Answered

Speakers disappear randomly & missing speakers will play music without a conrtroller/app


I’m not sure this is a question. I don’t expect to get any a solution at this point. I’m writing this simply because I’m still in the struggle. And it’s quite real .

I have 8 speakers, 4 of which are the Ikea lamps, plus one Ikea wall panel, a Roam, A Five, and a One.
These speakers will disappear in random fashion, often multiple times per day, with no input from me. My WiFi is strong throughout the house, with 400 Mbps DL speed and 11.5 up. Sometimes rebooting the router will fix everything, but  usually not. There’s just no why or wherefore for any of it. It was all working fine last night, but I got up this morning to find the Roam was the only speaker the app could see, or find. Not at all surprising.  When I pressed the Play button on my Sonos Five, however, it and the 6 other missing speakers suddenly sprang to life , playing an album I was playing last night. I’m not surprised, as This too happens rather frequently. I was surprised today to find that they all continue to play, even when I power off my phone, and make certain the app on my computer is closed. I’ve made several calsl to customer service, and even took the option of writing the CEO, who responded, much to his credit, and I got a phone appointment with an in-house pro. But all fixes have been temporary; soon enough, the problems begin again.. I SO want this system to work. I can’t believe the  hassle, the hours I’ve wasted fiddling around with it over the past year. But I’m nothing if not stubborn, So there’s that. Have a nice day!

icon

Best answer by Ken_Griffiths 2 June 2022, 22:53

View original

This topic has been closed for further comments. You can use the search bar to find a similar topic, or create a new one by clicking Create Topic at the top of the page.

4 replies

This sure sounds a lot like a potential duplicate IP address issue, somewhat common with some routers. 

@verivali,
The fact the WiFi is strong throughout the house with 400MB/s download speed, is possibly irrelevant. The devices in your case are clearly disappearing due to issues around SSDP multicast/broadcast discovery. 

The Sonos controller uses SSDP to initially discover the players, multicasting via UDP to 239.255.255.250:1900 and, for good measure, broadcasting to 255.255.255.255:1900. 

Thereafter communication is unicast and in your case it sounds like your network is failing to support these protocols in a reliable way. At least those are my initial thoughts🤔?

Can you perhaps describe your network in much more depth, including make/model of router, other wireless access points, extenders, switches (managed or unmanaged?) and what Sonos products you have wired and what they are wired to?

It would also help to know what WiFi channels you are using & their channel-widths and what controller devices you are using.

Also, just as an aside, have you been able to ‘ping’ your devices across the LAN, even when they were not showing in your Sonos App and have the Sonos devices IP addresses been reserved in your routers DHCP Reservation Table?

More details are needed before some constructive suggestions can really be made in your case.

It sounds like there’s a WiFi mesh through the house? If so is this in addition to a gateway router? And is that router’s WiFi turned off? 

The symptoms suggest the speakers and controller could be hopping between different IP subnets.

(By the way the controllers are just remote controls, so needn’t be present for music to still play.)

@verivali,

One other quick thing, just for your information.. you mention that you close the Sonos App and power off the phone, or shutdown the computer and the music still plays.. well that is often ‘by design’ and is supposed to be the case for some audio sources, as the Sonos App is not a music player, it’s merely a ‘remote’ control - think of it like your TV ‘remote’.. it’s only needed to control things.

Your Sonos speakers are the ‘players’ and they mostly communicate/play music etc. direct from the source… you can therefore start music from say the Spotify Service within the Sonos App, using your computer and shut the computer down and the music will continue.

However there are other Apps available for Sonos where the App is the player, rather than a ‘remote’ and in that case the music will not continue when you close those type of Apps or shutdown the device that contains the playing App. So expect the music to stop when using those sort of Apps.

I just thought it worth mentioning to you now that the Sonos Controller App is not a music player.

edit: ah @ratty beat me to it - but hope the above helps anyway to clear the mist a little more.