Sonos customer service hung up, never called back, and my Playbar still cuts out

Why should a CS representative in India be less capable of dealing with complexity than one in the US?

Sonos has never publicised the matrix or encouraged users to use it.  It is just something that some users know about.

The wireless radio on the Arc is probably more powerful than that on the Playbar, so it doesn’t necessarily follow that swapping positions should make no difference.  Please confirm which device(s) you have wired to your network in the setup that produced the matrix shown.  When you swap the positions of Arc and Playbar, what is wired?

Do the dropouts on the Playbar occur only when it is played alone, only when it is grouped with the Arc, or in both scenarios?

I can tell you with certainty that CS in India is not as capable. For one, when I tried to return two defective arcs they sent me, I was sent around to half a dozen different call center reps who couldn’t figure out the basic task of returning an item. They insisted the items weren’t defective, until I proved it was a bad batch of Arcs. I proved that by having to buy an Arc from Best Buy that didn’t have the issue that both Arcs Sonos sent had. When they finally agreed to let me return it, I spent something like 25 hours trying to get a shipping label for both arcs and my money back. You wouldn’t be believe how infuriating it was. 

I posted the incorrect matrix in the last post. The one below is when I swapped the Arc and Bedroom. Bedroom used to be in my upstairs bedroom; Arc used to be in my main room. When I switched positions and hard-wired the Bedroom into my Eero on my main floor, this is the matrix that I got. The bedroom satellites show a poor signal here because they were still upstairs when I moved the bedroom downstairs. Note that they still played fine despite being red and orange.

The Network Matrix was never documented and it’s usefulness in displaying troubleshooting data is waning. The latest S2 only units do not report any data for the Network Matrix. In my own system the Network Matrix is mostly blank. Only an ancient SUB reports interference levels. 

When Community members seem to have technical curiosity, mostly older units, and post about issues that are likely caused by wireless interference, I’ll reply with instructions on how to display the Network Matrix. If the Network Matrix is sufficiently populated, it is useful for pointing out units that are experiencing interference or very low signal strength. The user can then move SONOS or other nearby units and immediately see if there is any improvement.

I wish that the Network Matrix could be restored to its original glory -- and improved to incorporate WiFi improvements..

Hi.  If it is Bedroom (ie 9ie the Playbar) that is wired in the above setup then it is odd that it is shown as “undefined” in the matrix, when acting as the root bridge for SonosNet.

I would try the following experiment (but cannot guarantee it will help)

(i) Remove the surrounds  and sub from the Sonos soundbars (this step may be unnecessary, it’s up to you whether you do it, but I think it is best to keep everything simple to start with)

(ii) Power off all your Sonos and Eero devices

(iii) Wire the Arc to your Master Eero device.  Do not wire any other Sonos devices.

(iv) Power the Eero back on and let it come up fully

(v) Then power on the Arc and let it power on fully.

(vi) Power on Playbar and any other Sonos devices except for surrounds and sub

Leave any satellite Eero devices powered off and see if the system is stable at this point.  Post back with the results.

I did this when I first got the devices. It didn’t make a difference.

There are certainly things you can do about interference…

My own choice would be not to wire the Playbar, or any Surround, or Sub (if using) initially, as I would not want it as ‘root bridge‘ for the SonosNet STP… I would aim to wire a non-HT Sonos device direct to the Eero primary Hub instead (Such as a Boost or standalone One, just as examples) …and keeping that wired device at least one metre away from the Hub too.

If there are no Era or Sonos portable Sonos products, it would also be sensible to remove the WiFi credentials from the Sonos App network settings as outlined here…

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/remove-a-wifi-network-from-your-sonos-system

I would then scan/discover the Eero 2.4Ghz channels in use and set the SonosNet channel so that it coincides with one that isn’t used, or is least used.

Playbar uses a 2.4Ghz connection to the SonosNet wireless network, so I would set any devices around it like the TV, Fire TV, Apple TV, XBox or PlayStation etc. to all use the Eero 5Ghz band and see that the Playbar and bonded devices use a different ad-hoc wireless channel. 

If there were still issues after this, then because I had wired a Boost, or One, to the Eero router as the root bridge, I would consider purchasing a small switch (unmanaged) and insert that between the Eero primary hub and the wired Sonos device and then (now) wiring the Playbar to that same switch aswell.

The one thing I would not ‘ever’ choose to do, is to wire any Sonos device to the eero satellite hubs. That said, if the Eero satellites were also wired back to the unmanaged switch I mentioned, I might also try the Eero hubs ‘bridged’ to the ISP provided router instead, just to see which router performed best with SSDP multicast device discovery of the Sonos players by the Sonos controller App.

So there are quite a few things to try here, even with an Eero WiFi mesh setup, which it seems is sadly not very user-configurable and maybe not much better than the original Google nest mesh system that was being used before.. actually I’ll take that back, it is better than a Google mesh WiFi setup, but it does lack in user-configurability in some otherwise useful areas of Home networking.

HT - ‘Home Theatre’

If the Play:1 is standalone, then yes, I would choose to use that initially as the wired ‘root bridge’ device (set at least 1m away from the Primary Eero Hub), just  to take some network traffic away from the Playbar. That’s mostly applies to any other non-bonded Sonos devices. You can always wire the Playbar too, but make the Play:1 the root bridge in your matrix. You can change its priority, if required, to force it as ‘root bridge’, if you wire both, but just see how it goes.

Note as you change things around too, that what was not using channel 1 last night might be using channel 1 today, after you make a change to your configuration, so be mindful that eero is liable to do what it wants until things have been left to settle fully. 

If the Sonos Arc processor is busy whilst playing Music, or the more demanding TV audio, then do you really want it also handling the SonosNet network traffic aswell to your Playbar and any other Sonos players, when a standalone Boost or Play:1 can do that instead? - It’s the reasons why I would have personally chosen to wire a Play:1 and have it set as the ‘root bridge’ instead, but it’s entirely up to you.

I would have just simply tried the things mentioned and (if necessary) put the Eero system into ‘bridged mode’ too, especially as Sonos Staff have suggested that Eero configuration in the past, in threads on this forum, but I guess it’s down to which router and configuration works best.

Given the same situation, I would have just tried these things anyway to see what worked best in my Home environment.

As I say it’s really up-to you how far you choose to go with the hardware you have.

I would not rely entirely on the Sonos matrix for a clear view of what’s happening in your current setup. Modern Sonos devices don’t even report to the matrix any more, such as your Arc, it seems.

You mention using ‘Google’ hubs in your last post - did you mean Eero? I would not go back to using your Google WiFi, you will likely be better off using the Eero mesh instead and a ‘good rule of thumb’ is to never wire anything ‘Sonos’ to a WiFi mesh satellite hub, especially not a HT device as you can’t switch off their radio on most occasions …and you don’t want the network backhaul using SonosNet and slowing everything down if it’s due to go wirelessly via that satellite to the router, which ‘may’ sometimes happen in some circumstances.

This is where I’m confused. Why is T1 support telling me to connect directly from the Google Mesh hub but you’re saying don’t do that? I can’t connect directly from the Eero, as those hubs (other than the main one), don’t have ethernet ports.

I ended up going back to the Eero anyway, because when I moved over to Google Mesh, half my smart devices in the house wouldn’t reconnect.  The music is still cutting out on the Playbar, and even with the Arc wired, the rest of the house is showing up on wifi. And even when everything was on Sonosnet, the Matrix was showing poor signals in the bedroom still. The T1 rep said whether I wired or not, the interference would be in those areas and likely still cause issues.

I don’t know who’s right here, but I’m so frustrated with Sonos that I’m considering selling all my speakers and just switching over to another company. Customer service is everything and it seems like the lower tier is not properly trained and the upper tier is too hard to get in touch with. 

​I was merely suggesting that as your Eero Hubs have no Ethernet ports that if you wire your Playbar that you wire it to a small unmanaged switch linked back to the Primary Eero Hub (router). Also to use your Play:1 as the ‘root bridge’ (initial device) off that same switch - there was no mention earlier that you were still using your Google Nest Hubs, but even then I would not suggest you wire the PlayBar to a Satellite Hub for a variety of reasons, including the fact it may cause you network backhaul issues.

That said, it’s entirely your prerogative of course, to go with whatever advice you gather, but surely you have tried the things Support mentioned already and clearly things are still not working for you.

I personally would not use both Eero mesh and Google mesh together,  as you may just make matters worse, rather than better. Perhaps just use the Eero Hubs for now, as clearly you upgraded to those for good reason. 

I also mentioned earlier in the thread to only try the suggestions mentioned if you had no success with your T2 Support interaction. I suspect that’s still ongoing.

There are lots of suggestions in this thread that I still suspect you have not yet tried yourself and it seems unnecessary to ‘throw in the towel’ at this early stage, before trying the various things mentioned. 

As @jgatie mentions you will likely end up with the same issues anyway with a different brand of wireless speaker - I think you would just be wasting your money too and will be better off first resolving the issues that have been discussed here.