Question

Play:5 speakers part group setting keep dropping

  • 24 August 2014
  • 7 replies
  • 1004 views

Play:5 speakers part group setting keep dropping from the group. I have to remove them from group and re-add them to get them to play again. How I can prevent this from happening? Is this a wifi strength issue?

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7 replies

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Hello John,

Grouping/dropping issues could be due to interference or wireless setting conflicts. Have you tried to select another player and start the group off of that speaker? For example: select the kitchen unit (instead of the Office) and build off of the kitchen? 

Take a look at this link, it has possible causes and potential solutions to help with this. Sometimes changes as minor as making sure to separate your wireless router and the Sonos devices by three or more feet, or as far as the cable allows, will improve audio streaming.

Please also submit a diagnostic after these tests and after you experience an issue. I'll be happy to take a look. Please reply back with your number here. 
Update: maddeningly enough I can get the speaker that dropped out to play something DIFFERENT but I can't get them to regroup. It doesn't matter which room I start with to make a group out of, when I try to group them, the controller looks busy for a moment (I get the loading icon) but then they don't group. I am using a Netgear range extender and I am a part of the beta program.
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The fix is up to Sonos ... there is no technical reason that the speakers cannot regroup as soon as they get the wifi signal back.
My bit for the world community. Have had a lot of help from other on the net before, never been able to pay them back:
I had a lot of issues with not just SONOS speakers dropping off, but laptops, tablets, mobile phones. Seemed to be random, bizarre. Much research and reflection, nothing. Then I stumbled on the answer for me and I suspect this is the common to many others too: connected to the router admin URL, was looking among all the options for clues. Mine's a NetGear, but all routers will have a similar admin page accessible using a web browser.
Under "Advanced" find the section "LAN IP" and select it to bring up a new page
On new page you'll see two fields:
"Starting IP address" default value 192.168.0.10
"Ending IP address" deafault value 192.168.0.19
Further down there is a list of all devices connected "DHCP client lease info"
So this meant I had 10 IP addresses available. Made quick inventory of Kit in the house requiring an IP address: mobiles, laptops, tablets, SONOS speakers & other SONOS bits, Microsoft WIDI adapter gadget things. Total 13 all competing for the same 10 IP addresses. Eurika! Changed the "Ending IP Address" from 19 to 29 and APPLY.
Reboot the laptop and the SONOS speaker which currently seem to have dropped off voila. Prob solved, big smug smile and announce to the wife Im a expletive genius.
NOT THE END OF THE STORY! Months later it happens again. Why? NetGear router is rebooted to factory defaults whenever the cable company have an update for it. So reset the router password again (v. important to do this guys & gals to stop hackers) and reset the no. of IP addresses again.
Holy cow!

I thought the standard for this kind of thing was the full 255 IP range, not just 10. That's frightening, and odd. Especially these days, in the "internet of things" where it's quite likely that there would be a plethora of devices attached. I think in my house I have about 30 to 35 devices connected, when I'm at home. But I took many other's folks around here advice, and assigned almost all of them fixed IP addresses, so that I don't run into this kind of thing frequently.
There are a couple parts to this question.

- Network range - this is typically the 256 addresses you mention, but it is controlled by the network mask. A mask of 255.255.255.0 allows a range of addresses from 0 -255 with 254 usable nodes. 255.255.255.240 has 14 nodes.

- DHCP range - typically part of this rage is set aside for dynamic addresses, and your DHCP server assigns these to nodes requesting addresses. addresses outside this range are used for devices that you wish to have at a static address (not changing), this could include firewalls, servers, etc.

- Wireless range - Some routers will hand our dynamic addresses from the DHCP range, sometimes, the wireless range is limited to a further subset of the network range.

All of this is determined by your network infrastructure and settings.
The freaking speakers cast $500 each. I should not be on a community forum trying to debug this. I want my money back.