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Sonos Five AirPlay problems on Linksys Velop Mesh network

  • 13 January 2021
  • 19 replies
  • 715 views

Got the Five on 11.11. Love the sound and turn on as often as I get the chance.

In just the last couple of months, I noticed that the music stops after a while.  Initially I thought the playlist ended but lately, I started noticing a sudden stop in the playing mid song.

  1. I use a Linksys Velop mesh. 
  2. I have only the Five.
  3. Switched the channels on the Mesh, Reset the mesh.  Even unplugged, & reconnected my fibre broadband.
  4. Did a wired connection of the Five to the root (parent) router of the Linksys Mesh.
  5. Have also tried to uninstall the Sonos Five and re-install the Five.
  6. Here are the last 10 drops (Date:  Approx length of time I noticed it stopped) while playing a very very long playlist on iPhone 11 
    1. 23.12.2020   33 mins
    2. 29.12.2020   1hr 03 mins
    3. 30.12.2020   16 mins
    4. 01.01.2021   49 mins
    5. 03.01.2021   1hr 38 mins
    6. 05.01.2021   1hr 26 mins
    7. 08.01.2021   58 mins
    8. 11.01.2021   25 mins.
    9. 12.01.2021   52 mins
    10. 13.01.2021   09 mins

Please help.  This is getting rather frustrating.

Thanks.

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Best answer by Simon B 15 January 2021, 19:51

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19 replies

What source are you actually playing on the Five?

Ref the comment about “a very very long playlist on iPhone 11”, is this via Airplay?

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Hello Ratty

Yes. I was using AirPlay. Was there another option to play the play list in Apple? If there were, I’m not aware.

 

 Thanks 
 

HCWPSL

Apple Music? Just add the service to Sonos and play music directly using the Sonos app. 

Airplay can sometimes work fine, but it’s more susceptible to dropouts as the stream has to go out to your phone and back again before it reaches the Sonos player.

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Sorry Ratty, I do not subscribe to Apple Music. The playlist is assembled from songs in my library accumulated over a few years.

I see. Well, Airplay is most likely to be the culprit here, especially since wiring the Five didn’t help.

Test it out. Put your phone somewhere there’s a known good WiFi signal. If the music no longer drops out then the problem is almost certainly with Airplay.

Airplay could be more reliable with the iPhone on 5GHz WiFi. If you carry the phone around with you then 2.4GHz WiFi is more likely to be obstructed by the human body as it’s absorbed by water.

One option for keeping your music in a location more accessible to the Five would be to copy it to local network storage. Some of the Velop units even offer a USB port which could host a flash drive.

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Thanks Ratty for your help.

All this new tech is very confusing to me. I’m trying to stay put in one place - on my Apple iPhone.  I am not aware what else is available to store & manage the playing of my music library. All I was hoping to do was to have a good listening experience sans all this tech stuff.

I’m kind of disappointed that this connection with AirPlay thing was not made known when I was considering the Sonos vs Bose. Well, that is history.

 

regards

 

HCWPSL

Sorry, the AirPlay issue has nothing to do with Sonos. It’s Apple’s connection between your phone and the router. It would have affected a Bose just as much.

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That is right if Bose uses WIFI only. I tested the Move using BT & it was great … hence decision to buy Five coz it sounded really nice at the showroom 。

It wouldn’t matter what Bose was using. You said you had the same problem when the Five was wired to the Velop primary/root node. In that arrangement the only wireless hop was from your phone, over Airplay.

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Sorry if I was not clear. I followed the instructions on the app & linked the Five to the main router to allow the speaker to link up to the WIFI network (wired connection).  
 

(Air)played the music to Five & it was great. The wireless worked beautifully for an hour thereafter until I stopped the music for the day. When I next (Air)played the music, the speaker could not connect.

Do as I suggested above and test the quality of your Airplay connection to see if it is really the culprit.

  • Wire the Five to your router.
  • AirPlay from your phone.

If you suffer from any of the regular dropouts mentioned in your first post then it’s highly likely that AirPlay is the cause.

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I have done what you suggested:

  1. Connect the Five to the router with an e5 cable.
  2. Airplay to the speaker from my iPhone.

The speaker played flawlessly that evening & yesterday morning. Will return to using wifi mode this evening when I get back home.

 

regards

 

HCWPSL

 

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I could not help but try connect to the Five just now before I left for work.

Connection failed. 


Regards 

HCWPSL

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Hi

Got back & managed to connect to the Five wirelessly & (Air)played to the speaker for about a little over an hour.

It then disconnected mid-track & when I tried to reconnect to the speaker, it failed.

 

 

Could you please help?

 

regards

 

HCWPS
 

Sonos Support had better take a look. Submit a system diagnostic and post the confirmation number.

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Submitted system diagnostics.

Confirmation #:  211840131

Now it’s working again. Temperamental. :(


Regards

 

HCWPS

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi there @Hcwps, thanks for reaching out and on sending a diagnostic report of your Sonos system, It shows Audio Playback Error on the Airplay logs and Audio dropouts on Airplay via Sonos. Since you’ve done some troubleshooting and it’s working for now. Kindly observe if the issue will reoccur and if it does, I'll ask you to kindly contact our phone support team for further assistance and more in-depth troubleshooting steps and provide options on why Airplay is not working properly with your Sonos Five.

feel free to let me know if you require any further information.

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Hello Simon 

Thanks for your response.

I was able to enjoy the speaker for quite a while last night. Alas, it all came to a head when it dropped around 22:45, when the app was disconnected from the speaker... just like 2 pictures before.

 Will call the phone in as you suggested.

 

regards 

 

HCWPS

Userlevel 6
Badge +16

Hi @Hcwps, thanks for the update. Keep us posted on how it goes after calling phone support. If there is anything else I can do for you, please, don’t hesitate to let me know, we're here to answer any further questions you have.