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Question

Sonos soundbar randomly playing Absolute Radio in the early hours

  • August 17, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 30 views

I’m hoping someone on the Sonos Community can help me identify a very frustrating problem.

My Living Room TV Sonos soundbar repeatedly starts playing Absolute Radio by itself during the early hours of the morning, waking us up. The Samsung TV is switched OFF when this happens.

I have checked the following:

  • No Sonos alarms are set.
  • No voice assistants are connected.
  • No iPhone Shortcuts/automations.
  • No Apple Home automations.
  • The soundbar is not AirPlay compatible.
  • Sleep Timer is OFF.
  • The station being played is Absolute Radio.
  • I have submitted Sonos diagnostics while the problem was occurring. And they reset my App on Saturday but it is still happening.

Diagnostic references (incase SONOS technical support see this):
[redacted]

The system also includes a Virgin Media TV box connected to the Samsung TV via HDMI, so I am now wondering whether HDMI-CEC/Anynet+ or the Virgin box could somehow be triggering the Sonos.

Has anyone experienced Sonos starting Absolute Radio by itself in the middle of the night, particularly with a Samsung TV and Virgin Media box?

I really need to get to the bottom of this as it is repeatedly waking us up.

Any suggestions on how to identify what is sending the play command would be greatly appreciated.

Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.

3 replies

Stanley_4
  • Grand Maestro
  • August 17, 2026

You need to remove the diagnostic numbers, they should not be made public. Sonos support are the only people that can provide you useful information from them. If the play command is coming from the tv they likely won't be able to identify what is triggering the tv

Every instance of spontaneous playback has been traced to a cat (nice warm cat bed) or some service or device the user has connected to their Sonos, in rare situations it could be a rouge user on your network. 

Aside from another support call and asking for escalation to a higher level of support you could try selecting a different streaming source before bedtime to be sure it isn't just Sonos starting playing. Maybe go through each device and select a different source to find the culprit?

Since the soundbar is controlled by the tv it could be the tv at fault, or it could be passing something it is sent on over the hdmi connection, if the above fails then pulling cables is the best method of isolation.


Airgetlam
  • August 17, 2026

Where is Absolute Radio playing from? Is it associated with Sonos Radio, Spotify, Deezer, etc? Or is it through the Virgin media box?

As ​@Stanley_4 suggests, there have been no confirmed cases of the Sonos software going rogue (not rouge) and playing something on its own. All confirmed cases of this type of behavior have been associated with other reasons, including most frequently a Spotify Connect session which hasn’t been broken by playing another source. Lots of unsubstantiated claims, with people posting complaints, but never coming back to explain exactly what was going on, so the confirmed cases is all we can go on. But the software running on the Sonos changes frequently, it can’t be ruled out, but certainly has never been confirmed yet. 


Corry P
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  • Sonos Staff
  • August 20, 2026

Hi ​@Green George 

Welcome back to the Sonos Community!

I’m sorry to hear about this issue you are having with your Sonos soundbar playing Absolute Radio early in the morning! It sounds very annoying, but we think there is a simple fix.

Before we get to that, a little detail - it seems a touch control on one of the surrounds (the righthand one) is triggering the event. I’d likely blame a cat, if you have one? Anyway, when TV audio is detected and plays, the queue (which has Absolute queued up) isn’t cleared, so when the surrounds speaker’s Play control is touched, the soundbar is sent the command to play, and it resumes Absolute Radio.

To fix this, please open the queue for the affected room and clear it. If it already seems clear, please reboot all 4 speakers in the room by removing power for a short time.

If this does not help, please submit new diagnostics after the next event and let me know here when you have done so, but without sharing the given number - I can find them without it. Thanks.

In addition to all of this, it seems the surround speakers are having to change their Wi-Fi operating channel due to some nearby interference. If there are any Wi-Fi devices (especially your router) within 1m of your soundbar, please try to separate them to at least 1m.

I hope this helps.

 

Edit: Disabling the touch controls on the surround speaker would also serve to prevent this in the future - Settings icon » [room name] » Touch Controls (slide dot left to disable).