Move Speaker - Returned, Too Bad

  • 11 March 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 940 views
B
Userlevel 3
Badge +4

First, let me say this, my wife and I love our Sonos setup and have been using it for more than 5 years.  I have 3 Connects, 2 Amps, a stereo pair of Play 3's, a Sonos One, all on a Boost network.  I have a number of solid state and tube amps that the Connects are hooked up to.  We use Alexa and Google assistants as well, and stream Spotify music, all working great.

One of the things I like best is that I can have my local music playing without a PC or my NAS powered on.  My wife loves not having to mess with turning on a PC or NAS.  I do this for my local music files by having them copied to a 256 gig USB drive on my modem/router USB port.  The music file formats are MP3, FLAC, and ALAC.  This setup has worked perfect for years now, with not only my Sonos gear playing from it, but also my other music playing software, as well as my smart Roku TV.  I have had multiple different DSL modems supplied by my ISP over the years, and this setup has worked great on all of them.

The Move speaker cannot play these music files over my WiFi network without cutting out, hanging and starting again, or just stopping completely.

I spent 4 sessions on the phone with support over 2 weeks, the last one just the other day, with the nice support lady remote accessing my Win10 laptop and Sonos controller and trying everything to sort it out for well over an hour.  It plays great streaming Spotify, but would not play local files properly.  In the end, she said there was something wrong with the Move accessing the music files this way and couldn't resolve it at this time.

If all my Sonos gear and all my other software and hardware can play these files, I would say the Move has a bug.

So, before my 45 day trial period ran out, I had to return the speaker to Sonos.  I was told I will be credited my purchase price and given a 30% discount for another future purchase.

I now have a bricked Connect that I recycled in the upgrade program.

I really liked the Move speaker for it's sound and features, and looked forward to a summer on the deck with it.  In the end, this was a very frustrating experience. 

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3 replies

Ryan S
Userlevel 7
Badge +26

Hi bikenut, I’m sorry to hear about the trouble.

 

It’s unlikely that this is a hardware or software issue with your Move, and I know it doesn’t help, but I can assure you that Moves do play local library tracks, including FLAC and ALAC files just fine over the wireless.

I took a glance over your diagnostics and it looks like you have a Boost running the SonosNet network. One big difference between the Move and all other Sonos devices is that the Move doesn’t connect to SonosNet and only connects with your home wireless network. So while all of your other Sonos players are going to the Boost over our wireless and then wired to the network, and then out to your wired USB audio source, the Move has to do so wirelessly, and I’m seeing some failing connections there.

I’d be curious if as a test you had put your Sonos system on wireless only and unplugged the Boost temporarily from power. If you had done so, I’d expect any of your other Sonos speakers to have the same issues (at least if they were physically in similar places to where the Move had been). 

If you have a mesh network of wireless devices, it’s possible the Move was connected one with a poor connection, or perhaps the Move was just too far from the router. I know sometimes it looks like everything else is fine, but usually this isn’t the case. Some services can buffer more, and have more of a tolerance for issues.

In any case, thanks for sharing your feedback and story with the community, and if you do need any help with your system, please do feel free to contact us again. I’ll be looking into what happened with your previous support case on our end just to be sure.

Mark good posts by pressing the like button, and select the best answer on questions you've asked to help others find solutions.
B
Userlevel 3
Badge +4

During testing by myself and then with online support we removed the Boost and ran all Sonos speakers on my 2.4 WiFi network.   All Sonos speakers and other devices worked fine with no music playing problems.  The Move, connected at 5 gig,  cut out for some time, or stopped.

The WiFi was configured for only 2.4 so that the Move was only on the 2.4 band, and it did the same thing.

Ping with trace showed an average response time of 1ms in either setup.

The modem/router is configured with UPnP and DLNA.  The 256 gig USB stick is with NTFS formatting.
The DSL modem is a Sagecom 3000 (model # might be unique for Canada).

It seems to me that the Move has a problem accessing network mounted USB storage that all my other devices, including my existing Sonos speakers has no problem with.

If anyone has a Move working properly with a similar setup accessing USB network mounted storage I would like to hear from you. 

 

 

B
Userlevel 3
Badge +4

Just thought it was time for an update on this posting.  The news is good, for me and for Sonos and how I was dealt with.  If you’ve read any of the above, you can see that I returned my Move speaker, for basically not being able to play music from a network mounted USB drive, kept dropping the connection or hanging.

Sonos to their credit gave me a big credit for the returned speaker and the bricking of one of my connects.

After returning the Move, I decided for no particular reason to move the USB stored music to a Vero 4K (basically a raspberry pie).  It has a much faster processor than the DSL modem that the USB drive was always connected to.  I noticed the music album art loaded much faster.  The Vero 4K is connected on a gig Ethernet connection to the network.

So I took another shot at the Move speaker.  Well, with this setup the Move works perfect.  I have no technical explanation to why it works now and not before.  The music always streamed great before when accessing the DSL modem USB drive.  My setup always uses a Boost separate WiFi network for all the Sonos speakers and connects and amps I have.

After quite some time with the Move I can say that I enjoy it a lot.  Good sound and support for both WiFi and Bluetooth, and all the Sonos features, it offers a lot for a portable speaker.  I have remained on S1 because half of my units are older models.  S1 has been working fine to date.

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