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Slight audio dropouts in the rears

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Hi.

 

I have some slight audio dropouts in my Sonos One SLs that i use as rears in a Setup of Arc+Sub+LS+RS.

As my main listening position is usually close to the RS rear, this is obv. somewhat annoying when watching movies.

My diagnostic number: 121101499

Setup: Arc is wired into a FRITZ!Box 7590 (latest firmware). Rest is on SonosNet.

I checked with the FRITZBox which channel has the least amount of devices and the strongest other accesspoints seem to be on channels 6 and 11.

In the app, i set SonosNet to Channel 1 and my router to Channel 11.

 

However, no matter what SonosNet channel i pick, i still have a lot of dropped packets in the /support/review site.

 

 

I’m left with two ideas:

  1. don’t use SonosNet
  2. hardwire the rears

Both of which i would rather no do if the problem can be solved by a different way.

 

What’s the suggested approach to fix this? Could this also be a hardware defect by the Arc or something?

Is there any way to find more information about why a lot of packets get dropped?


Thanks

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Best answer by Corry P 26 May 2021, 13:05

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14 replies

G
Userlevel 7

Do you have any devices near the Arc or surround speakers that could be causing WiFi interference? How close is your router to the Arc?

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." - Rashi
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I have my router, a hue bridge, an ikea bridge an (hardwired) and a raspberrypi in a (wood) drawer below the (wall mounted) arc. I can’t move this stuff around for asthetic reasons.

WiFi of the raspberry pi is turned off and the fritzbox is on a different channel so those two shouldn’t cause any interference?

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I just disconnected the ikea and hue gateways as i read they also operate in 2.4ghz… however under /support/review i still see dropped packets raising for the Living Room (RR).

I didn’t get around to make a longer test if audio dropouts are still a thing but i assume that the dropped packets should not change? i get maybe like 10 per seconds.

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The amount of dropped packets increase (it’s actually about 4 per second) doesn’t change regardless if the ikea/hue bridge is plugged into power or not.

Corry P
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Hi @breiti 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

Your speakers in the other rooms, communicating with the Arc as their Access Point, are having no trouble whatsoever. These connect via 2.4GHz on SonosNet.

Your surrounds and Sub, however, communicate with the Arc over 5GHz and are having trouble doing so. As this is unlikely to be due to range, I support @GuitarSuperstar’s idea of checking for and removing sources of interference near the Arc, specifically on the 5GHz band. Despite being on separate channels, two WiFi devices will interfere with each other when in close proximity. I recommend a 1m separation between all WiFi devices (and transmitters) if possible. Any small increase in separation will have double the proportional effect (due to the inverse-square law), so any separation is better than none.

Additionally, 5GHz isn’t as good at penetrating solid matter as 2.4GHz is, so it may help to show us a picture of your Arc in it’s surroundings.

Connecting Sub and Surround speakers to ethernet is not recommended.

I hope this helps.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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@Corry P thank you for reaching out! Good to know that they use 5Ghz, i didn’t know that.

 

My Sub is next to the Arc and the surrounds are also wallmounted an in direct line-of-sight to the Arc, about 4-5meter in distance.

 

For moving the other stuff around, i don’t have much options unfortunately. I can however for troubleshoot purposes try to remove devices temporarly (like i did with the smart bridges).

 

What do you think can be additional sources for 5Ghz interference? I’m a bit out of ideas. Do you think it would help to also use a fixed channel for 5GHz? But as i can’t fix the channel on sonosnet i guess this would be a bit futile.

 

I just disabled 5Ghz on my router, however the dropped packets rate still is not affected.

 

Any further help and ideas are very welcomed!

Thank you.

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Here is a picture of the arc, the sub and the surrounds. The router is located in the middle drawer of the cabinet.

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Also the WiFi of the TV is turned off.

Corry P
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Hi @breiti 

Thanks for the picture.

If I understand correctly and the router is directly underneath the Arc, I recommend you move it though I realise this is probably no easy task. Ideally, I’d also like the Sub to be a bit further away from the Arc than it is now, though the proximity of the router is a greater concern. Basically, you have two devices both transmitting 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz within centimetres of each other. They can’t not interfere.

It’s strange that disabling 5GHz on the router didn’t help matters. I wonder if a neighbour has devices on the other side of that wall? As for possible sources, I think 5GHz WiFi devices are the only devices you’re likely to come across using 5GHz - it’s why that band was picked for WiFi, in part.

Having said all this, the packet error rate between the Arc and its satellites isn’t all that high - I’m surprised you’re noticing anything at all (unless the problem is periodic?).

Have you tried rebooting? Unplug the surrounds, the Sub and the Arc from power. Once the Arc has been off for 20 seconds or so, switch it on and only power up the others once the Arc has a solid white light.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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It’s strange that disabling 5GHz on the router didn’t help matters.

Yes - so for me this indicates the problem is the Arc itself (as it’s acting like an access point) or something external.

I wonder if a neighbour has devices on the other side of that wall?

No - the other side of that wall is my bedroom - no wifi devices there.

Having said all this, the packet error rate between the Arc and its satellites isn’t all that high - I’m surprised you’re noticing anything at all (unless the problem is periodic?).

Well in normal music playback i don’t recognize problems - but watching movies make the problem apperent, as the dropout is every 1-3 minutes, sometimes multiple times. I think it’s because when listening to movies, i’m not having my right ear almost next to the right satelleite One SL. Also maybe with movies there is more traffic to the rears?

Have you tried rebooting? Unplug the surrounds, the Sub and the Arc from power. Once the Arc has been off for 20 seconds or so, switch it on and only power up the others once the Arc has a solid white light.

Will try that later today.

 

Given turning off the 5Ghz of my router doesn’t help - what would be the next troubleshooting steps in case reboot doesn’t help? (I would assume it, as i did reboot it a few weeks ago when i wallmounted the Arc)

 

Thank you for your support!

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Just did the reboot dance - dropped packets rate still about the same (as expected).

Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @breiti 

Have you moved your router? I would expect no improvement on dropped packets until this is done.

I also saw some decoding errors on your Arc - I wonder if the problem is with the stream itself, and not the act of getting it to the surrounds? Please unplug your TV from power for at least 30 seconds.

Once it’s back on, please test again and submit new diagnostics immediately after hearing any issues. Thanks.

Please also try playing different audio formats to see if the problem is specific to just one.

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen." - Albert Einstein
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Hi @Corry P,

Have you moved your router? I would expect no improvement on dropped packets until this is done.

No. I drilled Holes in the tv board and have cables running through the wall (e.g. the Arc’s Ethernet cable) - so it’s not trivial. But as you said Arc+Sub+LS+RS are communicating on 5GHz… do you think there is a high chance of this actually helping - even turning off the 5Ghz radio of the router didn’t change anything? Because i personally would rule the router out for now based on this?

 

I also saw some decoding errors on your Arc - I wonder if the problem is with the stream itself, and not the act of getting it to the surrounds? Please unplug your TV from power for at least 30 seconds.

I use HDfury Arcana to avoid any funnyness with the TVs crappy firmware. So i think decoding errors would be coming from either the Apple TV 4k (2nd gen / tvOS 14.6) or the Arcana (don’t think so - they claim they don’t touch the actual stream). However - i have this problem since forever and in that timeframe, i obv. powercycled and switched basically everydevice. I upgraded my TV, i upgraded the Apple TV - but still the slight dropouts never gone away.

 

Please also try playing different audio formats to see if the problem is specific to just one.

As in 5.1 instead of Dolby Atmos?

 

Additional questions:

Your surrounds and Sub, however, communicate with the Arc over 5GHz and are having trouble doing so.

What did you mean by that exactly? Did you also see a lot of dropped packets?

 

I also saw some decoding errors on your Arc

Decoding happenes on the Arc itself right? So this would indicate also more of an Arc problem i guess, esp. since i changed the streaming hardware (upgraded ATV4k 1st gen to 2nd gen)?

Corry P
Userlevel 7
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Hi @breiti 

Yes - I saw dropped packets between the Arc and each of the satellites. I would not make the call that disabling 5GHz on your router did not help until I have seen diagnostics from the Arc confirming it (you may still get interruptions but the packet error rate may be reduced, suggesting that you’re part-way there but have more to do). The ifconfig pages you posted above do not indicate how the PER changes over time.

The problem with disabling 5GHz is that you restrict your internet access speed to the maximum that 2.4GHz can support, which may be lower than the internet connection speed you’re paying for. This is why it’s recommended to move the router.

HDMI switches such as the HD Fury Arcana are not supported, but I consulted with a colleague and if there were decoding issues the Arc would drop audio too, so I think we’re back to interference.

I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team, to go through some real-time troubleshooting/data-gathering steps with you. They’ll be very likely to suggest moving the router once they find out where it is, however. I understand that you’ve altered the cabinet so that you can keep your router tidy, but I highly recommend at least moving it temporarily to test if it helps. If it does help, nothing we can do will produce the same result - the router and Arc are just too close. If moving the router doesn’t help, then we’ve discounted the most probable cause and can move on to other possibilities.

 

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