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Answered

Queue is cleared after power outage

  • October 3, 2024
  • 5 replies
  • 110 views
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Dear all,

my Sonos speakers (Sonos Play:5 Gen 1, several Sonos Play:1, Sonon One, Sub, Roam) forget their queue content after power outage. I guess this is currently by design and I have to admit that doesn’t happen often but I have connected my speakers to my home automation (swtch light on > start playing / switch off > pause) and every time when my speakers get disconnected from power (e.g. due to power outage) and restoring power, they boot up with an empty queue and I have to add a radio station again manually to all speakers. It would be nice, if the speakers could keep the last played play list with track and position, radio station or whatelse. I’m not a programmer, but speaker settings also remain after power outage, so in general it should be possible to keep some information beyond power outage. Maybe this should just be considered as feature request.

PS: I thought about a workaround via my home automation but it’s difficult for to keep track of the queue information an revert it back after power restore.

Best answer by jgatie

@Airgetlam is correct.  The non-volatile memory (flash memory) used by Sonos has limited write cycles; that is, there is a limited number of writes before the material starts to break down.  Once a sector has deteriorated, it is marked as unusable, causing an ever decreasing storage capacity, and eventually breaking down entirely.  There are typically around 100,000 write/erase cycles until the circuit begins to deteriorate.  For this reason, the writes are kept to a minimum (system settings, service information, new units, etc.).  If the system was writing out the queue to flash memory every time the queue is added to, deleted from, or otherwise edited it would reach the limit of the memory very quickly. 

It is also very slow to write to, which could cause a performance hit.  But this is secondary to the write/erase limit.

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5 replies

Airgetlam
  • Airgetlam
  • October 3, 2024

This is something I’ve been requesting for over 10 years. I don’t think (as a guess) that there is the appropriate type of memory in a Sonos device to store that data across a power cycle.

The flip side is that it is also one of the ways I can tell when there has been a firmware update for the speakers, in which Sonos reboots the system, too…while I don't lose the playlist, it does reset the playlist to the first ‘song’. Interestingly, it does reset the ‘random’ nature of the playlist, so after that first ‘song’, I do get new randomization of the playlist.

Bruce
Stanley_4
melvimbe
jgatie
  • jgatie
  • Answer
  • October 3, 2024

@Airgetlam is correct.  The non-volatile memory (flash memory) used by Sonos has limited write cycles; that is, there is a limited number of writes before the material starts to break down.  Once a sector has deteriorated, it is marked as unusable, causing an ever decreasing storage capacity, and eventually breaking down entirely.  There are typically around 100,000 write/erase cycles until the circuit begins to deteriorate.  For this reason, the writes are kept to a minimum (system settings, service information, new units, etc.).  If the system was writing out the queue to flash memory every time the queue is added to, deleted from, or otherwise edited it would reach the limit of the memory very quickly. 

It is also very slow to write to, which could cause a performance hit.  But this is secondary to the write/erase limit.

Airgetlam
melvimbe
D
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  • dbr82
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • October 3, 2024

Sounds logical and that I do understand totally. Thanks for that detailed explanation. Then, I will try to configure a workaround like “Check the queue every 5 Minutes and in case it’s empty add at the default radio station”. I don’t know yet how to determine the empty queue (I’m using Home Assistant with Node Red addon), but in my experinence this should be possible in some way.

Airgetlam
  • Airgetlam
  • October 3, 2024

It isn’t something I frequently care about, although living where I do now, there are more frequent power outages. Nor is it all that taxing for me, as long as when Sonos updates the firmware, I can skip the first song.

For me, it’s an extremely minor concern. Sonos has much bigger fish to fry, and as @jgatie suggests, ‘fixing’ it likely won’t happen, for the reasons he outlined. 

Bruce
Stanley_4
  • Stanley_4
  • Lead Maestro
  • October 3, 2024

Something to keep in mind about the flash memory is that new Sonos have a vastly improved number of write cycles over older Sonos so what might be possible for new gear would shortly trash older gear. You can see some of this on the topics discussing older Connects on S2 versus reverting to S1.

Writing only on power-fail or reboot sounds like an option but it is risky as if the power is gone before the writes are done you have a mess. That is why most SSD drives have a limited power storage capability, it lets them finish the current write cycle and not corrupt the device. Maybe not so much your data but that is far easier to restore.

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