes upwards of 45 I was seeing.

Can you check my latest diagnostic and see if you’re still seeing the multicast flooding?  I’m quite apt with packet captures and such so I feel confident I can track it down, but I’m wondering if it’s still seen on the new SSID.  Have a feeling it’s not.

1312603222

Also I’m curious what my expectations around this should be.  Should I expect that it takes a couple seconds for them to all lock in to changes like I’m seeing now?  YouTube Music still feels instant compared to Spotify.

K
Userlevel 7
Badge +16

I've never had any problems with Spotify on grouped speakers, it's almost instant.

Normally use Alexa on Sonos or the Spotify App itself.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

Good stuff! The multicast flooding has gone, and the Packet Error Rate for the devices on 5GHz has now been significantly reduced.

The two Right speakers are still on 2.4 GHz, but they can see the 5GHz broadcast with sufficient signal strength so a quick reboot of those two speakers should sort out the rest of the problem.

A couple of seconds to group is fairly normal - my system takes 1 second, but I don’t have the amount of WiFi broadcasts around me that you do, and I was grouping one speaker in rather than a stereo pair with a Sub. You will probably see further improvement once the last two speakers are on 5GHz too. 45 seconds is not considered acceptable, but I don’t think 2 is too bad.

I still don’t quite understand why Spotify is behaving differently in regards to grouping, but there have been changes on Spotify’s side of things recently and there are now a couple of open issues regarding them, so there may be further improvement once these are resolved.

Note that when you use the Spotify app, the method of control is completely different than when you use the Sonos app - it all goes through the cloud, for a start - so, for a true feeling of how long grouping takes, I recommend using the Sonos app whose control over the Sonos system is performed locally .

I am glad to hear there has been a decent improvement!

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
F

I could not get the right speakers to move over to 5GHz.  I tried forcing a reconnect on the wifi side as well as power cycling.  I tried removing 2.4GHz from the SSID they’re connected to forcing them all to 5GHz (or not connect I guess).  They connected at 5GHz and my issues immediately reappeared.  This was using Spotify through the Sonos app.

Diagnostic # 1349709929

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

I see multicast flooding again for the 3 minutes prior to the submission of the diagnostic on Bedroom L (the speaker currently in charge of fetching the music feed for the entire system and distributing it).

That, the right-hand speakers on 5GHz and the change of the 5GHz channel used from 48 to 36 are the only differences I see. If the channels are being changed automatically and on a regular basis. that could conceivably be an issue - if you can get them to settle on one channel for a while, I recommend it.

Presumably, the multicast flooding is intermittent and pure chance resulted in it being missing in the last diagnostic. If you can find a way to eliminate it, there’s a good chance that will fix the problem. Or, if it does not, with the flooding gone I’ll be more comfortable passing these diagnostics to someone more qualified than I.

In your next testing, please compare using the Sonos app and using the Spotify app - if there’s a clear difference, that might tell us something.

I do think we’re making good progress here, so I hope you’re good to stick with it for a little while longer.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
F

Interesting.  I think you were seeing them change channels because they were actually changing APs as the APs applied the update to only 5 GHz for that SSID.  This got me looking into the channels they were using.  The APs do change channels occasionally on 5GHz to avoid radar on DFS channels.  I live close-ish to an airport.  I have no idea if that’s what causes that or what, but it does happen and looks to also have happened right before the last diagnostic.  

I also noticed/remembered that I locked these to a specific access point to try and troubleshoot this either while on the phone or before talking to the first rep I spoke to.  During that call I believe he had me enable IGMP snooping.  I’ve read a lot about this and how multicast enhancement works on Unifi since starting this thread and believe I now understand how that works where I didn’t before.  When I first set up this system on the SSID you see now, I had all sorts of issues like this.  Very first thing I thought to try was moving them to the 2.4GHz only SSID, I never turned off multicast enhancement on the combined SSID.  Then the rep had me enable IGMP snooping.  And now today I’ve disabled multicast enhancement on the combined SSID.  

So now that I’ve unlocked them from the specific AP that I chose, they’re all over which is fine and all connected at 5GHz.  Spotify app and Spotify through Sonos are working instantly.
 


Diagnostic # 582724345

This leads me to believe that I probably artificially handicapped the system by locking them to a single AP and locking them to 2.4GHz, when in actuality IGMP snooping and multicast enhancement may have been the culprits from the get-go.

Unless you see anything else, I’ll run this for a few days and see how it goes.  I’ll also try and get a packet capture to track down the multicast flooding you’re seeing.

Appreciate the help!  And very much appreciate the willingness to work with me even though my setup is probably more complex than most.  Phone rep was a little out of his terrority for this.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @forebittclash 

Sonos uses multicast frequently, so anything that interferes with the transmission of it will cause problems. It certainly sounds promising now that Multicast Enhancement has been disabled. Yes - let’s see how it behaves long-term.

Having all your speakers on one Access Point can certainly simplify matters for Sonos, but on a well-configured network, it shouldn’t be a prerequisite, and it does of course prevent each speaker from connecting to the AP with the best signal for it.

I would not expect aeroplanes to interfere with your network, but the airport’s radar may be a different matter - a Google search reveals multiple frequency bands in use for various purposes, but they are all outside the ranges used by WiFi. The power of the transmissions is what would concern me the most, at 25kW. There isn’t much you can do about this, however, short of moving home.

To be honest, with the multicast flooding appearing to be largely confined to short moments, I would test things as they are (with Enhancement disabled) for a while before digging into finding the source of the flooding - it may not be necessary to do so after all.

You are most welcome - especially after spotting a typo that had been on my Pi-Hole article for nearly a year! Backscratching is good!

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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