Spotify unstable when starting tracks

  • 22 September 2021
  • 29 replies
  • 688 views
S
Badge

When starting playback on Spotify, speakers randomly cut in and out, it can take up to a minute to settle down. Once playing it will generally be fine for as long as you like, until you change something. Skipping a track on a playlist will produce the same issue, (while just playing the next track that's already lined up and buffered is fine) when pausing sometimes you can hear some of the speakers still going for a few seconds. Often tracks or changes to the queue will be ignored when the current track finishes.

This does not seem to happen with Sonos radio or the local music library on our NAS (when I can get sonos to find it, but that's for another day) 

A day and a half on the phone and live chat support with both Sonos and Linksys has not fixed things alas.

System is connected by a boost to the router, and after support suggested it yesterday, also one of the Play:1s. (like 3 feet away) Sonosnet is set to channel 11, the WiFi (2.4GHz) to channel 1. (although it seems to occupy up to 6 on occasions watching on WiFi scanner app) We are rural so no WiFi interference that we don't generate ourselves.

WiFi is Linksys Velop dual band mesh with two child nodes, fed from a TP-Link Archer MR600 AC1200 Mbps 4G router. (see previous about rural, the land line broadband gives 3meg max, and this issue used to happen when on that too) The WiFi on the TP link is disabled. 

Diagnostic 171739937

 

Any assistance gratefully received. I feel like support are running out of ideas and haven't actually said what would cause this issue. 

 

Ta like. 

 

 

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.

29 replies

S
Badge

This seems about as good as I have ever seen it, yet the cutting in and out when starting tracks still happens, indeed it is worse than the last setup, so surely it has to be something else

 

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Standforhats 

Apologies for the delay - I’ve been on holiday.

Your most recent diagnostic certainly shows a different connection map:

Unfortunately, with the Front Bedroom in charge of a group, it’s actually the Left speaker that gets the stream and distributes it. Are you able to connect the Left speaker to ethernet instead of the right one? If not, I recommend you physically swap the two speakers to see if that helps.

Note the Boost is missing now.

Regarding the adding of Spotify tracks to the end of the playing queue and them not playing, this is an issue we are aware of and it is unrelated to your other playback problems. It will take a software update either on Sonos systems or on Spotify servers to fix.

Reserving IP addresses can certainly be tried, but I wouldn’t expect it to fix this problem. It’s generally only used when speakers are missing from your system. As we’ve tried everything else, I would give it a go.

Finally, the only answer may be to reduce the number of rooms in the group you are playing to until you can find and resolve the source of the multicast packets - these are still showing up on the ethernet-connected devices.

 

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

Hi @Corry P  

 

Apologies for the delay - I’ve been on holiday.

How very dare you!! ;-)

There have been some further changes while you were away...

 

Unfortunately, with the Front Bedroom in charge of a group, it’s actually the Left speaker that gets the stream and distributes it. Are you able to connect the Left speaker to ethernet instead of the right one? If not, I recommend you physically swap the two speakers to see if that helps.

I had a suspicion this might be the case, something in the back of my head… (It should be noted that support told me it didn’t matter which speaker was wired) 

My decision to wire the Right was that the Right is basically in the middle of the house and so should provide the best coverage for connecting to the other speakers…

Anyhew, I have now connected both Front Bedroom speakers. (There is a switch involved which also allows the WiFi Printer which is near to the left speaker to be connected to the router via Ethernet and so I could turn off the WiFi broadcast on it and so leave it on without mucking up the Sonos. It was switched off for all the fault finding we did on here but a previous Support conversation had identified it as a source of interference to Front Bedroom Left)

Note the Boost is missing now.

Not required now with the purchase of the 10m ethernet cable! (Also I read that because you can’t address the boost directly as the group controller using a wired speaker is much better as it removes two journeys for the stream - I don’t know if this is true?)

Regarding the adding of Spotify tracks to the end of the playing queue and them not playing, this is an issue we are aware of and it is unrelated to your other playback problems. It will take a software update either on Sonos systems or on Spotify servers to fix.

Thank you again for this information - I suspect that not all your support operators got that memo… Really looking forward to having that fixed it’s really frustrating!

 

Anyways… with the current set up, I almost daren’t say it but all seems to be working well. The skipping channels seems to be resolved. To recap, both Front Bedroom speakers are wired directly (via a switch) and Fire Room is wired via a (gasp) Homeplug. It even seems to behave if I use Outbuilding as group controller in an attempt to make it misbehave… 

I daren’t say it’s all fixed now, since every time before I have thought this it has turned out to be a temporary reprieve… so I would be very grateful if you could cast your eyes over a couple more Diagnostics to just see how it’s looking:

278925707 - Floater as group controller (deliberately not one of the wired rooms)

804479730 - Front Bedroom as group controller.

(I worked out how to see the Matrix myself, can a user get to the connection map without your access?)

 

Finally, the only answer may be to reduce the number of rooms in the group you are playing to until you can find and resolve the source of the multicast packets - these are still showing up on the ethernet-connected devices.

 

Are these still appearing? given the initial issue appears resolved what issue are they causing? Or is this part of the queue nonsense? I don’t really know much about this kind of level of things - what could be causing them? The only option I could find on the TPLink Archer MR600 settings was to turn on IGMP snooping - which I have done but I think I had already done that before the diagnostic you checked before. Oh well

 

Thanks again, I am very hopeful I will be able to leave you be now!

Cheers

H

Corry P
Userlevel 7
Badge +18

Hi @Standforhats 

I am pleased to announce that in those two diagnostics I am seeing far less multicast flooding (though still a little) and only on one wired unit (Front Bedroom R, which is also the designated root bridge (controls SonosNet STP) so it kind of makes sense - don’t ask me to explain as I can’t without help). I think the IGMP Snooping option helped a lot. 

Also - 11 hours since the last dropout!

In terms of how many, or which, speaker(s) should be wired, there’s no right answer - whatever works best for you is the correct way to do it, as far as I am concerned. You are correct in that the Boost cannot possibly be a group controller, so in edge-cases like yours, yes, a wired speaker is better than a Boost. I would say the regular use of large groups is what is making this difference for you. It can be argued that with a Boost wired, a speaker has more CPU resources available for other tasks, but again, what works, works.

You are very welcome, and hopefully you can now enjoy the tunes in peace! Fingers crossed!

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