Speakers (stereo paired) work on their own but don't show up in any instance of the app

  • 8 January 2024
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C
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I have many stereo pairs and surround groups in my Sonos system. A good number of times in the past, and recently I have issues where a room like “Kitchen” for instance, work to play music from voice prompts thru Alexa or Sonos voice control BUT the room doesn’t show up in the app (iOS, Mac or Windows.) I’m currently in that situation with several rooms. It’s baffling, frustrating, and paints a very negative image of the product and its ecosystem. And now there are valid competitors in this field.

I can go in the kitchen and tell Alexa/Sonos to play music from any of my connected services, and it works. The daily alarm playlist (originally setup in Sonos app) starts at the set alarm time each day. So all seems well - thru voice commands and I supposed saved repetitive activities. But the room doesn’t show up in the app and the alarm and/or its playlist cannot be accessed/adjusted at all (no room, no playlist/alarm...)

I’ve rebooted all speakers and the router to no avail. Many of my speakers are mounted in places that require a ladder to access them, which is obviously a pain. Not as much of a pain as having to factory reset all the speakers and then add them back into/rebuild the system though.

This is happening more and more frequently and at times seems to align with the timing of updates.

Anyone else having this EXTREMELY frustrating experience?

If so, found a way around it?

I can’t find anything specific out here, and of course I fully expect Sonos’ support to default to their usual “It’s not us, it’s your network - reboot the router. Bye...” response.

 

It’s amazing that these days the user community is usually leaps and bounds more help than the mfg of the product. Really getting tired of the lack of reliability and responsibility with each update for what is overpriced products that at one time really did have a decent UX (well, the desktop apps have pretty much always sucked) and support group. Now, it seems they just want to sell products with limited testing and offer little to no support.

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4 replies

Ken_Griffiths

If all the ‘missing’ Sonos products are listed in the ‘About My System’ and it’s a controller ‘discovery’ issue and you are able to ‘ping’ the missing devices, showing that they are still present on the LAN (subnet), then maybe something in the detail/info. below may help you to find an answer to your discovery issue…

The discovery of the Sonos products by the Sonos controller is a slightly complex area to explore, but briefly… 

SSDP (the UPnP simple service discovery protocol) is used to initially discover the Sonos players and is done via multicasting via UDP to 239.255.255.250:1900 and, for good measure, broadcasting to 255.255.255.255:1900. 

Thereafter communication is unicast.

Both the Sonos players and controllers must share the same network subnet. However if the Sonos devices are connecting to multiple access points, the recommendations (from myself) are that they be set to the same WiFi channel and channel-width. This is for optimum performance particularly in groups and for some reason, if using, with some mesh-based WiFi systems, it appears some will work okay with Sonos, but others may not, particularly if the satellites/AP’s are perhaps auto-selecting their own WiFi channels …and to help solve any issues arising, many here in the community often suggest using SonosNet (wired mode) for Sonos device-discovery/communication instead. 

Quite possibly in your case, the router SSDP multicast used to discover your Sonos speakers is ‘perhaps’ sometimes not working as it should be. However I’m not certain of all the detail of your present network setup, but maybe (just for test purposes) try to ensure ‘all’ (Sonos products and controller devices) are using the same (router) wireless access point and WiFi band, if that’s practicable?

Note, that network switches (if applicable) can also have a role to play in device-discovery issues too and perhaps are not correctly forwarding the multicast packets across the LAN. Just check if any of the missing devices link back to any particular network switch and see what happens when the switch is bypassed.

See this useful link aswell (worth a quick read) re: IGMP snooping:

 https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-igmp-snooping.html

It is also worth trying/fixing one of the three non-overlapping WiFi channels 1, 6 or 11 on the local router 2.4Ghz WiFi adapter, just to see if one of the channels may work better for you (but that’s assuming no Sonos products are wired to the LAN). Note too, that the SonosNet channel (when wired-mode is being used) should not be the same as the chosen router channel.

Another important area to explore is the controller device itself. Temporarily disable any security/software on the mobile controller as that can impact on discovery issues, for example, I’ve seen some users mention ‘Private Address’ (MAC Spoofing), or ‘WiFi calling’ VPN/Firewall/Antivirus software, mobile data access by the Sonos App etc. which has caused them some Sonos device-discovery issues… disable these features temporarily to see if that helps.

Some features built into routers can also be problematic, three that spring to mind are ‘QoS’, ‘Airtime Fairness’ and ‘Parental Control’ - I would choose to personally disable those features, if present.

I would also check for any router firmware updates or, as a last resort, maybe consider switching the router for a different brand, or model, otherwise you may just encounter the same ‘discovery’ issues from time to time, no matter what you try to do with your wired, or wireless, devices.

I’m really sorry for the lengthy post here, but maybe something mentioned above may help you to resolve the matter, if indeed it is a device-discovery issue?

C
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@Ken_Griffiths - No apologies needed for the ‘lengthy post’ as it is greatly appreciated. Plus, I tend to be overly verbose myself LOL.

All WAPs connect to the same managed switch but you do make an interesting point about channel/band steering. The router is a PepLink enterprise grade unit and is rock solid. Replacing it isn’t really an option due to expense, complexity (multiple ISPs with aggregation/failover capabilities, etc.) and all the other work/devices it handles.

That said, back to your point on wireless configs. I have generally left that open for the WAPs to manage automatically so that they can optimize connections with their clients. I may put much narrower (like 1 channel only to test, as you suggest) limits on that to see if it helps. As well, again as you mention - the Sonos devices are indeed spread across multiple WAPs due to the large physical area being covered. That said, one stereo pair IS working that is also attached to the same WAP as a pair that is on its own island but not fully working (mentioned above - works via voice commands but isn’t seen in any instance of the Sonos app.)

My router is pretty strong, so I don’t do any MAC spoofing, etc.

The most frustrating part of this is a system that works for months with no issues at all suddenly becomes broken (sometimes completely unusable) after Sonos pushes updates. That seems to be the case here as well, as the timing of the latest madness seems to line up. My PepLink and/or TPLink gear have had no recent installed updates. I am going to dig more into how that gear is handling the SSDP multicasting though.

The average user isn’t going to have a clue about this kind of stuff though, and most likely won’t have managed equipment that they could examine/adjust any of it even if they did. That’s a real problem for UX. The value proposition on this stuff is that it’s supposed to be easy to use. Digging into network architecture is the opposite of that.

As mentioned in other posts (different subject) - THANK YOU for your insights and suggestions. It gives me a better jumping off point to discover the root cause of these issues instead of just pulling all the gear off the walls and binning or burning it out of sheer frustration while feeling like there’s no help to be had. Your help is greatly appreciated!

C
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@Ken_Griffiths - On a completely side note that will likely be deleted from the thread cuz it’s so off-topic. I see in your profile you’re from the UK and a Floyd fan. I too have been a PF aficionado since the mid ‘70s. I just (intentionally waiting until I could sit and digest it all) listened to Roger Waters’ DSOTM Redux in full (end to end) today.

I’m curious of what your thoughts are on his reinterpretation.

:-)

Ken_Griffiths

That said, back to your point on wireless configs. I have generally left that open for the WAPs to manage automatically so that they can optimize connections with their clients. I may put much narrower (like 1 channel only to test, as you suggest) limits on that to see if it helps. As well, again as you mention - the Sonos devices are indeed spread across multiple WAPs due to the large physical area being covered. That said, one stereo pair IS working that is also attached to the same WAP as a pair that is on its own island but not fully working (mentioned above - works via voice commands but isn’t seen in any instance of the Sonos app.)

My router is pretty strong, so I don’t do any MAC spoofing, etc.

The most frustrating part of this is a system that works for months with no issues at all suddenly becomes broken (sometimes completely unusable) after Sonos pushes updates. That seems to be the case here as well, as the timing of the latest madness seems to line up. My PepLink and/or TPLink gear have had no recent installed updates. I am going to dig more into how that gear is handling the SSDP multicasting though.

Yes, one ‘non-overlapping’ channel (ch 1, 6, or 11) on the 2.4Ghz band only is worth trying and if your AP’s allow, set a channel-width of 20Mhz only for that band.

You mention dropouts post Sonos updates - some DHCP servers have issues reassigning addresses post reboot of multiple devices and so sometimes issue a duplicate address or no address at all - my thoughts are to reserve your IP addresses (make static) in the routers DHCP reservation table (high up in the subnet, out the way), or even outside the allocated address ‘range’ on the subnet server (if server caters for that) and see if that fixes the issue during any future updates.

Roger Waters and DSOTM redux - To be perfectly honest, I’ve not really listened to it that much since its October release - it got mixed reviews, I see.

Too much ‘old man’ talking on it for my liking and a bit dreary/depressing, I found it difficult to get into it. I need to listen to it some more as there are some nice bits in it - to sum up I would call it similar to ‘marmite’ you either love it or hate it… I just found it depressing/even boring in places. Whilst I need to listen to it some more, I prefer to have my glass half full, rather than half empty and it left me feeling like my glass was entirely empty.

On an entirely different note, I do like Peter Gabriel’s I/O album at the moment and after repetitive listing to that, there are some parts that I just can’t get out my head. 

My Wife doesn’t like either album Waters or Gabriel - she describes them both as ‘depressing music’ - so its a headphones job to listen to these things, or I just wait till she goes out.😀

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