I've done EVERYTHING possible. NO MATTER WHAT Sonos Connect keeps interrupting playback


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OK.

 

I posted a while back about this but out of desperation I tried a few things including:

 

Purchasing a 2nd CONNECT that is S2 compatible, AND

Moving the music library drive to a different host, AND

Downloading and installing S2 to all hosts, and yes EVEN…

Copying the .music library to a NEW standalone drive; I have tried that on the regular host as well as another host PC on the network.

Oh, I even rebuilt two operating systems thinking that maybe there were some files that had been corrupted. That’s right, I actually completely rebuilt the O.S. on two machines and reinstalled all software that I had previously installed on them. ALL of this in an attempt to make these two pieces of electronic excrement work reliably.

 

NOTE: This DOES NOT happen with streaming services. However, I have a broad record / CD collection that is in-house, and I like having them available rather than a possibly somewhat compressed stream version. The fact that this doesn’t happen with streaming does not, in any way, make this less annoying.

 

No matter what I do... either player - when playing alone, together, or different files (and this is ALL from my music library) will cease playing, there will be 2 - 10 seconds of silence, and then playback will continue. I have tried everything...checking firewall, turning off VPN, all manner of system checks over, and over, and over.

 

It is SUCH a downer when I have people over, because it kills the vibe. Also, as an audio professional it reflects poorly upon me. I have to admit I was a fool to purchase the first CONNECT. I should have

 

I can’t believe that I thought switching to S2 would fix the issue. I feel like a chump. I should have just purchased a real, reliable playback device; all of the hours (yes, hours) would have been avoided with a reliable system.

 

For all the geeks out there, yes, I reset the gateway, I reset the switches, I verified all switches were Connect-compatible.

 

Do you know what’s REALLY AWFUL? I had the interruptions before running S1 (with an S!-only CONNECT and an S2-compatible CONNECT) but they were actually less frequent.

 

That’s right...by spending more money on Sonos products (a used S2-compatible CONNECT) and the time to set up the system once more things are now actually WORSE.

 

The ONLY thing that seems to be consistent? Once my girlfriend downloaded S2 on her Android phone the issues seemed to start again; for a while I heard none of the interruptions. Maybe it’s coincidence (almost certainly).

 

Oh, and before anyone asks whether I have tried running wired instead of wireless, that’s how they have been set up since day one; I’ve never used wifi to get the music to the CONNECT units - always an Ethernet cable.

 

I’m DONE with Sonos. I know there are some much more expensive units out there. I don’t think I will sell these - why should some other person have to deal with crap hardware? I may just take all of the units (three of them now, two S2 “compatible” and one S1 only) to the recycling station.

 

I have been bounced around by Sonos support so many times, and each time it’s the same raft of pull-down menu questions to ask - EVEN AFTER I EXPLAIN THAT I HAVE DONE ALL OF THAT UP FRONT. All this time wasted on something that should bring happiness.

 

As an engineer nothing frustrates me more than unreliable equipment.

 

What an enormous disappointment.

 


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36 replies

That's a sad story. It must have been very frustrating. One thing that doesn't surprise me is that moving from S1 to S2 made no difference. Given the nature of the problem there is no reason to think that would help.

If streaming lossy music works OK then there are really only two things that could cause the issues;

1. Getting the music from local drive to router.

2. Network not coping with larger lossless files.

(I should mention that my Sonos plays lossless FLAC streamed or local faultlessly,  so the equipment is up to the task.)

Do you experience the issues when playing through the Connect only or just when grouped?

If you provide more information on what you have connected to what then someone on here might be able to help.

PS. What happens if you stream lossless? Or play local mp3s?

 

So in summary IF Sonos had said “hey...your music may get interrupted a lot if you choose not to use a NAS that would have either swayed my decision NOT to buy any CONNECT units, but as I said even the setup says each is equally valid (no disclaimers) and once worked flawlessly no longer does.

 

A more correct claim would be that millions of units are working very well, but the system will not work for you.

You have not convinced me that there are no hardware issues with one or both of your CONNECT’s. I suggest that you power up only one CONNECT and test the system, then do the same with the other CONNECT. If only one of the units misbehaves, that is a strong indication of hardware issues with that unit. If both units misbehave when only one is powered up, we can’t be certain that they are problem free.

Sorry I started reading but I didn't understand much. Your problems have nothing to do with the app. I suggest you get a NAS and join the rest of us playing our music libraries without a hitch.

@immersifi,

Just to mention here that it won’t be the Sonos App, or the mobile device if you are playing music from a library share on your PC, as the App is not a ‘player’ it’s just a ‘remote’ for your speakers.. once the music starts you could actually close the App and switch off the mobile device altogether. 

The issue therefore lies with/between the library share (source volume) on the PC & the actual Sonos Player and of course the wired network in-between those two. 

Admittedly I initially thought it might have been the Netgear GS108 switch, as the earlier model is shown on the Sonos ‘incompatible hardware’ list, but as you’ve ruled that out and the wired connection, I would perhaps now look closer at the method you are using to host the library and perhaps try a NAS box, that’s if you can get a mate, colleague, or other family member, to maybe lend you theirs for a day or two, to test.. I would also bypass the ‘switch’ too (just for good measure).

Did you ever eliminate the GS108 switch to see if it was playing any part in your issue?

Also I would at least try your locally stored music library on a gigabit Ethernet-linked NAS too, (even if you have to borrow one to try from a colleague, if necessary) at least that will eliminate other network issues around your USB connected storage.

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Did you ever eliminate the GS108 switch to see if it was playing any part in your issue?

Also I would at least try your locally stored music library on a gigabit Ethernet-linked NAS too, (even if you have to borrow one to try from a colleague, if necessary) at least that will eliminate other network issues around your USB connected storage.

Yes. Switches were compliant. I also swapped a different mfgr gigabit switch. Made no difference.

I just don't understand why this is so complicated.  There are loads of us out here with a basic  NAS wired by Ethernet to our routers, and a bunch of Sonos devices, one of which is also wired to router. That is how Sonos was originally designed to be used. You seem  to have tried everything except that. 

Badge +1

 

So in summary IF Sonos had said “hey...your music may get interrupted a lot if you choose not to use a NAS that would have either swayed my decision NOT to buy any CONNECT units, but as I said even the setup says each is equally valid (no disclaimers) and once worked flawlessly no longer does.

 

A more correct claim would be that millions of units are working very well, but the system will not work for you.

You have not convinced me that there are no hardware issues with one or both of your CONNECT’s. I suggest that you power up only one CONNECT and test the system, then do the same with the other CONNECT. If only one of the units misbehaves, that is a strong indication of hardware issues with that unit. If both units misbehave when only one is powered up, we can’t be certain that they are problem free.

Mmmm...You have to remember that this issue wasn’t always there which is what makes this so frustrating.

 

To paraphrase your words a better still claim would be that I once counted myself among the millions for whom the system worked flawlessly. For years. That’s what makes it so frustrating because ostensibly nothing in my hardware or network has changed. If anything it would seem to point to software - whether the S1 / S2 controllers or something within the O.S.. However, keep in mind that I have a) swapped drives on the regular host, b) moved the drive to another host, c) moved the copy drive to another host and none of these conditions make the system immune.

 

In terms of a Connect failing (or both) that would be most disappointing. I had six Turtle Beach Audiotrons at one point (many years ago) and not one of them ever encountered a hardware fault that cause any playback issues. Ever. In those I could fully configure the network parameters for each unit (including setting static IPs) which made things very configurable albeit beyond the reach of many consumers who didn’t want to deal with such things.

 

See...I come from the perspective of having had a different but outdated system before in which everything just worked right up until the day that I decided to replace them (because my music library had outgrown the 32768 song limit AND .flac was not supported). Yes, it was clunky in terms of the webpage control and song limit, which is why I bought the first Connect all of those years ago, but the Audiotron worked. Always. No matter if one, two or six units were streaming files - and they were streaming .wav files (the audiotrons were pre-.flac), so as far as music goes save for high res formats the host and network were streaming the largest-format files possible. In the audiotrons the only way to update the firmware was manually (as is normal) just like the web app that ran the whole show.

 

I’ll cop to not knowing enough about how the firmware updates are handled in the Connect but were it the case that the update was globally problematic then there would have been an outcry from the community, so it seems highly unlikely that a firmware update has caused the issue in one or both units. The problem is that the diagnostic file is not accessible to the end user (the file that you submit to Support) and there are things in there that would be helpful (certainly to me) as I learned during a chat session with one of the “Senior” diagnosticians, however, I can’t try this / that, then force a write to diagnostics and then look at the diagnostic file to see if what I tried had any effect etc. I understand that Sonos wanted to make this as plug and play as possible, which I appreciate, but it seems access to the diagnostics file would be at least a happy medium as a means by which those willing to try and fix an issue (that’s clearly me) could use said information as a means to try and put things right..

 

The fact that the issue persists irrespective of which host is used to share the .flac files makes me wonder if there is something that happened in a Windows update that’s effectively transparent to me, because this would be a common factor across those three machines. This would also explain why both of them were right as rain for years and then suddenly this problem occurred. I don’t make it a habit to sit up nights reading change logs etc so maybe I have not dug deeply enough; this could very well indeed be THE reason for all of this - some background process that was once on-demand or dormant that was changed as part of an O.S. update that would likely be innocuous to nearly all users, but perhaps the controller / Connect are sensitive to. The problem would be identifying them. I’ve looked at the event viewers and things seem normal to me - no warnings etc.

 

If one or both of the Connect units have failed / are failing well I guess I can just chalk that up to a short lifespan. It’s sad - I have lots of audio gear from the 1970s and 80s that I use every day - gear that has lasted close to 50 years with little to no need for repair / replacement. If they are indeed failing from a hardware perspective then it’s time to move on.

 

In the meantime I will try what you suggest, because I honestly don’t know what’s left to try at this point, so thanks for the suggestion.

 

 

 

 

When in diagnostic mode if one assumes that the issue must be [...] or cannot be [...] one is likely to be blindsided. I’m suspicious of both your network and your computers. And, we haven’t ruled out hardware failure.

 

Maybe I should amend this to include “shouldn’t be [...]”.

Mother nature is never fair, units do not usually pick a convenient time or mode when they fail. As units age the probability of failure rises. In the case of CONNECT, we don’t know the statistics. You mentioned 50 year old traditional audio units that are still working. I’m sure that this is the case for isolated units, but this is a very low probability case.

At each stage in a unit’s life there will be typical failure modes for the units that do fail and these modes will change with age. After a while the service shops catch on to what happens to model XYZ at a certain age. I’m not saying that all XYZ’s will fail, but those that do have a likely signature. In some cases the problem is too intermittent and bizarre for the owner to fully describe, but the shop has been through this and knows exactly how to proceed -- likely before attempting to power up the unit.

I can’t give you a probability, but it is possible that both of your CONNECT’s have failed in the same way. Or, that something on your network that “couldn’t”, “shouldn’t”, or “never happened before” is frustrating the CONNECT’s.

In my case I had an ancient NAS device that was intermittently bugging my SONOS system and I assumed that the NAS was finally ready for the recycle farm. However, there were some aspects of the issue that suggested a duplicate IP address. But ... I’m too smart for that ... right? Finally, I swallowed my pride and checked addresses in detail … darn! … . A couple months prior I had replaced my router and shuffled reserved addresses slightly. I had forgotten about a seldom used. palm sized device hidden away in a cupboard. It now had the same IP address as that NAS.

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Submit diagnostics and post the confirmation number here.

OK. It JUST did it.

As an aside the music JUST halted and restarted about seven seconds later (on the Whole Lotta House Connect - the only unit playing music when this happened). The Subterranean Playground Connect has two songs in its queue but the unit was not playing them when this happened

NOTE: the halted / resumed music fault occurred when my girlfriend attempted a web search on her Samsung Galaxy S9; she’s running S2 on her phone and had loaded “Tumbleweed Connection” from the S2 application on her phone from my .flac library, so to be clear NOT a streaming service.

Anyway, the confirmation number is: 1560385625

When playing from the NAS the players fetch music directly from the NAS. The controllers can be shut down or uninstalled and music play will continue.

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When playing from the NAS the players fetch music directly from the NAS. The controllers can be shut down or uninstalled and music play will continue.

I don’t run a NAS. I have a flac volume (and a duplicate connect to another host) that’s connected to a host PC and likewise with the other .flac volume.

I have tried using a) the same volume on different hosts, and b) unique volumes on unique hosts to see if that would stop the temporary halt of playback.

That is, I have tried moving the main .flac volume to a 2nd host (Dell M6500 with 20 GB RAM) host (that’s on the same GS108 switch), clearing the library pointer in S2 and letting S2 re-learn the library attached to a different host. That attempt did not stop the halting / resuming playback.

Likewise, I have tried using the 1:1 copy of the .flac volume connected to a 2nd host (Dell M6500 with 20 GB RAM). This did not fix the issue.

Also, I have tried using the 1:1 copy of the .flac library on the main host (Dell T7500 with 40 GB RAM) and having S2 re-learn the library. This also has not solved the problem.

I’ve reset the gateway numerous times, reset all switches, and have put the two hosts and the two Connect units on the same switch (it was like this pretty much from the start).

I have rebuilt two of the three O.S. on the machines that are typically in use but I’ve not done the T7500 because a) reinstalling the O.S. on the other machines didn’t fix the problem and I’ve so much that I would have to reload on the T7500 that rebuilding the O.S. and doing all the re-installations is going to take considerable time.

I’ve got various anti-virus, I routinely scan for malware etc, and the S2 has been configured to “play nice” with the windows firewall on all machines. I’ve used several variants of malware and spyware removal, tried to clean the registry in the T7500 and so on; that this doesn’t work properly is not for a lack of trying on my part.

I’ve gone into power settings to make sure things stay at max performance etc.

I just don’t know what to do at this point. I’ve no idea what’s in the diagnostics file (but I would like to see) so that’s a shot in the dark for me because it’s nothing I can see and say “OK, what’s changed from a “clean” diagnostic report”. Too bad that there isn’t a means by which the diagnostic file could be written to a local machine and then viewed by the user.

So frustrating.

It almost feels like if S1 / S2 were never installed on her phone and I ran them strictly from a host or a tablet the problem would not exist. I have no hard data to support this BUT it seems to me that after I upgraded the 2nd CONNECT and upgraded to S2 it worked without incident for about 10 days. Then when my girlfriend asked why her phone was pushing her to install S2 I explained why, and she did so. As I recall the temporary halt issue started again shortly after she updated her phone to S2.

Frustrating.

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Sorry I started reading but I didn't understand much. Your problems have nothing to do with the app. I suggest you get a NAS and join the rest of us playing our music libraries without a hitch.

You say it’s not related to the application, but is this your opinion or is it a matter of fact? Do you know for a fact that the issue is not due to the application? Personally I think it’s either a fault common to both S1 and S2 OR a fault in BOTH units that causes this? The network connections work fine for everything else in the house and as I mentioned in a prior post I even checked all of my LAN connections for integrity. No problems found.

I never really stated that S1 / S2 were causing the issue, rather I have been reporting that which I have tried and what the results were. I have no idea if the problem was / is within the Connect units OR a function of the app or something else (and I’ve poured way more work into trying to fix this than I should have to).

The product is designed to work with NAS or any discoverable hard drive, which was one of the reasons that I purchased it as I didn’t have a NAS nor did I sense the immediate need for one especially since it was designed to see music on otehr valid shares - it was even marketed as such. The mapped drive has worked for years for me. Years. If the intent was never to allow shared drives’ contents to be mapped and reliably accessed then why do it in the first place? Why not make it NAS only?

Other network players out there support NAS but also shared drives; maybe their code is simply more reliable than that of Sonos.

You see, I’ve already spent money on a 2nd Connect (used) that’s S2-compatible and now I should go out and buy a NAS and populate it with new drives on the odd chance that this might fix things? Is the NAS a guaranteed fix or is this another “try this and see if it works” kind of thing? I mean if someone from Sonos proper were to say “the only way for this to work without ANY incidents is to use a NAS with these specified compatible drives” that would be one thing, but frankly not hearing that directly from Sonos makes me wonder. Honestly were I go to through the time and expense to set up a NAS only to discover that the problem persists that might be just enough to take the Connect units out to the driveway and chock them behind the rear wheels of my car and then put the car into reverse.

If buying a NAS and drives doesn’t fix the issue are the good people at Sonos going to reimburse me for an expensive purchase that I didn’t really need to make? I doubt it.

Again, it worked for years, two units - one S2 compatible and one not (running under S1) pointed to a host on the same switch with a drive attached to it. Is it too much to ask that a product be stable?

If I add it up and especially my time I’m really at the point of diminishing returns. It’s especially frustrating not getting any “Aha!” messages from Sonos based on submitted diagnostics. Instead I sense a sea of shoulder shrugs as to what it might possibly be.

Using an unrelated music playing App installed on one computer, try playing music stored on the other computer.

Personally, I never wanted my computer to be involved in playing music. I avoided attempting to play music with consumer grade kit because it was under powered and unreliable. If the computer was tasked with playing music, it would slow. Consumer operating systems are not very good at real time tasks. Also, I tend to get into software development and if the computer goes down the music would stop. In 2005 SONOS introduced a system that did not require any real time involvement with my computer and I got on board. I have not experienced the chronic issues that you are struggling with. There is some issue unique to your setup.

When in diagnostic mode if one assumes that the issue must be [...] or cannot be [...] one is likely to be blindsided. I’m suspicious of both your network and your computers. And, we haven’t ruled out hardware failure.

Have you investigated the PING times to your computers and SONOS players? Do they vary from time to time?

@immersifi,
The issue with any PC hosting the local music library is often all the scheduled background tasks for OS updates, file search-indexes, disk checking read/writes, defragmentation, power saving features, screen savers, antivirus, malware scanning, background installs, firewalls etc; to name but a few things that could be causing this type of intermittent issue.

So a wired NAS box has to be worth a try here, IMHO, just to eliminate those sort of issues that can clearly come with such a library-hosting device.

I certainly choose to use NAS boxes here for my local SMB library shares and often have music playing all day with no interruptions. 

Anyhow it’s just a suggestion for you to maybe think about.

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@immersifi,
The issue with any PC hosting the local music library is often all the scheduled background tasks for OS updates, file search-indexes, disk checking read/writes, defragmentation, power saving features, screen savers, antivirus, malware scanning, background installs, firewalls etc; to name but a few things that could be causing this type of intermittent issue.

So a wired NAS box has to be worth a try here, IMHO, just to eliminate those sort of issues that can clearly come with such a library-hosting device.

I certainly choose to use NAS boxes here for my local SMB library shares and often have music playing all day with no interruptions. 

Anyhow it’s just a suggestion for you to maybe think about.

Again, I have tried moving the library volume to another host. I have managed updates to be at very, very late hours of the morning.

I can’t see buying a NAS just to see if it works; this already feels a lot like good money after bad. After all, as I have stated many times, I have rebuilt O.S. on the machines so they are squeaky-clean save for the T7500, but as I mentioned, setting up the share on a different machine with a brand new and updates O.S. doesn’t fix the problem either..

Again, I ask the question...if it worked all this time (years) why does it not work now?

 

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Using an unrelated music playing App installed on one computer, try playing music stored on the other computer.

Personally, I never wanted my computer to be involved in playing music. I avoided attempting to play music with consumer grade kit because it was under powered and unreliable. If the computer was tasked with playing music, it would slow. Consumer operating systems are not very good at real time tasks. Also, I tend to get into software development and if the computer goes down the music would stop. In 2005 SONOS introduced a system that did not require any real time involvement with my computer and I got on board. I have not experienced the chronic issues that you are struggling with. There is some issue unique to your setup.

When in diagnostic mode if one assumes that the issue must be [...] or cannot be [...] one is likely to be blindsided. I’m suspicious of both your network and your computers. And, we haven’t ruled out hardware failure.

Have you investigated the PING times to your computers and SONOS players? Do they vary from time to time?

Ping times are normal.

I can play the files just fine from another non Sonos app across the network (windows media player). There’s never a glitch.

As far as computers being slow I’m not sure why you say that. I have several machines all of which have DAW software on them which I use to mix and render music / recordings; these tasks are FAR more CUP and memory intensive than a simple file stream, especially audio which is a fraction of the size of a video stream.

I’ve checked the anti-virus / malware setting and they are set for very early morning updates rather than when the machine(s) is / are likely to be in use. Again, this HAD worked for years, with two players, with the same library on the same host serving files to two connect units running under S1. I’ve checked the RAM on all machines, rebuilt the O.S. on two of three.

I’ve done everything that I can think of but if I am going to buy a NAS and drives only to find out that it doesn’t fix the issue I’m not going to be happy, but I guess the bright side is that should it come to that at least the NAS can be used with a more modern device that is better engineered. I would be willing to buy the NAS and try it if I could take everything back should it not work.

I find it odd...Clunky old windows media player...32-bit at that...can play files without any such issues whether the music being accessed is internal, local, or network. No issues whatsoever. That requires no NAS.

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@immersifi,

Just to mention here that it won’t be the Sonos App, or the mobile device if you are playing music from a library share on your PC, as the App is not a ‘player’ it’s just a ‘remote’ for your speakers.. once the music starts you could actually close the App and switch off the mobile device altogether. 

The issue therefore lies with/between the library share (source volume) on the PC & the actual Sonos Player and of course the wired network in-between those two. 

Admittedly I initially thought it might have been the Netgear GS108 switch, as the earlier model is shown on the Sonos ‘incompatible hardware’ list, but as you’ve ruled that out and the wired connection, I would perhaps now look closer at the method you are using to host the library and perhaps try a NAS box, that’s if you can get a mate, colleague, or other family member, to maybe lend you theirs for a day or two, to test.. I would also bypass the ‘switch’ too (just for good measure).

I never assumed that the app was the “player”. What I was driving at was that something might be happening when the control of the connect units gets handed off to a mobile (with Android O.S.) device - or some other app on said mobile device causes the S2 app on said mobile device to go wonky.  I say that because after the S2 update things did work OK for about ten days, until my girlfriend loaded the S2 app on her phone (becauseS1 was no longer viable). Shortly after she installed S2 and started using it the system did the whole interruption thing. However, this could most certainly be coincidence.

That said, I have seen it happen at least three times where (either with S1 or S2 installed on her phone) she picked up her phone, or attempted a web search that the interruption happened. It’s never happened with my phone. Maybe there’s something in the way the app handles requests via wifi (i.e. Android devices) that an issue occurs. I have tried staying logged on and logged out (of S1 and later, S2), but that seems to make no difference.

Also, I have no Sonos speakers; the Connect units merely act as playback units that feed either the whole-house analog distribution system or a separate audio system downstairs. That’s their sole function. Once the signal is back in the analog domain it goes about its way to other amplifiers / self-amplified speakers. In other words the I/O “overhead” for the Connects is minimal - no wireless network being used, no Sonos speakers to which the connect units speak. There are no “bridge” units and so on - strictly wired-only.

Re the switches...I even replaced one of the GS108’s with a Netgear gigabit switch and the malady persists. The switch that I replaced (more money down the drain) was the one that had both main hosts and both Connect units connected to it.

The gateway has four ports; one is tied to the DVR leaving three open; to make the Connect units work w.o switches would mean having all other wired gear hanging off of one port on the gateway and rewiring all of the switches. I suppose that’s worth trying (I suppose) but really, should I have to? I mean...nothing has changed in the network all these years. Nothing. The Connect units have always been wired through switches and they worked for years.

I suppose that I could try moving the Connect units to different switches; I would have thought that having them all on the same switch would be the optimal solution, but perhaps not. The otehr devices on said switch are not used for heavy I/O stuff like on-line gaming and such; the biggest CPU tasks they do are processing audio files in a DAW (reaper and CuBase) but almost never am I running those DAW packages while I am playing music to the house.

So exasperating. It worked for years...everything was just fine.

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@immersifi,
To get your diagnostic report feedback, you can in fact speak/chat online with Sonos Support Staff via this link here below and refer them to thread here (and your earlier thread) so they can see the complete picture…

https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

HTH

WOW.

 

I simply can’t believe it. No, I’m not writing to express my thanks (though we’ll get to that) but to relay what happened via phone diagnostics (took two hours and being put on hold six times). I’ll cut to the chase:

Flavia (the rep, who was super helpful) had me check a few things but said there was an error being shown repeatedly in the log. HOORAY!

 

As it happens while I pinged the IPs of the connects early on there appears to have been an issue with the MAIN host PC to which the drive is connected insofar as S2 is concerned. Long story short the Sonos app was looking for 192.168.1.76 while in reality the IP of the machine had .85 for its last octet. Mind you I hadn’t pinged the IP for this machine in a while BUT when I did it WAS .85 and I had zero issues (I pinged .85 successfully, so the network and O.S. knew it was .85 but S2 thought it should bn .76). Also, just to front load this every device showing a valid IP via the gateway’s home page could be pinged with 0% loss.

 

I mentioned to Flavia that if there was a DNS type issue that would explain a lot but as an end user I can’t see that in the diagnostics file (users should be able to see its contents IMO) and truthfully that sort of thing WOULD have jumped off the page at me weeks ago, but we lowly consumers (we just fund the Company, we don’t deserve access to the diagnostics apparently).

 

PARTIAL RESOLUTION:

Flavia suggested that I rename the host PC and reboot, and then un-learn the library (more on THAT later on), reboot the machine, point to the library on the drive (where it had always lived) and let S2 relearn the library. I was overjoyed because during the reboot and generation of a new diagnostics file that I sent the diagnostics file NO LONGER SHOWED THAT ERROR! FANTASTIC! My problems were over! Or...were they?

RESULT: For a short while it seemed that the system was stable and yes, even fast at displaying album art and so forth. This lasted approximately a day or so. So what started happening? Well, here we go:

 

NEW PROBLEMS:

After renaming the host I noticed that all of the sudden the Android app was basically unresponsive (yes, I had a solid wi fi connection to my phone). Nothing that I could do would make the S2 app work. So I uninstalled S2 from my phone and reinstalled it. Things looked normal for about a few hours but then I noticed that NONE of the album art was loading. Not. One.

So, I go back into S2 on the renamed machine and look at the path for the library and within Sonos the directory name was DIFFERENT than the drive name and path on the operating system (I had selected the path via mouse - this was not an errant keystroke on my part). In other words I pointed to the FLAC_Public directory on the M drive of this machine after I had renamed it BUT when I looked again I noticed that the path for the music library was now shown as FLACPublic (the underscore separating FLAC and Public was not shown as the directory name). Despite this it still worked. Kind of.

 

The REAL FUN STARTS:

So I have some people over for a welcome home party for a friend of mine. During the night the S2 app, whether on Android phone or tablet became unresponsive. So much so that a) first the upstairs CONNECT disappeared (the one that we had been using) but then - hold onto your hat, a few minutes later b) a 2nd Connect appeared but was named “Garage”. Not “Whole Lotta House” (the original name) but instead “:Garage”. The Subterranean Playground Connect was there but “Whole Lotta House” was gone and “Garage” was there in its place.

NOTE: I did NOT rename that Connect unit. I can offer no explanation whatsoever for what had happened.

One. Two. Three. Four. times the unit locked up during the night and the only way to fix it in EACH instance was to unplug the Connect and reconnect to AC mains. Oddly the “Garage” unit went away and its alias (Whole Lotta House) showed up again while the other Connect that was not being used just sat there.

Basically, it ruined yet another party due to all of the interruptions in the music.

 

THE LATEST:

The music library has disappeared from my music source list twice. That’s right, just vanished.

Whole Lotta House has become unstable several times and ironically right after being very cooperative. That is after populating album art, the next instance shows maybe ½ the art, and each subsequent access shows fewer and fewer bits of album art. It SEEMS that after this progresses a while the Connect becomes unresponsive and I have to shut down the phone etc.

Oh and then there’s the “thinking” clock when I load some tracks only to see ERROR 1002 music could not be loaded. SOMETIMES I see a message stating that the path yadda-yadda-yadda could not be located! Could not be located? IT’s on the freaking PC to which the music library is connected. S2 located it a few minutes prior but now it can’t find the path? RUFKM?

 

All that I do now with S2 is watch the performance get worse with time.

 

THE BEST OF THE BEST PART OF THIS?

I thought “well I’ll just go back to S1 and live with “fewer features”. NOPE. Since I installed S2 apparently both Connect units got a sort of firmware update (I guess) and basically after loading S1 I was told that none of my products are compatible.

FUN REMINDER: Once upon a time my 2nd gen S2-compatible worked just fine on S1.

 

So what do I have?

Two units that are wholly unreliable for playing back my flac library. I’ve purchased a total of three Connect units (one new the others used) and a third unit that I *COULD* use with S1 were I to take the S2 code AND HARDWARE off of my network OR set up a 2nd system with a different wi fi network etc.

 

NFW I’m doing that.

 

Thanks, Sonos for building a product that seems to get WORSE with time and revisions.

 

JUST AWFUL.”Upgrading” to S2 has made things infinitely worse.

 

So the quest for a new device continues. I’m trying to decide whether to drive over the Connect units or merely send them to the landfill. I hate dong that sort of thing but holy hell, if moving to the new application makes things worse that tells me that the code has some major flaws going unaddressed.

 

Also before anyone goes off on me about “it’s your network” keep in mind that EVERY OTHER DEVICE on my network (multiple smart TVs, several computers, peripherals etc) EVERY SINGLE DEVICE works just fine on my network; always discoverable. Can be pinged successfully etc. Every. Single. Computer or peripheral...all just work. I should add my network printer is about six years old and has had its driver / software updated countless times. Guess what? It still works like it is supposed to work. My computers are all accessible etc. The ONLY devices that are problematic on my network are the two Connect units running under S2.

 

Are you using Alexa? If so, check this out.

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Are you using Alexa? If so, check this out.

No. No use of Alexa et al.

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The entire library is .flac; I keep the 320 kbps mp3 library separate (a copy of the .flac, just more portable as it were for other devices and also other PCs (ironically still running windows media player which CONTINUES to work)). The other PCs are not pointed at the flac library,

 

I don’t have my mp3 and flac files in the same library; the entire point of buying the CONNECT was native .flac support.

 

This “hiccup” happens when:

  1. I am playing only one of the two CONNECT,
  2. I am playing both of them (grouped), but I almost never do this as the main unit feeds a whole-house analog balanced line distribution system. The 2nd CONNECT is only for the Subterranean Playground.

I have tried having the music (albeit a smaller version of the library) on a local internal drive. Same issue.

This happens with albums and playlists. I almost never play only one song so I can’t really address that use case. ALSO...playlist length does not matter - whether 30, 258, or 900 songs, the hiccup will occur.

The hiccup does not seem to be a function of the file size either; something this happens with short songs but other times it happens with long songs. Absolutely no consistency.

I have checked my main Audio processor (to which the whole house CONNECT is connected) when the fault happens to see if maybe the TOSLINK-out was hiccuping. The audio processor never loses sync, so IF there is a hardware fault it’s in THAT Sonos CONNECT - perhaps it’s losing blocks of data somehow. That said, the output is always silent when this happens - never Gaussian noise etc, just silence.

The ONLY thing left that I can think of would be to take the analog outs into the processor (the output of the processor feeds the whole house analog distribution system). I suppose it’s possible that there’s a flaky DAC but that said, I don’t know if the S/PDIF is served from the same digital location (i.e. pre DAC) as the TOSLINK. So yeah, that’s the only thing left - take the analog signal and see if the hiccuping stops. Ironically I just wanted to use the digital out and let the audio processor handle everything. HOWEVER this happens on both CONNECT units, and on the 2nd unit I am NOT using a digital out, so it seems once more not related to the DAC etc.

Again, I’ve fully reset the gateway more than once. I’ve checked every LAN connection to every switch. I’ve powered-down the switches, and yes, even tried a USB to CAT6 connector on the odd chance there are issues with the NIC on the main PC. That, too made no difference. All PCs and CONNECT units are on the same gigabit switch so there’s no real heavy lifting for one to see the other. I’ve rebuilt OSs and run all manner of diagnostics.

Ironically, the PCs around the house can all see and play flawlessly the mp3 versions via media player.

I’m sick of all of this. I head that NAD makes a beautiful but pricey unit. The problem is that I need two, and they are WAY expensive.

So, so, so frustrating and made all the worse by the pull down menu support personnel in chat etc. I’ll never ask them for help again. Even after submitting diagnostics they still couldn’t tell me anything apart from what’s in the pull down menu help tree.

 

 

 

 

Userlevel 7
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Apple will also rename devices.

To downgrade Sonos devices (be reminded this can't be done with the One SL) take a look here: 

 

Am I correct that you have two SONOS CONNECT’s? Have you physically swapped the units?

We cannot rule out hardware fault.

An orderly Mute typically occurs when there is a communication fault that starves a unit’s data feed. It’s difficult to determine exactly when data starvation started because there is a data cache of several seconds. When the cache is empty, the unit will Mute.

Have you checked the Network Matrix to verify that the unit is wired to the network?

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Apple will also rename devices.

To downgrade Sonos devices (be reminded this can't be done with the One SL) take a look here: 

 

OK, first, the downgrade.

I did that which was suggested. However, after doing so I tried to install / set up S1 and I got the message that both devices were incompatible. I ran through the steps again but got the same message, so I gave up.

 

I’ve reinstalled S2 (but of course with all of my playlists etc gone as a consequence of the reset) and that made things status quo.