Hi @r03g1, welcome to the Sonos Community!

I’ve had a look into the diagnostics and can see a buffering error with Deezer, causing the music to dropout/skip. 

Generally, buffering errors and dropouts are caused by wireless interference, so we’ll want to change some router settings to prevent any interference.

In the diagnostics, I can see the home channel of Sonos was channel 11, if you can change this in your router settings, I’d recommend changing the wireless channel to either 6 or 1 to see if that helps. The router you’re using may also have auto-channel turned on, which we’d recommend you turn off to leave Sonos on a dedicated wireless channel and prevent the router from causing interference by changing channels in the future.

You’ll also want to make sure that Sonos isn’t close to any sources of wireless interference that could be causing the dropouts. You’ll also want to keep sources of wireless interference away from the router as well, because if the router is picking up on useless signals, it can send them to the rest of the system. If possible, I’d like to know if this still occurs if you have a device wired to the router via an Ethernet cable.

Finally, I’d like to know how Sonos is connecting to your network. Would you be able to let me know what devices you have in your network and how Sonos is connecting to them, such as any network switches, access points, wireless extender, etc. 

I hope this information helps!

thanks for looking into this!

the network setup is rather easy and has not changed in years:
two google nest wifi routers connected as a mesh network. the primary one which connect also all sonos devices but the master bedroom and the secondary nest devices which connects the two master bedroom sonos play 1s. so everything is in the same layer2 network.

unfortunately, google does not allow to pin channels - so all i can provide for now is a speed test from the access points to the sonos devices:

access points → internet - 250mbits
access points → sonos play 1 master bedroom - 29.1mbits (5ghz)
access points → sonos play 1 bathroom - 22.7mbits (5ghz)
access points → sonos play 3 living room - 29.1mbits (5ghz)
access points → sonos playbar - 628kbps!!! (2.4ghz)
access points → google chromecast - 58.2mbits (2.4ghz)

interestingly, the soundbar is closest to the primary google nest wifi router and its the only sonos device using the 2.4ghz band. is there a way to switch it to 5ghz also? on the other hand the chromecast is not even half a meter away from the soundbar and gets nearly 60mibts via the 2.4ghz band.

i will try to get a rj45 run for the soundbar and let you know the results.

i will try to get a rj45 run for the soundbar and let you know the results → no issues any longer connecting the soundbar via RJ45. Seems it was really only the soundbar which I ruled out standing just next to the Router (still does not make sense though...)

is there anyway to prefer 5ghz on the soundbar or do any advanced wifi config?

Hi @r03g1,

You aren’t able to force the Playbar, or any of our Soundbars for that matter, onto the 5Ghz connection. The 5Ghz on Soundbars are reserved for surround and sub connections, so the soundbar itself will run on 2.4Ghz and any additions to the Home Theater setup will connect back to the Soundbar via 5Ghz.

While speedtests can help, they generally don’t tell us the full story and its best not to focus on them too much, however 628kbps is fairly low, as is likely the reason for the underflow and skipping audio.

I’d suggest a system reboot, by turning off the devices that are part of the system for a few minutes then turning them back on. You’ll want to reboot in this order: Google Mesh → Mesh Node → Sonos Devices → Controllers running the Sonos app. After doing that, check if the transfer rate has increased or if it’s still at 628kbps. Other than a network reset, the next solution would be to keep the Playbar wired and see if that improves the connection.

I hope this information helps!