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Speakers Stop Playing Together

  • April 5, 2023
  • 10 replies
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For about the last month, my Sonos Playbar and a pair of Play 1 speakers temporarily stop playing together after grouping.

The Playbar is also used as a TV speaker, which causes it to ungroup from Play 1 speakers when the TV is on. That’s the way we prefer it for TV watching.

When listening to music, we prefer a whole room effect, so we group them together.

For about the last month, especially when listening to SiriusXM, the grouping works great for about the first 10 minutes, then the Playbar drops off for about 3 minutes, so only the Play 1s are working. Then  the Playbar returns to the group by itself, although the overall sound quality is degraded.

I have tried powering down all components, then rebooting, to no avail.

I live in a high rise building amidst many other WiFi systems. The components all work off a Wifi extender on a Google Fiber network. All the components are 12 feet or closer to the extender.

Grateful for any help. I have submitted diagnostics Confirmation #515872033.

Best answer by RichBV

Thanks, Ken.

Since my last post, after deleting the Wifi network info, the Sonos system was not recognizing any of the components except the hard-wired speaker.

Out of desperation, I called Sonos tech support, and from the diagnostics, they figured out that I had disabled the wireless function on the hard-wired speaker, which was a big problem, since the hard-wired speaker was supposed to be the broadcast source for SonosNet.

Once I re-enabled wireless for the hard-wired speaker, all the other components quickly joined onto SonosNet of their own accord. No drop-outs, no interruptions, sound quality is great.

Thanks again for steering me in the right direction.

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10 replies

Ken_Griffiths

Are you able to wire either the Playbar, or one of the play:1’s to the WiFi extender (preferably the left speaker in the stereo pair) to see if that may immediately improves things as it will switch your system over from WiFi to the internal SonosNet signal. If that does work I would also suggest removing your WiFi credentials from the Sonos App - see this LINK.

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  • RichBV
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • April 6, 2023

Speakers (especially L speaker) are too far away, don’t have an ethernet cable that long, plus would have to route it through a high traffic area, causing tripping hazard.

Might be able to route a cable to Playbar, if that would really solve the problem.

R
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  • RichBV
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  • Contributor I
  • April 6, 2023

On the other hand, I have two Play 1s in a separate room, with the left speaker very close to the router (not extender).

If I link the left speaker to the router by ethernet cable, will that help solve the temporary disconnect between the Playbar and Play 1s in the separate room?

Ken_Griffiths

On the other hand, I have two Play 1s in a separate room, with the left speaker very close to the router (not extender).

If I link the left speaker to the router by ethernet cable, will that help solve the temporary disconnect between the Playbar and Play 1s in the separate room?

Yes that will actually be a better solution - see if that solves the issue by wiring the speaker to the router. If not, then just check that the extender (which may not be officially supported by Sonos products) is operating with the same SSID/credentials, Wifi channels and channel-width as the main router.

Ideally the 2.4Ghz channel should be set to a ‘fixed’ non-overlapping channel (use either 1, 6 or 11) and limit its width to 20Mhz only on both the router and extender.

Note: The sonosnet channel in the Sonos App ‘Settings/System/Network’ should be set to a different channel to the one in use by your router and extender.

See if that fixes things.

R
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  • RichBV
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  • Contributor I
  • April 6, 2023

“ Ideally the 2.4Ghz channel should be set to a ‘fixed’ non-overlapping channel (use either 1, 6 or 11) and limit its width to 20Mhz only on both the router and extender.”

So for example the router 2.4 Ghz channel should be set to 1, and the extender 2.4 Ghz channel should be set to 6?

Or does “non-overlapping” refer to other networks in the neighborhood?

Ken_Griffiths

“ Ideally the 2.4Ghz channel should be set to a ‘fixed’ non-overlapping channel (use either 1, 6 or 11) and limit its width to 20Mhz only on both the router and extender.”

So for example the router 2.4 Ghz channel should be set to 1, and the extender 2.4 Ghz channel should be set to 6?

Or does “non-overlapping” refer to other networks in the neighborhood?

If the router Wifi is operating on channel 1 then also set the extender to channel 1 too. Both should have the same channels ….and (if possible) the same channel-width too, ideally 20Mhz only. 

Only the sonosnet channel should be different - so set that to either channel 6 or 11 (that’s if you’ve set the router & extender to channel 1).

Hope that clarifies things. 

Airgetlam
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  • RichBV
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • April 6, 2023

Yes it does.

But I’ve hit a dead end.

I set the router and extender channels to 11, and SonosNet to 6. I changed the 2.4 Ghz channel width to 20 on the router; no such option exists on the extender login page, so I am assuming it carries over from the router.

However, when I connected the Play 1 speaker to the router, the entire system did not automatically switch over to SonosNet. I was able to play music with the L speaker listed as WM:0 and the R speaker listed as WM:1, i.e. still on the Wifi network. But when I joined the other room with Playbar to the group, music did not play in the other room.

I went to Settings/System/Network, and SonosNet Channel showed correctly that it was set to Channel 6.

I next went to Manage Networks, and it only showed the 2 Wifi SSIDs, XXNet and XXNet_Ext, but not SonosNet. I then went to Update Networks, thinking I could manually switch the components over to SonosNet one at a time, but SonosNet wasn’t offered as a choice for any of the components, and when I entered it manually in the Other Networks blank for each component, it was not recognized.

I then tried deleting XXNet and XXNet_Ext from the Manage Networks listing, hoping the system would then discover SonosNet, but it didn’t happen.

Do you see a way out of this dead end?

And thanks for all your help so far.

Ken_Griffiths

Reboot the speakers that should help force them over to SonosNet, but just to mention the WiFi networks SSID XXNet and XXNet_Ext were (are) not correct anyway - they both should have been broadcasting the same WiFi SSID ‘XXNet’ …and that maybe why you was having the issues.

Anyhow now you’ve removed both networks from your Sonos App the devices will be seen whilst your mobile device is connected to your router WiFi  (so ensure that is the case to begin with).

I then recommend you rename the WiFi extender SSID to broadcast its signat as XXNet and not XXNet_Ext.

R
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  • RichBV
  • Author
  • Contributor I
  • Answer
  • April 6, 2023

Thanks, Ken.

Since my last post, after deleting the Wifi network info, the Sonos system was not recognizing any of the components except the hard-wired speaker.

Out of desperation, I called Sonos tech support, and from the diagnostics, they figured out that I had disabled the wireless function on the hard-wired speaker, which was a big problem, since the hard-wired speaker was supposed to be the broadcast source for SonosNet.

Once I re-enabled wireless for the hard-wired speaker, all the other components quickly joined onto SonosNet of their own accord. No drop-outs, no interruptions, sound quality is great.

Thanks again for steering me in the right direction.

Airgetlam
Ken_Griffiths
Ken_Griffiths

Ah glad you sorted it @RichBV. 👍

Airgetlam
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