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Roam won't move between access points

S

I recently got a Roam, and am running into trouble with AirPlay over WiFI. When moving my Roam around the house, I get audio drop-outs and stutters. This happens when I move the speaker, and isn’t affected by the location of the audio source.

I have a an Eero mesh system that consists of two Eero Pros that are connected to one another via gigabit ethernet hardwired backhaul, and a third Eero Pro that is connected wirelessly. They are not running any of the experimental features and it’s been a rock solid system for literally years with multiple devices.

I looked at the eero app, and lo and behold the Roam does not (wait for it) roam between access points. It picks the one that’s closest to it at power-on (or possibly, the one it was closest to when originally set up), and does not switch.

It seems like it’s a known issue that the Roam does not move between WiFi access points per this comment in another thread: 

Rebooting when moving it around kind of defeats the roaming ability of the Roam. I have a mesh WiFi system so I don’t have to think about WiFi coverage in my house.

AirPlay streaming over WiFi is essentially why I bought the Roam. Otherwise I would have just bought another, cheaper Bluetooth speaker. (Or kept the one I’ve had for years!)

Is this planned to be addressed soon? If it’s not, I will likely return it so that I don’t end up outside the 45 day return window with a speaker that doesn’t do what it’s advertised to do.

 

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Best answer by Corry P 13 May 2021, 13:09

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12 replies

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @splinkyhoo 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I can assure you that the Roam’s ability to roam between Access Points will be coming in a future update. Much as I would like to tell you when that will be, I do not have that information available. Please be assured that it is a priority for us, however.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
C

I’m having the same problems, when I take my phone or any other device between the access points in my house they work fine. However the Roams get down to like -85db and still stay connected, even though they have stopped streaming music. 1 is worse than the other. To make things worse when they finally do switch over, they usually lose their stereo pair, and all their equalizer settings.

The equalizer thing seems like a terrible design to me, whenever you put them into a stereo pair they lose their settings, and whenever they come out of the stereo pair they lose their settings. I could see having different settings for the pair and different settings for the individuals, but at least save them.

This is the part that makes the restart “solution” so terrible, it wouldn’t be that bad to turn the roams off and back on if they could remember they were in a pair, but to have to re-pair them and then reset the equalizer is super annoying.

Unfortunately these are my first products from Sonos and the experience has been anything but “premium” they sound nice when they work, but getting them set up to use is a circus show ever time.

G

I could not agree more.  I continually have connectivity problems with the Roam. Today, I tried to a Roam to an existing room and after a couple of minutes of working fine… the system stops and there is no sound.  The app on the phone goes into the “hunting” for the entire system and I’m told Sonos cannot locate my entire system.  This may be an access point problem on my mesh network?  NO idea…. but it’s totally unacceptable as the only reason I bought the Roam was to fill in areas that didn’t have good audio coverage.

At this point, I consider the Roam a useless product and cannot recommend it to anyone.

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @gdnx 

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, who have tools at their disposal that will allow them to give you advice specific to your Sonos system.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
A
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Me too.  Roam won’t Roam between access points.

I found that I could resite my Netgear wifi extender so that the part of the house where I use my Roam most of the time is in the primary wifi zone rather than the extender zone.   Not perfect but it works moderately well for me and overall wifi coverage for everything else is still good. 

I’ll be happier when Sonos fix it.   

 

M

@Corry P do you have an update for us on this. I cannot believe this can be true. How can you have a portable speaker that doesn’t connect throughout a house’s mesh/eero system? This is borderline false advertising. Like a poster said - should have just gotten a regular Bluetooth speaker!

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Mgobkexam 

Not as of yet, no. 

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
V

I’m having also some of these issues. The Roam is very unreliable when it comes to it’s availability. I can see it in my home automation software and I notice it in Spotify, Airplay and through the Sonos app.

 

I have a Unifi controller and Unifi access point and I’m in networking by profession. So I know my way around with the gear. What I noticed that is happening is that the Sonos One occassionally connects to an access point upstairs (which is bizarre, because it’s 30 cm away from the closest AP). The roam is located upstairs and actually connects downstairs, but in doing so has to deal with more concrete walls etc. The result is that it is connected to the network, but with such a poor experience that it becomes unavailable for most services. I can see it downgrading it’s connection to 802.11g, which isn’t great news, because it will downgrade the 2,4Ghz experience for all devices connecting to my living room AP.

 

The sonos devices are the only ones doing this and they tend to stick to the same AP. I don’t know if they lock onto a MAC address or something, but this is absolutely horrible. Everything else in my house is roaming flawlessly and doesn’t pose any issues.

 

As a sidenote, for now the Sonos are still in the same VLAN as my laptop and smartphones, so there is L2 connectivity and I allow all multicast within that VLAN. It’s purely a wireless connectivity issue that seems to be a firmware issue on the Sonos devices if you ask me. A timeline for a fix would be very much appreciated. A possible workaround as well...

buzz

Are you using different WiFi channels on your AP’s?

V

Are you using different WiFi channels on your AP’s?


Yes, i do. Both for 5ghz and 2.4 Ghz. I looked at swapping the places of the APs, just to test it out, but I have different PoE specifications in both places, so that wasn’t an option for the AP swapping.
What I now ended up doing was to factory reset both units and and reconnect them to the WiFi and Sonos app. Now, they stick with the AP that makes sense.

The Roam was still a pain to set up after the inital setup via the Sonos app. I mean, for it to show up properly under the system and also the Google Voice Assistant wasn’t able to find it several times whereas the other the One was smooth sailing. The Roam replies to pings, but the smartphone has issues finding that it at times. I can’t explain the behavior of the Roam very well, because the SNR on the WiFi is great and it’s now connecting over 802.11ac.

I’ll play around a little more to see if I can figure out what’s going on with it. From my WLAN Controller all seems to be fine and happy, but the user experience is a little different at times.

buzz


 but I have different PoE specifications in both places,

Are you mixing new and older (passive power supply) access points? There may be some implications if so. 

lucasec
Userlevel 1
Badge

Hi all, have any recent firmwares changed this behavior?

I just picked up a Sonos Roam, and it does “roam” in the sense that it will re-connect to another AP when playing TuneIn without skipping a beat, but it does seem to drop out of any Sonos groups in the process.

Just wanted to make sure this is the current expected behavior the known limitations.

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