Streaming to Sonos Beam

Next useless and not for the first time. Not sure they actually read what I submitted.

told me I shouldn’t have disabled wifi on the Beam after connecting an Ethernet cable to the router and that the Beam couldn’t feed the sub and surrounds despite the fact all on the same network and I was listening to them at the time the email came through.

if you shouldn’t disable wifi once you have an Ethernet connection why doesn’t app warn you? It just says you can’t do it unless you have an Ethernet connection

told me I had no cloud service connection so would have problems with voice commands. Despite me telling them voice commands worked fine and it was actual stream that dropped out.

The connection to the sub/surrounds has to be extremely low latency in order to sync with the video.  Though it may seem that an Ethernet connection is low latency, in practice it often involves more hops than the direct, one-way, custom 5 GHz connection that the Sonos WiFi radios provide.  This is why it is not recommended to disable WiFi on a soundbar that is using surrounds/sub. 

Why Sonos doesn’t clear up the confusion over the “Turn off WiFi” setting or put some warnings in there about surrounds/subs?  That’s something we’ve been asking since that setting was put in place, and we’ve gotten no answers. 

Maybe the Sonos firmware should look at the Room and if there is a Sub or Sub/surrounds Bonded to the Room do not allow WiFi to be turned off on the soundbar.

And if it is off and the user tries to add either, turn it back on.

The impossible dream of course is that Sonos would properly describe what that switch does and the consequences. Someone deep inside Sonos must have a never to be disclosed personal reason for refusing to change this.

The ability to turn off the radio is good, that should stay, only the wording needs to change to avoid so much user frustration.

It can't be helping sales or reducing the load on the support system, so why?

I totally agree with comments about the wifi disable toggle. But the main problem was they threw up things like that and telling me voice control wasn’t working when my the problem I contacted them about wasn’t either of those things.

The issue I was reporting is that an audio stream from a radio station, initiated by a voice command that they say won’t be working, initiates and then cuts out after a few minutes. Does it on wifi, does it on an wired Ethernet connection.

Has worked reliably for years, has stopped working. Might not be a Sonos issue but was hoping their examination of the logs might give a clue. Not to totally ignore the actual issue that I was reporting.

You can call back and request your issue be escalated to the next level of support.

Collect several diagnostics first, in addition to your earlier ones, so they have a good selection to compare. Note the issue and diag numbers along with any other info the support folks might be able to use.

I have run software/systems for much of my working life. A good support technician deals with the queries that are asked. They answer the questions that are asked, not the ones they want to answer. If they don’t understand they ask a question to clarify. If the logs don’t appear to show the issue then they ask for more.

Sorry but this isn’t the first time I have found Sonos support second rate. They seem to have a complacency that comes from market leading products. Not a market leading organisation.

Was about to invest in a second complete system. They have probably blown an Arc Ultra, sub and surround sale. I appreciate the grand scale of their business that probably doesn’t make a difference. But it is basic support 101.

​@Turnbacktime 

​@Stanley_4 is right about 2nd level support.  In my experience they are very detailed.  The last service call I made was also very quickly answered;  No more 1.5 hour wait times.

I think that there are competing factions within SONOS, “Simple” and “Complete”. A support article that we might consider is “Complete” could be marked “Complicated” by the powers and details will be removed in order to make article seem “Simple”. If there is a debate I think that “Simple” wins. In this case it would not require many more words to suggest not using this option if surrounds or SUB’s are included in the Room.

All we can hope for is at some point the bean counters might decide that support calls (costs) could be reduced if the documentation was a little more complicated.