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Speakers Repeatedly Disappear from App

  • 3 August 2022
  • 5 replies
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Hello All

I recently had a system installed consisting of a Beam (in the bedroom) two Sonos Five’s (one kitchen & one living room) and an Arc w/ Sub and 2 SL Ones in the basement Entertainment room.  Regularly the Arc, Sub and SL Ones will disappear from the app (sometimes all, sometimes only one or two).  Less frequently one of the Fives will disappear and rarely the beam is gone.  The beam and two Fives can often be corrected simply by unplugging them.  Often, however, the issue in the Entertainment room is not corrected by a simple unplugging and I’ll lose patience attempting to fix and go focus on something else.  When I return the speakers show back up in the app.  Can anyone shed light on this issue, Please?

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Best answer by Airgetlam 3 August 2022, 20:37

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5 replies

Userlevel 7

Are you able to connect one Sonos speaker (not a Sub or surround) directly to your router with an ethernet cable?

There’s a couple of potentials that pop to mind. One is the simple potential of wifi interference, which can occur both inside your home, or be an influence from outside your home. I’ve experienced both in my years.

The other potential, although less likely, is duplicate IP addresses that occur when your router gets mixed up during a Sonos update, and hands out duplicate IP addresses which can clash at odd moments, but not always.

Usually, the “easy” albeit non-permanent fix is to unplug all Sonos devices from power, then reboot the router. Once the router comes back up, plug back in the Sonos devices. The more permanent fix, which many of us have done, is to assign reserved IP addresses for our Sonos devices in the router’s DHCP table. 

This is How I fixed the same exact problem. 
it was not an interference, nor IP conflict. I even gave designated IPs to each speaker with no luck.

After a modem/router restart, speakers would be visible but then they would start disappearing.

Here is what the problem was.

The modem/router from Xfinity is giving out a single signal but within the router there were 2.4 and 5ghz wifi capabilities. Once I logged in to the interface of the router/modem, using the MAC ids for each speaker ( can be found under sonos app, settings>system>About my system), I could see the list of connection of each speaker along with everything else connected to wifi.
The problematic speakers were connected to 5ghz while rest were connecting to 2.4ghz. This connection selection is not an option during wifi scanning. Therefore, as the only solution with my technical level, once I disabled 5ghz option from router settings (ip 10.0.0.1 for Xfinity) all connections jumped to 2.4 ghz automatically. I hope this helps to many, it took me a good 1 month day and night to find the root cause for a system that worked for 2 years without issues. This problem started interestingly after I updated the sonos app

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

Some routers prevent devices reaching out to each other from 2,4 to 5Ghz and vice versa, though it still has to be explained to me why this would bring an advantage. Sonos devices need to be able chat among themselves.

Your solution is the best possible if the router can’t be set to build a normal network.

Userlevel 7
Badge +22

Some routers prevent devices reaching out to each other from 2,4 to 5Ghz and vice versa, though it still has to be explained to me why this would bring an advantage.

That blocking of communications between router clients was intended to minimize the damage an infected client could cause on your network.

I can’t see a use for it on your LAN unless you do not have a guest access point for visitors to use. Then the protection may be worth the aggravation.