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A little background: I’ve had my system since the ZonePlayer and big standalone controller days. Today it consists of Play:1 and One SL speakers, with S2 Android apps and also Windows apps. I have a large library of MP3 and WMA songs on a Synology NAS. I have many imported playlists in old school WPL format, and generally play from these playlists. The imported playlists number below the 1,000 max and 40,000 total songs limits I found in this support article. I do have 2 of the speakers plugged into ethernet; I figured it wouldn’t hurt.

In recent months, I’ve started to see sporadic issues in which during playback of an imported playlist, the current song will stop about halfway in, and Sonos will advance to the next song. And often this cycle will repeat, sometimes righting itself and playing normally, but just as often starting and skipping songs continually going forward. Because I generally play these imported playlists, I’m not sure whether the issue would also occur during playback of an album, or if there is something about the playlists. Also, I generally have most speakers in the house grouped together when playing tunes.

There is a brief error message that flashes, but I was able to capture a couple. I have seen others that say something about losing connection, but couldn’t capture any of those.

 

I have Sonos configured to access the Synology NAS via a user defined on the NAS. I’ve also configured the NAS to support Samba. And I know this is correct and Sonos can access the music library because I play tunes frequently without issue. Except when this happens.

I don’t know where the issue is; the playlist, Sonos, my home network, or the NAS. My rough understanding is that the Sonos system has a distributed architecture, with each speaker holding configuration and syncing with the others. When I open the Android app and specify to play an imported playlist on the NAS, I think I understand that one of the speakers in the group is going to connect to the NAS and stream the tunes, and distribute the stream to the other speakers; I don’t think that all the speakers connect to the NAS simultaneously. So if that is the case, could it be that perhaps the speaker that happens to make the connection may sometimes have a flaky connection to the NAS, perhaps because it is on the periphery of the Sonos network? Wouldn’t generally, Sonos choose to make the connection to the NAS via one of the speakers plugged into ethernet because it’d be better? Just guessing.

 

It’s really puzzling me and I don’t have enough information on what’s going on and where the failure is in order to understand what needs fixing. Any help would be appreciated because it is really annoying when it happens. I’ll be glad to answer any questions about the system or try any experiments. Thanks!

 

Hi @Johnny Rico 

Thanks for your post!

I think I understand that one of the speakers in the group is going to connect to the NAS and stream the tunes, and distribute the stream to the other speakers; I don’t think that all the speakers connect to the NAS simultaneously. So if that is the case, could it be that perhaps the speaker that happens to make the connection may sometimes have a flaky connection to the NAS, perhaps because it is on the periphery of the Sonos network?

Spot on! The speaker which is selected in the app before the group is made is designated as the Group Coordinator (GC). It is in charge of fetching the stream from whatever source, buffering it, deciding at what precise millisecond certain frames will be played, and distributing the “synced” stream across to the other rooms in the group. This, under certain circumstances, can make the choice of which speaker is GC an important one. As you are using SonosNet, the best choice of GC is a wired unit which is central in location relative to all the other units. When a wired unit isn’t in the group, then a unit with a likely good wireless connection to one that is wired would now be the best choice. For a system on WiFi, the unit in the group with the likely best WiFi connection is best.

Wouldn’t generally, Sonos choose to make the connection to the NAS via one of the speakers plugged into ethernet because it’d be better? Just guessing.

This would need a change in the way grouping works, and my understanding is that the current behaviour is based on user expectation - a dynamic change in GC would (I assume) result in an interruption of playback. As it stands, it is you who makes the choice when creating the group.

It’s really puzzling me and I don’t have enough information on what’s going on and where the failure is in order to understand what needs fixing. Any help would be appreciated because it is really annoying when it happens. I’ll be glad to answer any questions about the system or try any experiments. Thanks!

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 - if there is a reported spike in interference or transmission errors at the same moment the error is produced, then they’ll likely be able to spot it and advise. If there is not, then the issue is more likely to be with the NAS’s connection, or with the network itself.

Some things to check/try before you do get in touch, however:

  • reboot your router by switching it off for at least 30 seconds
  • keep all speakers at least 1m away from any other WiFi devices, including other speakers. This goes especially for the ethernet wired units - make sure they are not too close to the router or other WiFi access points. Make sure the router doesn’t have anything near it too, just for good practice.
  • If the NAS is not ethernet-wired, it should be.
  • Please ensure that the reported missing files are not, in fact, actually missing!
  • If the issue is at all related to particular files, then the issue may be with the files themselves - even if they are not missing. What happens after a song stops halfway through if you attempt to play it from the start again? If it plays through, it’s not the file.
  • The next time it happens, immediately submit a support diagnostic so that the agent you speak to later can examine an example occurrence. You can post the given number here if you like, but my response will likely be much slower.

I hope this helps.

Thanks Corry, that’s great info and a big help. I generally have an alarm that starts music in the morning, specifying the Family Room speaker pair, excluding grouped rooms (assuming in an alarm scenario like this, the Family Room would be the Group Coordinator). Then, later, I’ll group most of the rest of the house into the family room and play one of the playlists. The Family Room pair is not wired. Sounds like a better plan is to change the alarm to the Living Room, which is wired, and then later group everything into it. 

Before doing that, though, I think I will continue as-is and do the support diagnostic when it happens again. Just to see what the agent can find out.

Is it the case that when one or more speakers are wired with Ethernet, the system configures itself for SonosNet? And if there are no wired speakers, it would use Wi-Fi? I do see in the Android app under the Network Settings, SonosNet is configured. However, under Manage Networks, my Wi-Fi SSID is also shown. I recall that during one of the speaker setups some time ago, the Android app had trouble connecting directly and suggested using Wi-Fi so I gave it the SSID and password. Just wanted to verify that I didn’t inadvertently configure an odd hybrid of Wi-Fi for some speakers and SonosNet for others, if that could be part of the problem.

 

BTW, I did verify that the problem songs (which change since I shuffle the playlists) do exist and can be later played successfully. And the NAS is wired. The network is 100Mbps which has always been adequate, but I will be (one of these days!) swapping the switch out with a Gigabit one (finally).

Thanks again for all the help!

 

 

When there is trouble fetching music, the system will abort the current track and attempt the next track. After a number (I’m not sure what that number is) of aborted tracks, play is terminated.

If you are playing from a desktop controller, go to Help → Error Log… . Here you can review those messages that flashed by.

I had some similar issues a while ago and I didn’t pay much attention to them. It turns out that my NAS was attempting to attract my attention. Eventually, it simply stopped -- and captured my full attention.  Fortunately, I have backups.

A network issue can also cause this. A duplicate IP address is at the top of the list of possibilities.

Yes, when one or more SONOS speakers are wired to the network, SONOS will switch to SonosNet and ignore WiFi and WiFi will ignore SonosNet, however, WiFi and SonosNet use the same radio space. It’s best to use 20MHz WiFi channel 1, 6, or 11 and use different channels for SonosNet and WiFi. Your phone/pad/computer controllers will use their connection (wired or WiFi) to “Associate” with one of the SONOS players. The Associated player will then use it’s connection (WiFi or SonosNet) to work with the system. In a controller you can go to Settings → System → About My System and check the connection status of each player. WM: 0 is SonosNet, WM:1 is WiFi. MOVE and ROAM will always be WiFi. The Associated Player is also shown here.

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By the way, Synology is throwing some dust into the air. They are discontinuing support for some of the older firmware versions. If you have not received notice of this, I suggest that you check their website.

Great info, thank you Buzz!

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