Prodigy III

Answered

Why did I bother...

39 replies
910 views

I thought I’d replace a Play:3 with an Era 300 as the app has behaved itself for a while and eventually added the alphabetic selection back to a local library…

I should have known better. At all stages of the process it’s been a shambles. I had two 30% credits on my account from old gear and buying a single 300 used both…

I then get a survey request asking me how I liked my 300 before it had even shipped, so I’m sure you can imagine the responses that got.

The Era 300 arrived today and wow, how absolutely unfriendly can you make the simple task of replacing a speaker with a new one? There’s still no way to remove a speaker from your setup. The best suggestion is to factory reset it… so did that with the Play:3, but the Sonos app now reports the old speaker as missing… brilliant.

Add the Era 300, the app detects it, but bombards you with popups saying hey I’ve found a speaker and then more popups to stop the popups… I just want to use the app to check stuff before I add the speaker. Do people feel unwanted these days if they aren’t bombarded with stuff on a screen constantly?

Try to play some local music (which is what I do most) on the new speaker and nothing from the local library will play on the Era 300. Try a re-index, no joy. It adds the music to the queue but then cycles through all tracks really quickly with more popups saying can’t play file in question.

Add a DHCP reservation on the network for the new speaker… Era 300 kindly ignores.

Factory reset the Era300 to see if it helps it a) pickup the DHCP reservation or b) kick the local library playing into action.

No to both. Still ignoring DHCP and still won’t play from local library. Other Sonos components still play from local library…

Era 300 appears to be on the latest software, as is the iOS controller used to do the ‘add’.

In my list of speakers I have two ‘Kitchens’ one with a warning triangle that was I presume the old Play:3 that perhaps will just vanish after a while?

Haven’t bothered to get Alexa going as there seems little point at this stage.

Well done Sonos. Still putting customer experience right up there.

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

I

Ian_SAnswer

Prodigy III

@Ian_S

There’s so much going on in this thread it’s difficult to determine what resolved your issue. As I mentioned I’ve had none of the issues you describe and for the record I upgraded to my Synology DS925+ after my system was configured with Era 300’s.

I’m married but my wife doesn’t mess with my Sonos configuration, NAS, nor anything that has to do with networking. So my second question is why would not all users and Admin have access to folders on your NAS. However, since the NAS is mine I’m both User and Admin😂. If that makes a difference in your case.

.

Well, given all the fuss on here about SMB1 and it’s ‘dangers’… 😉

Also if you follow Sonos’ own advice on here on how to configure a Synology NAS with a new Era 300

You won’t get very far. Like many here I’ve been using a NAS for local music for a long time and had the library defined using the NAS name which has worked for YEARS (and is what the guide tells people to do) … So problem:

The Era 300 when first added would not play ANY files from the local library. All existing speakers still did. The issue here turned out to be needing to change the name to an IP address in the shared folder definition.
*If* The Era 300 then becomes the associated product, it will not perform either a re-index or add a new local library path unless the ID used to connect to the Synology NAS is in the ‘admin’ group. Again, existing speakers don’t have this behaviour and are quite happy with read-only or even read-write access.
The indexing behaviour of the Era 300 and previous speakers is different giving different (but consistently different) results when indexing your library. BOTH are wrong unfortunately.

Ignoring some of the (still) poor UI choices in the iOS app during setup, I don’t call that a particularly smooth experience and ought to be something Sonos could easily fix. I guess the fact that users get so ****** off at the end that they’re just happy it works and can’t be bothered to take it up further with Sonos also speaks volumes.

I no longer use Sonos for ‘serious’ listening as the iOS interface is atrocious and winds me up massively on an iPad where the UI makes no sense whatsoever, unless you like your music selection to be a swipe fest.

I ‘upgraded’ to an Era 300 as the Play:3 was lacking compared to some B&O Beolit 20’s I heard. Ok, the Era is a step up from the Play:3 but I don’t feel like I bought something better, and have just bought a ton of pain and am back in Sonos hell with broken local library indexing AGAIN.

Perhaps Sonos should employ the guy who writes Minimserver, if a one man band can write a decent indexing software I’m at a loss as to why a company the size of Sonos not only can’t correctly index music, but can’t even do it the same on different speakers.

Show previous replies

User117655

Prodigy II

I have just had a brain rush...

My previous post:

was, apart from needing the IP in the path, actually only some of the things I had attempted to get the renamed folders to reindex successfully. What specifically fixed it was:

* I have a specific user set up on my (Synology) NAS which had read only access to the shared music folders with no access to any others

* This had been working for many - 11/12 - years

* For some reason to actually get my renamed folders to reindex I had to change this access to that of an administrator (for the music folders only) to enable them to index

* This was not the first time my music folders had been renamed/added to or removed from Sonos BUT it was the first time any changes had been made with the Ultra and Era300's in my system 🤔

I have no real idea why this worked and no other obvious combination of user privilege, permissions or folder naming worked for me. I have tried, post index, revoking user permission back to read only but with no success, the Sonos user has had to remain an admin…

I never linked this to the era300 library indexing issue until now but with hindsight it would seem to be related?

I had intended to talk to support about this but, to be honest, can't be bothered currently...

I

Ian_SAuthor

Prodigy III

@User117655 Thanks, that’s useful. Now I know I can get my library back ok after yesterday's mild panic, I might have a play seeing if that makes a difference. Would be interesting to know if others with newer Era models effectively have given admin access to their local libraries or not.

I

Ian_SAuthor

Prodigy III

@User117655 I can confirm that both adding a local library or re-indexing an existing one fails on the Era 300 unless the Sonos user is added to the admin group. Then it works in so far as indexing in general ‘works’ …

User117655

Prodigy II

@Ian_S Good work... It is nice to know a definite cause and workaround if not a definitive reason. There was enough of a gap for me between era300 addition and changing my library folders that I never made a connection between the two. I just got lucky I think when I hit on a 'fix' 🤓

Glad it resolved it for you, flagging @Corry P in case it is of interest...

I

Ian_SAuthor

Prodigy III

He might want to look here too… :)

AjTrek1

@Ian_S

There’s so much going on in this thread it’s difficult to determine what resolved your issue. As I mentioned I’ve had none of the issues you describe and for the record I upgraded to my Synology DS925+ after my system was configured with Era 300’s.

I’m married but my wife doesn’t mess with my Sonos configuration, NAS, nor anything that has to do with networking. So my second question is why would not all users and Admin have access to folders on your NAS. However, since the NAS is mine I’m both User and Admin😂. If that makes a difference in your case.

.

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

User117655

Prodigy II

@Ian_S NAS will support many users. For many reasons it was my decision to create a specific Sonos user with, originally, read only access and only to my music library folders. It would seem that with era300's that Sonos user now needs admin access to those same folders.

AjTrek1

@Ian_S NAS will support many users. For many reasons it was my decision to create a specific Sonos user with, originally, read only access and only to my music library folders. It would seem that with era300's that Sonos user now needs admin access to those same folders.

Thanks! That’s interesting. I wonder if it’s just for Era series or all editions of Sonos speakers. However, I’m not asking you to test and clarify anything 😂

Enjoy your Sonos!

Together Everyone Achieves More = T.E.A.M.

Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

I rolled my own NAS and for the Sonos / Music share I made it Public, Guest Allowed and Read-Only.

Makes it handy to connect to from anything while protecting the data.

User117655

Prodigy II

@Stanley_4 It may be a new Synology 'thing', a red herring or a new Sonos peculiarity with era300 speakers. I also added 100's, a sub4 and an ultra though so 🤷🏼‍♂️...

It is interesting that @Ian_S and I have had experiences that seem to align. I would posit it warrants further investigation by Sonos or someone with backend/firmware diagnostic access...

Show more replies

Sign up

Login to the community