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Sound Interruptions with some speakers in party mode

  • 18 October 2021
  • 14 replies
  • 297 views

Hello everyone,

 

I have 8 Sonos Speakers at home and everything was working fine for many years.

Last year, I have changed my Asus RT-AC3200 for a RT-AX88U. The change was transparent and I didn’t meet any issue until the last weeks.

 

When I use the Party Mode to group all the speakers together, it often happens that some speakers stop playing the music, while other speakers continues. And the sound comes back a few seconds later, like the speaker was temporally not anymore in the group.

When it happens, I checked and the speakers with no sound are not muted and still present in the app, in the same group, all playing the same audio source.

It appears that this issue happens everytime with the same speakers, but not only with the farest from the router.

  • The wifi coverage is very good
  • Each speaker has a static IP
  • I tried to manually change the Sonos Channel, but same issue
  • Restarting the router didn’t change anything
  • I don’t use Sonos Boost, one Play One is plugged to my router.

Has anyone any idea ?

Sorry, but wire every speakers can’t be a solution :D

Thank you

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Best answer by Corry P 21 October 2021, 10:58

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14 replies

Userlevel 7

Try turning off the Quality of Service (QoS) feature and disable Airtime Fairness for both 2.4 and 5GHz bands in the router’s settings.

Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @j3r3m 

Welcome to the Sonos Community!

I recommend you make sure that you select the ethernet-wired Play:1 first, then group all the other rooms to it. This will ensure the path that the data stream takes is the most efficient (the room listed at the top of the group is the Group Coordinator, and distributes the stream to the other rooms - the wired Play:1 is the best situated to do this).

If this, or @GuitarSuperstar’s suggestion, didn’t help, please submit a diagnostic after reproducing the issue and reply here with the number given. Thanks.

I have had similar experience and it happens mostly when I am streaming through Airplay. I have grouped the devices in the room (one Play 5 and three Play One SL). One of the Play One SL is wired and the other Sonos devices are wireless.

 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @el rubio 

I recommend you always stream Airplay to the wired SL. Also, make sure the phone has a good WiFi signal. Rebooting your router by removing power for 30 seconds may also help.

I hope this helps.

thank you @Corry P for the feedback and I will consider to use the wired devices in the first place - I am less ‘enthusiastic’ about rebooting my router each time, since I have other users that are less concerned about Sonos’ behaviour and do not like their connections being cut :yum:

 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @el rubio 

If your router was supplied by your Internet Provider, I’d reboot it about 4 to 6 times a year. With better routers, you can get away with much longer, but I’d still recommend a reboot a couple of times a year. I wasn’t suggesting you do so every time you want to use AirPlay - that would be intolerable.

If your router needs rebooting often, you may want to look into replacing it. However, I’d make sure that this is the problem first - 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 and what it reports. It may just be some configuration is in order - for example, have you assigned static IPs for Sonos devices, as mentioned by @j3r3m in their original post?

Finally, if your music source is Amazon Music and you have an Unlimited account with them, you’ve likely been switched to HD playback (lossless compression, but still CD quality) without realising. This uses 4x as much bandwidth on your local network when grouping, and you may be hitting limits imposed by the speakers’ electromagnetic environment. Reducing WiFi interference in the vicinity of your router and Sonos devices will likely help, but how many rooms you can successfully play to will be reduced when playing HD content, in relation to when playing lossy compression codecs (this limit may be more rooms than you actually have, however).

I hope this helps.

 

hi @Corry P 

I never rely on the ISP’s router and always connect to my private router. In most cases (read: places) these are Netgear routers with dd-wrt firmware and that works very well. In one case my wifi is UniFi gear with meshed access points and an Ubiquity Security Gateway. Despite the fact they are more expensive products, the UniFi gear does not perform as well as the Netgear routers. However, its UniFi Controller software gives lots of information about the wifi usage. Internet bandwidth (on the 1 Gb fiber connection) and wifi throughput is not an issue. IP address reservation for the Sonos devices is in place. Wifi coverage throughout the premise is perfect and serving about thirty devices simultaneously. 

 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @el rubio 

The majority of devices on your network probably only talk to the internet, or if talking to each other do so with tiny amounts of information (like a smart home light turning on). These devices working well do not necessarily indicate a heathy local network. The way Sonos communicates often highlights network issues that other devices do not.

Please recreate the playback issue, immediately submit a diagnostic and reply here with the number given when convenient. Thanks. Hopefully, that will let us get to a resolution.

Thanks @Corry P I will consider this. On the other hand I have had a case using a Netgear router (on dd-wrt firmware) where Sonos devices ‘behaved well’ despite a noisy wifi environment and lots of wireless (receive and transmit) packet errors. While Sonos devices responded well, other (video) streaming services to iPads and iPhones often had issues. From what I have learned in the recent posts, this is probably due to the fact that Sonos was transmitting on its own channel through the wired Sonos playbase or did I miss something?

 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @el rubio 

Yes - a wired Sonos device will transmit it’s own WiFi signal that all other Sonos devices - except for Roam and Move - belonging to the same system will prefer over any 3rd-party WiFi connection.

In my experience, each Sonos system needs to be considered in isolation. What fixes an issue on one won’t necessarily fix a similar issue on another system - too many symptoms have multiple possible causes, and each Sonos owner’s home has a different electromagnetic environment and layout of different speakers. Without a diagnostic, I can only hand out guesses.

@Corry P your assumption was correct that my devices were mostly transmitting (exclusively) using my wifi and IP Network and did not ‘benefit’ from the Sonosnet. I double checked all wired Sonos devices and found on most of them the wifi network connection disabled. This may explain the high impact of my UniFi network on the Sonos behaviour and instability. All wired Sonos devices throughout the premise have now wifi enabled and I perceive a ‘swiftly’ performance. So far, so good. 

 
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @el rubio 

Fantastic! Thanks for updating us here.

Indeed - the only time Sonos WiFi should be disabled is when there are multiple ethernet-wired Amps in a cupboard next to each other, usually fitted by an installer, or if our technical support team recommend it after analysing system diagnostics.

Just to complete the whole ‘picture’, my Sonosnet is using channel 1 and my UniFi wifi network is using channel 11 (2G) and channel 40 (5G).

 

Hello everyone,

I take back possession of my topic :D

Sorry for being quite so long, after reading the first answer to my question, I checked the QoS options of my router and it was diabled. So I wanted to try to enable it.

And, after this simple action, it seems that the Web GUI Asus WRT doesn’t work anymore. The router is working fine, but I can’t access and manage its settings.

Not having yet a backup of my routers settings, Im still waiting a solution from the Asus Support Team before resetting it.

 

However, I have read all the answers carefully… The wifi is enabled for all the speakers in my Sonos system.

I have tried to group all speakers on my only which is wired to my router : it’s a bit better. But I stil encountered the same problems.