Don't buy the Sonos

  • 5 October 2017
  • 43 replies
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I spent two and a half months trying to get this speaker to work. It has been replaced with a Bose bluetooth speaker.

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The Sonos was given to me as a birthday gift from my wife back in July, and it worked well at first. Gradually, it started skipping, and to help I bought a Boost. It seemed to help at first but the skipping just got worse and worse. Eventually I couldn't even play music from my phone. Call after call with customer support didn't help. All of this has led to some distress for my wife - seeing me struggle with trying to get it to work for weeks on end.

I have an iPhone6 and DSL internet. As a test, I used the XM-Sirius app instead of the Sonos, and listened to it through simple headphones. Flawless. So, now the Sonos is gone, and replaced with a Bose bluetooth speaker, which is also flawless.

The expense was significant, near $300 total for the Sonos 1 speaker and then the Sonos Boost, both of which are out of return warranty by now, with the Boost being the newest at 6 weeks old. So, now I am stuck with $300 of useless electronic devices, which will have to eat or try and recover on eBay.
Your experience is extremely rare. The vast majority of people are happy with Sonos. I'm sure you contacted their support and followed all suggestions instead of simply posting your displeasure here without giving the support a chance to help. Sorry it didn't work out.
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I have Playbar, Sub and Play1 pair. Streaming from Deezer and my home NAS has been flawless. Couldn't be happier.

Twp weeks without a single dropout or hitch.
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I don't care if it's rare or not, and I've been working with tech support for two months. I've done just about every permutation possible with channel changes and all of their other suggestions. Sonos simply didn't work for me, possibly because of latency issues with DSL. It's just not robust enough to handle DSL apparently, whereas streaming the same channel through my phone with the XM Sirius app (with bluetooth speaker) handles it just fine. Those with DSL may want to look elsewhere for their speaker solution.
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Is there a 'want to sell' part of this forum?
Userlevel 7
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Is there a 'want to sell' part of this forum?

No. It's against the T&Cs of the forum
Userlevel 7
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Is there a 'want to sell' part of this forum?
No. It's against the T&Cs of the forum


But there really should be a section of the forum for folks who just want to vent non-specifically or threaten us with selling their systems 'if Sonos doesn't do X.'

I could then completely avoid that section of the forum and focus energy instead on those with constructive questions and contributions.


But there really should be a section of the forum for folks who just want to vent non-specifically or threaten us with selling their systems 'if Sonos doesn't do X.'

I could then completely avoid that section of the forum and focus energy instead on those with constructive questions and contributions.


Yes!!!!! They can call it the "Or The Bunny Gets It" section! Make it so, Ryan S!
I don't care if it's rare or not, and I've been working with tech support for two months. I've done just about every permutation possible with channel changes and all of their other suggestions. Sonos simply didn't work for me, possibly because of latency issues with DSL. It's just not robust enough to handle DSL apparently, whereas streaming the same channel through my phone with the XM Sirius app (with bluetooth speaker) handles it just fine. Those with DSL may want to look elsewhere for their speaker solution.

I'm happy Bluetooth works for you. Sonos is a far more complicated system that requires a significantly more stable network and internet connection, but even so, the vast majority of systems work fine (far better than most Bluetooth speakers). It doesn't get an overall 4.5+ stars rating on Amazon for nothing. But as the saying goes, horses for courses.
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My contribution is that people with DSL internet may have problems and may want to look elsewhere for their listening solutions. I acknowledge that my life on occasion serves as a warning to others. While some are bent out of shape about my posting and have great luck with their systems, the fact is that months of working with tech support has gone nowhere, and the skipping problem was getting worse, not better. As soon as I did a test streaming the same XM channel through XM's app via my DSL, and then through headphones, then later a bluetooth speaker, I realized my DSL was perfectly up to the task of streaming XM.

I don't like the fact I had to dump Sonos, but nor do I like being out $300. I liked the system - when it worked. It is superior in many ways to bluetooth, but the fact remains it did not work for me. I want to listen to music, not deal with IT issues and tech support.

It is possible that my Sonos speaker and/or Boost are defective in some way, but tech support never indicated that.
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Quote "It is possible that my Sonos speaker and/or Boost are defective in some way, but tech support never indicated that."

It is of course possible but there has never been, as far as I know, any indication that Sonos operate in this way
My contribution is that people with DSL internet may have problems and may want to look elsewhere for their listening solutions.


Nonsense.

We know one thing: There is apparently something in your particular circumstances that causes Sonos to go wonky. But there is nothing inherent in DSL that causes Sonos to go wonky, for thousands of users with DSL lines have Sonos and it works just peachy. Matter of fact, you are the first person I can remember to point to DSL as being the cause of any problems. If this were widespread (like EOP connectors which do not forward packets necessary for Sonos), there would be many more posts like yours.
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When I ran a connection test of my DSL while loading a web page, I saw some latency, and the connection test would 'fail'. Once page was loaded, it would 'pass'. When more users are active, either in my home or elsewhere on the DSL loop, the skipping got worse. 9AM Sunday morning was better than 8PM on a weeknight. Plus I don't understand why it got worse with time. My DSL gives 10mbps down/1mbps up. But the fact that XM's app can stream it flawlessly tells me that the Sonos software just isn't handling the latency very well on my DSL. When I searched to find solutions for skipping, I found 5 posts complaining about it. Not a lot, but not zero. I am 'lucky' I guess.
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10mbps is quite low nowadays, is that peak speed?.
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Yes that's peak speed, I live in a rural area, but that's what we have. The Sonos only needs 500kbps or something like that. It's not the speed that's causing the issue.
I've been using Sons with DSL Internet for the best part of 10 years now with no problems. I have 40Mbps now, but in the past I've had less than 2MBps and it's never stopped it working.

Statistically, hundreds of thousands of other people have also used Sonos with DSL Internet without any problems either.

Of course, if you are using a relatively low speed Internet service for streaming, and if your Internet service is congested (lots of downloading or video streaming by other users) or the ISP is simply rubbish, then this could have a detrimental impact on music streamed to Sonos. But this isn't a Sonos specific issue.

There's no reason to not use Sonos with DSL just because one person is having issues with their local network or ISP.

Cheers,

Keith
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My message: caveat emptor. Good luck to anyone buying a Sonos to use on a DSL system. If you take the chance, save your receipts, all packaging materials, and keep an eye on the calendar so you can send it back and not get stuck with hundreds of dollars of useless equipment. I guess I can sell it on eBay, or re-gift it to some hapless relative. It's too light to be a good boat anchor.

To those who have DSL and your Sonos works, mazel tov.
My message: Good luck to anyone buying a Sonos to use on banjopicker1959's network and DSL connection.

Use it anywhere else, on any other DSL connection and you should be fine.
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Ive had trouble with channel hopping, were you using it in Sonos net, hard wired or your routers wifi ?
So many wifi deviced near our house with 'smart' wifi just continuously hop channel to channel as they try to avoid others. Most of my equipment is now hardwired and the wifi channels are set to fixed and the hopping has stopped.

WOnder if your skipping was due to hopping ?
Add me to the "happy with DSL" group. I've used my Sonos in 2 different homes with DSL over the last 5 or 6 years, and nary a problem.
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I think you should spend your money to upgrade your internet, get rid of DSL and get something decent first. Once you got that, Sonos will work for you. Your problem is you have a lousy internet with data rate that is insufficient. Good luck.
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"Get rid of DSL". Not an option. Not everyone lives in the city. "Data rate that is insufficient". Read my posting further up. Only 400kbps or so is needed for streaming audio on Sonos. My download speed is 10mbps. That's not the problem. The Boost was hardwired into wireless router, and there is no channel hopping on my wireless router.

What no one (including Sonos tech support) has explained, or attempted to explain, is why: 1) the problem got worse with time; and 2) why streaming the same XM channel through the same WiFi, through the same phone, into hard-wired headphones or my brand new wonderfully reliable Bose bluetooth speaker using SiruisXM's mobile app, works perfectly.
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Get rid of DSL ? What are the alternatives, fibre to the home ? Virtually everyone is on DSL, be it adsl or vdsl, it's very rare (at least in the uk) to have anything else.
PSA: It's not DSL.

I say that from a position of expertise:

I'm a Telecommunications Engineer with nearly 30 years experience, including substantial experience working on broadband distribution networks.

I have created designs for, done implementation and testing on, and provided support on major carrier broadband network projects for companies including Cable & Wireless, BT, Eircom, Portugal Telecom, Telekom Malaysia and others. I've studied DSL technology, experimented with it in labs, and seen it deployed in action across millions of users on the projects I've worked on.

At one point I was reporting to the Chairman of the DSL Forum.

I've also been on Sonos forums for more than a decade, and have seen and interacted with tens of thousands of Sonos users over that time.

If there was a fundamental issue or incompatibility with Sonos and DSL I would know about it.

There is not. There's never been a sniff of an issue that there might be and, knowing DSL technology as I do, there's no reason for there to be an issue.

ANYONE CLAIMING THERE IS A COMPATIBILITY ISSUE BETWEEN SONOS AND DSL DOESN'T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT

Cheers,

Keith
Now we've straightened that out, there's lots of reasons why Sonos might not work properly on your setup. None are fundamentally related to using DSL.

For a start, DSL does not have a higher latency than other broadband technologies. In fact, it tends to have a lower latency than some consumer broadband services, like cable modem.

If you are getting high latencies then there is something fundamentally wrong with your service. For reference, I'm getting an average of just over 22ms ping time to Google DNS across my DSL service:

> ping -c10 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=24.8 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=96.4 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=13.3 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=60 time=14.1 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6 ttl=60 time=12.4 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=7 ttl=60 time=14.1 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=8 ttl=60 time=13.3 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=9 ttl=60 time=12.4 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=10 ttl=60 time=12.3 ms

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 received, 0% packet loss, time 9011ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 12.341/22.709/96.447/24.829 ms


I get similar times to www.sonos.com (on Akamai CDN):

> ping -c10 www.sonos.com
PING e7788.b.akamaiedge.net (104.105.51.189) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from a104-105-51-189.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (104.105.51.189): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=12.9 ms
64 bytes from a104-105-51-189.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (104.105.51.189): icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=12.9 ms
64 bytes from a104-105-51-189.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (104.105.51.189): icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=13.0 ms


This, or near this, is what you should be getting.

If you are getting substantially higher than this, then there's something wrong with your DSL. It could, for instance, be congested. Are you, or anyone else in the house, streaming or downloading large files? This could max out the bandwidth which would cause high latency and packet loss which would definitely impact Sonos streaming.

I could also be the router you are using is faulty. There have, in the past, been issues with some FIOS services, not because there is anything inherently wrong with FIOS, but because the routers being supplied by the ISP were defective.

Alternatively, it could be issues with wireless coverage. Do you have issues when streaming from a local source, such as music files saved on a NAS or laptop?

Cheers,

Keith