A Boost is unlikely to help as you already have a device wired. If it is easy, you could try connecting another of your One SLs to the router in addition to the existing one.

What router are you using?

For the wired speaker, are you getting dropouts on that when playing to it alone, or only when grouped with others?

When grouping speakers, you want the initial room to have the best connection ie. wired. as that becomes the Group co-ordinator.

Hello and thank you so much for your reply.  I have a an Xfinity router and one speaker wired to the router and the remaining seven as I understand, it, create a mesh Netwerk with each other.  My speakers typically drop when they are grouped. And what’s odd it’s the speakers that are closer to the router.  I have two bands on my router, a 5 on a channel 157 and a 2.4 on channel 11.  I have change the Sonos Netwerk to channel one, so it would not have interference however, that did not solve the problem. Then the support representative told me to change it to the same channel as my router so I changed it to 11 because they said it would most likely look at the 2.4.  I’m running out of ideas. Sure appreciate your thoughts. Thank you! 
 

Based on what you’ve posted, it sounds like you’ve got some wifi interference . Worth reading the linked FAQ, and ensuring that “closer to the router” doesn’t mean less that around 3 feet. 

You’re using SonosNet, which is still a wifi type signal, and can be affected as much as your normal wifi. I’d definitely try channel 6, if you’re having issues on channel 1. The reason Sonos uses 1, 6 or 11 is that those are the channels that have no “bleed” over into each other. But whichever channel you use, it’s still potentially affected by both your normal wifi router’s signal, other electronic devices in your home, and of course external sources. I once had a new neighbor move in who set up his router such that it stomped all over my SonosNet channel, and I had to change it. 

Unfortunately, those of us who are part of this community don’t have the same access to the diagnostics that you submit to Sonos, so much of what we’re telling you is based on history, and not hard data.

Hi Bruce, thank you!  I will try channel six to see if it makes a difference.  I wonder if the fact that my router has two bands causes any confusion?  Xfinity suggested I drop the 2.4 but really don’t want to do that since if my 5.0 loses connection I have a failover to the 2.4.  The other thought is to see if it still drops on five speakers instead of playing all 8 at once.  The Sonos rep said the wired speaker create the Sonos net but only good for five speakers.  Not a great option when having parties which is why I thought of the boost.  But it sounds like that will not solve the problem either. 

BOOST simply omits the audio section to save costs. Unless it’s impractical to wire one or more speakers, I doubt that BOOST has any utility in your system. Actually, it is likely to be ignored.

Eight speakers is easy for SonosNet to support — unless there is interference or signal strength issues. Very dense walls will reduce signal strength. All of this leaves clear tracks in the diagnostics.

Note that all network traffic for a Group passes through the “Group Coordinator” (the first player in the Group). If the Coordinator is struggling to connect, the Group will suffer. Ideally a wired unit should be the Coordinator. You should experiment by using a different Coordinator.

Parties can present additional issues. Water absorbs WiFi band energy. Humans are mostly bags of water. A house full of party bags can degrade wireless performance.

And I’d leave the 2.4 GHz ‘side’ active. 5Ghz is indeed ‘faster’, but it doesn’t go ‘through’ objects as well, and Sonos streams don’t need the ‘speed’ it offers. It’s very useful for other things, absolutely, just not for Sonos. 

Hi.  You seem to have received some dodgy advice from Sonos Support, I am afraid. The suggestion that SonosNet is only good for 5 speakers is the most blatantly ridiculous statement.

Just to check that SonosNet is running OK please check under About My System in the Sonos app that all your speakers are displaying WM=0 not WM=1.

Do you have any other network devices besides the router?  Mesh satellites?

Do you have separate network names for your 2.4 an 5GHz bands or are they combined into a single SSID?

Thank you!  Wm are set to zero.  No other networks except the two and they are separate names.  I’ll try a different wired speaker but from the advice I’m getting the consensus seems to be interference since I’ve tried everything else.  I’m playing them this morning after changing to channel 6 and so far no drops.  It does seem to happen more in the late afternoon. I thought it was odd that I was told a wired speakers are only good for five other speakers in the mesh network, Sonos advertises 32! I also found another potential issue after reading the interference article that was in a response.  My router is on a shelf below my tv that uses a fire stick.  So may be causing interference or competing for the network.  The tv uses the 5 band.  But they are not on at the same time.  Not sure if that matters? Really appreciate the help here!  I’ve gotten more solutions that seem to be improving the situation. 

Are there any other potential interfering devices, such as Zigbee home control devices, baby monitors, microwave ovens (when operating), wireless security cameras,  cordless phone system, etc.?

Since there seems to be more issues at specific times, keep a log of events. Back in 2005 I had major issues with my SONOS system. After a short period of logging a clear pattern started to emerge. I shared my log with a neighbor and she could correlate her use of a cordless phone system with my issues -- occurring only when she was at home. She mostly used the phone in a specific room and I was able to shuffle my wired/wireless player locations and work around the issue. (By the way, only certain cordless phones will cause issues)

, Neighbors are far enough apart that I can’t reach their network.  We only have tv’s with fire sticks and computers.  Seems to happen more at late afternoon when we log off for work.  I’ve been running them for three hours now with no cut outs so will do as you suggest, keep a log to identify what time and what other devices may be interfering but typically do not have several things going at once unless it is our phone causing it.  Since we start the music from our phones on the Sonos app does it matter what band the phones  are on since the speakers are on their own network?  Wondering if our phone has a lot of activity getting email and text alerts if that causes it? To me,  It would only seem logical if the speakers were running on the Wi-Fi. 

It depends how the SONOS system is accessing the music. In most cases, once you start music playing, the SONOS system will directly fetch the music and the controllers can be shut down or uninstalled and the music will continue. If you are playing music stored on the phone using Bluetooth or AirPlay 2, then the phone/pad is directly involved in music play and bottlenecks on the phone/pad will have an impact. SPOTIFY is a hybrid arrangement and their phone/pad App can be involved in the music play.

A few suggestions that may improve stability.  (Sorry if some have been mentioned already, but on a very quick skim back I didn’t notice them).

1. Remove your WiFi credentials from your Sonos system.  Go to Settings, System, Network, Manage Networks.  (You cannot do this if you have a Move or a Roam, but it sounds like you don’t.)
2. Reserve IP addresses for your Sonos speakers in your router’s DHCP settings
3. Keep the wired speaker at least 3 feet from the router.
4. Check that the channel width for your WiFi is 20MHz, not 40MHz or Auto.
5. If there is a ‘band steering’ option in your router, disable it.  (Although now that you are using SonosNet, this will directly affect only the controllers, and may not have an impact even there.)

Footnote to my post…

I am actually staggered that a Sonos Support person should say that SonosNet is only good for five speakers. For the first ten years of its existence Sonos could only be run on SonosNet. It's a mesh, for goodness sake! Every Sonos device can act as a repeater. The more the merrier!

The most I have personally run on SonosNet is 10 'rooms', with 16 speakers once you allow for surrounds, Subs and stereo pairs  But I know that there are larger systems out there. 

It was an odd comment because I have a very simple set up.  I moved my router to a room with less interference.  It has helped a bit.  I ran the speakers last night and they cut out for about five minutes maybe for the speakers to discover each other on the mesh.  Then it ran for an hour fine then they cut out but came back again.  The app shows they are still playing when they cut out.  I ran some reports so will call Sonos but sounding more and more like interference.  My next thought is to get a mesh network for my router. I need to do that anyway for some far reaching tv’s. Do you think it would resolve anything if I created a mesh network with my network and changed the speakers to Wi-Fi versus the Sonos network?

Mesh WiFi often has features that do not get on well with Sonos in WiFi mode dand it is still generally better to run SonosNet alongside a mesh WiFi. No two situations are exactly the same, of course. 

It may be worth looking at your network matrix while you are running in SonosNet mode. Identify the IP address of one of your speakers in About my System.

Then type the following into a browser, substituting your ip address  

http://ip address:1400/system/ review

Click the Network Marrix link.

You can post the matrix but you may prefer to obscure the MAC addresses.