sonos devices dropping connection

This is all absolute rubbish.

At this price point you should not have to fart about with router settings, ip addresses or anything.  Particularly when using Sonos in Mesh mode.  If it isn’t plug and play, the programmers are a bunch of cowboys and should be sacked.  We did not buy Sonos to learn the ins and outs of networking, but play music and audio.

My meshed system consistently ‘unrecognises’ one of my speakers ever since the last update.  Reinstalling is not an option as Sonos have blocked me from adding speakers because I have not bought a new iPad (I have an Air2 that is used to control everything Smart in my home with no problems except the Sonos.

A few years ago, Sonos abandoned everyone with Sonos Control 1 app, making obsolete many systems using early Sonos products, penalising the early adopters who made the company successful.  Now they are forcing us to buy new iPads.

The best solution appears to be sell the lot on eBay and purchase a system made by professionals rather than cowboys.

I agree, and for me…it will happen soon. Every 1-2 days, one or all 5 of my speakers falls off.  The amount of time and frustration I pay to just be able to Use these pricey speakers just isn’t worth it any longer. If Sonos put as much effort into their software as they do the actual speaker, they may be worth it. And I can’t even bypass the Sonos app, other srvcs still won’t find the speakers. UGH. I wish I would’ve Never bought Sonos to begin with. So frustrating. 

Honestly I would return them.  I just purchased a bunch of Sonos gear and I’m having the same problems.  I read this thread and the Sonos help articles and honestly it boils down to lousy Sonos network stack sw.  Wifi is intermittent, things drop off, mesh networks drop and reconnect nodes, if Sonos cannot handle these typical scenarios it is a them problem.  All of this reset their products, reboot routers, etc are hacks around a network stack that can’t handle the vagaries of a wifi network.  I have a bunch of cheaper smart speakers from Amazon, Google, Apple, none of them every loose network connection or somehow get confused by my home mesh network.  

I don’t know if Sonos engineers read these threads but if you do, you guys simply need to do a lot better.  This is unacceptable.  

If you read the post you would realize I currently own Sonos products.  I have an ARC and 2 amps and there is something definitely wrong with the network stack on their hw.  I have them updated to the latest releases and my network infra is Ubiquity which is enterprise grade network gear.   The WAPs are hardwired back to the controller and I have no problems with any other equipment connecting via WiFi.   I just changed my ARC from WiFi to Ethernet and it still just drops connections and stops playing.  So I’m pretty sure their network stack needs work.  
 

I commented on this thread so others can understand that is likely not their network and they shouldn’t have to restart, reset and generally screw around with the network to get Sonos to work.  It should be up to the Sonos gear to deal with imperfect network situations.  

Ok that was sort of helpful.  I read the note about making sure everything is either wired or wifi but a network can’t be mixed.  Tough restriction that rules out any small speakers I want to place around but ok I’ll deal with it.  Then the note says that you have to specifically go into the devices and disable wifi.  This seems strange because most network gear will notice when ethernet is connected directly and default to that but ok I went to do this.  But disabling wifi fails.  It fails multiple times on all of my devices even though they are connected to ethernet.  So I again searched the Sonos community and found this thread:  

Apparently the new app is broken and therefore you can’t disable wifi on the devices from the app.  One person managed to find a hack that if he sets the app to disable the wifi and then once it is done immediately unplugs the Sonos amp then the disable will stay.  Credit to the person that uncovered this but come on, really.

I go back to my original comment that the Sonos engineers just have to do better.

BTW, I appreciate the help.  My frustration is not directed at you or anyone on this forum.  It is directed at the engineering team that delivered this level of quality.  

Still having daily issues - which are solved by resetting the router.

The smart plug suggestion doesn’t work as once switched off there is no internet connection for it switch back on.

So disappointing to have to faff around with supposedly top end kit.

Any other ideas before I return?

Thank you

Luke

What router and mesh setup are you using here?

Why is there no internet connection to turn a connected smart-plug back on? That should not be the case - might that be part of your issue here, if the smart-plug is also not working properly in situ?

Have you spoken to Sonos Support yet and given them the diagnostic from jour system, as mentioned earlier?

More likely fighting some other device for a duplicate IP address. Try unplugging all of your Sonos devices, and while they’re unplugged, reboot your router. Once the router has had a couple of minutes to recover, plug back in your Sonos devices. 

Yeah I have submitted dozens of diagnostics and spoken with Sonos support - it was working at the time, so they said there was nothing to fix, which slightly misses the point.

i tried the smart plug on the power socket to the router which obviously killed the WiFi needed to switch back on, thinking about it now probably worth trying on the power supply to the speakers - I’ll see if that works.

Thanks for your replies!

Ken, thank you very much for your help and hints. I did try to carry on looking into it yesterday, but … life. So, I will do what you and your colleague have suggested as soon as I can and let you know how it went.

RacDel

Thanks Airgetlam for reply! I took a look over the system logs and it seems like it's coming from the devices trying to switch over to a different mesh AP. While other devices seem to be able to handle this switch, the Sonos devices seem incapable of handling it as gracefully.

For now it looks like I was able to resolve this problem by changing the RSSI threshold to be around -78 rather than -70, so they are not attempting to switch anymore. But I do wonder if it's just a me-problem, or if others also experience this in mesh networks?

I had the same issue after the update, all my connection issues started up. It’s almost a weekly chore now to keep the devices up. As the port seems to lose the Wi-Fi password, only to say it failed and suddenly it’s all good. Then it’s fine for a few days, and it’s the same thing all over again. 

Have you tried the suggestion above to set static/reserved IP addresses for your Sonos gear?

Your router’s 

DHCP Settings page usually makes that fairly quick and uncomplicated.

In that case it maybe best to first reproduce the issue, then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support via this LINK to discuss the matter in detail and see what the Staff can perhaps then suggest to resolve the matter.

And now, as if by magic, it has stopped dropping out. No idea how it happened, as I had tried everything and then gave up as I was too busy at work and privately. I have just tested the sound again and it is back to normal. Thank god for that.

and thank you Ken.

RacDel

The boost hasn’t been doing it’s job since I ”upgraded” to the new app and not been doing anything at all that I can make out since the update in May. The speakers have all been visible on my mesh, showing that they were connected to my router / repeaters using wifi…

It should be working and it’s connectivity was improved in mid-May. See the release note (screenshot attached). 

If problems persist then it maybe best to reproduce the issue seen and then immediately submit a Sonos system diagnostic report from within the Sonos App, note it’s reference and then contact/chat with Sonos Support Staff via this LINK and see what the Staff can perhaps suggest to help you to resolve the matter.

Just purchased a refurbished Arc. I can not keep it connected to play continuous music or even my TV. I own multiple other sonos speakers none of which I have a problem. I have reached out to customer service a number of times with no resolutions. On there side it shows it working. I’m wondering if the original issue with the speaker was the connection and they didn’t wait long enough to reproduce the issue. 

Why have you joined this forum today, if you no longer own a Sonos product and replying to a month old post here - seems like you’re simply here to present destructive, rather than constructive feedback.

The new Sonos App is just a remote for Sonos products by the way, it’s not a player and other Apps can be used, so advising others to return their products because of a software ‘remote’ is certainly not the best answer here in any case, there are many other options that could first be considered and there’s certainly nothing wrong at all with the Sonos Hardware.

How is it connected? What have you and Sonos Support Staff checked/tried so far?

I wired a speaker directly to the route for exactly the same problem and I still couldn’t submit a diagnostics report. Sonos help blamed it on my mesh, but my computer / phones / ipads / robot vacuum TV sound work fine, no drop outs at all. I have, repeatedly turned off all of my speakers in the whole hose (10) and turned the router off, then turned all my speakers back on. It drops out constantly. I am starting to despair that this will ever be resolved and we have thousands of Euros worth of gear that we can’t use. Absolutely not good enough.

RacDel

Connected by WiFi. We have done all the resets of router and updates. Completely took it out of the system factory reset. Every time we do anything it plays for awhile then disconnects. Through the TV or just playing music we get the same results. 

What does the Arc’s status LED do when the music/tv audio drops out? -

Does the Arc lose its actual connection to the router and drop its IP address? 

What router are you using (make/model) - can you ascertain it’s 2.4Ghz WiFi channel and it’s channel-width?

I should mention the ONLY way I've been able to add the speakers back into the network/system is by doing a factory reset.

I've checked the router control panel when they have dropped and it looks like they are not connected to the internet so it seems like they are crashing?