Sonos - if I knew then what I know now...
Discussion
... I would not have bothered.
It seems that reliability of a Sonos setup is inversely proportional to number of components. With seven zones across ten components in our setup the ad hoc zone dropping and unprompted volume changes has made the idea of having the same music playing across multiple zones a complete disappointment. If you want one or two zones, then it seems to work, but for two rooms there are better options. I am four zones short of what I really want and the system is falling apart. The trouble is that you have to sink a fair bit of £££ before you discover these limitations !!!
Grrrrrrrrr
It seems that reliability of a Sonos setup is inversely proportional to number of components. With seven zones across ten components in our setup the ad hoc zone dropping and unprompted volume changes has made the idea of having the same music playing across multiple zones a complete disappointment. If you want one or two zones, then it seems to work, but for two rooms there are better options. I am four zones short of what I really want and the system is falling apart. The trouble is that you have to sink a fair bit of £££ before you discover these limitations !!!
Grrrrrrrrr
You shouldn't be having those sort of problems at all.
I have numerous clients with Sonos installs using far more zones and hardware than that without issue.
Have you spoken to Sonos support about it?
Where are you in the uk, there are several Sonos dealers here and I am sure we would help out if local.
V.
I have numerous clients with Sonos installs using far more zones and hardware than that without issue.
Have you spoken to Sonos support about it?
Where are you in the uk, there are several Sonos dealers here and I am sure we would help out if local.
V.
AREA said:
... I would not have bothered.
It seems that reliability of a Sonos setup is inversely proportional to number of components. With seven zones across ten components in our setup the ad hoc zone dropping and unprompted volume changes has made the idea of having the same music playing across multiple zones a complete disappointment. If you want one or two zones, then it seems to work, but for two rooms there are better options. I am four zones short of what I really want and the system is falling apart. The trouble is that you have to sink a fair bit of £££ before you discover these limitations !!!
Grrrrrrrrr
My guess is you're having network issues which could possibly be resolved. It seems that reliability of a Sonos setup is inversely proportional to number of components. With seven zones across ten components in our setup the ad hoc zone dropping and unprompted volume changes has made the idea of having the same music playing across multiple zones a complete disappointment. If you want one or two zones, then it seems to work, but for two rooms there are better options. I am four zones short of what I really want and the system is falling apart. The trouble is that you have to sink a fair bit of £££ before you discover these limitations !!!
Grrrrrrrrr
We recently spent a day trouble shooting a Network issue at a clients which appeared to be stopping Sonos from connecting to Spotify, well, that and many over Internet issues. After hours of trial and error we eventually discovered it was a faulty Sonos Zoneplayer that was bringing down sections of the network, as soon as we removed it problem solved.
As VEX notes you shouldn't be having these problems and we also have many 15-20 room Sonos systems installed and have had zero client call backs, so nothing wrong with the system. As noted above a faulty component can reek havock. You need to contact a specilist and get them to pop over, probably simple but if complex they'll get to the bottom of it quickly if any good.
First place I would start is to factory reset every component and rebuild the mesh.
As VEX notes you shouldn't be having these problems and we also have many 15-20 room Sonos systems installed and have had zero client call backs, so nothing wrong with the system. As noted above a faulty component can reek havock. You need to contact a specilist and get them to pop over, probably simple but if complex they'll get to the bottom of it quickly if any good.
First place I would start is to factory reset every component and rebuild the mesh.
just bought 2 x sonos 5 and 1 x sonos 3 and have been blown away by the ease of setup and configurability good quality components with more than enough sound quality for my untrained ears!
just ordered a QNAP 419 NAS to rip all my CD's to so have begun this process this afternoon to my laptop which I'll copy over Monday night to the NAS all in all a fantastic piece of kit!
and the wife can play the radio without any intervention from myself, now thats high praise!
just ordered a QNAP 419 NAS to rip all my CD's to so have begun this process this afternoon to my laptop which I'll copy over Monday night to the NAS all in all a fantastic piece of kit!
and the wife can play the radio without any intervention from myself, now thats high praise!
We had issues with dropouts and bandwidth with playing flac via the NAS "Old laptop"
Switched from wireless to powerpoint networking and now we're running 4 zones issue free.
Unless you've got loads of wireless access points in your place (we've got 3) I think trying to do it all via a single HUB would be a bit hit and miss, certainly was for me.
T1b
Switched from wireless to powerpoint networking and now we're running 4 zones issue free.
Unless you've got loads of wireless access points in your place (we've got 3) I think trying to do it all via a single HUB would be a bit hit and miss, certainly was for me.
T1b
VEX said:
Sorry T1b but SONOS doesn't use existing wireless networks for itself it builds its own.
Now if your source equipment was also wireless I could see that causing a problem.
V.
I had an issue that my Sonos and wireless networked ended up on the same channel. Sonos was set to 6 and the for some reason my router was on Auto. This actually stopped the Sonos app on my tablet from connecting to the networked but everything else worked fine. I could start the Sonos from the wired PC and the tablet connected to the netork. Changing the wireless to Channel 2 fixed everything.Now if your source equipment was also wireless I could see that causing a problem.
V.
Update: Sonos email support put me in touch with phone based tech support. I spent 45 mins on the phone with a very helpful chap working through the issues. This was made all the more interesting in that I was not prepared to install remote access/control software on my mac (another topic but companies are going to have to think their support models through = why would you allow anyone or anything in to your machines???). Whilst this slowed the process down a tad, it did allow me to get a view and understanding of how well you can access and administer the Sonos environment.
Summary, after a thorough vet and some sequential reboots, is:
- zones are dropping out far less frequently
- although I've already already Ethernetted (!?!) two of the zones, I am going to have to hard wire a third which does start to defeat the object a tad. Hopefully that will resolve the remaining zone drops
- I am hitting limitations vv. playing CDs around the system (I have a Beosound 3200 that Line Ins to one of the Play:5s = streaming FM radio/HDD/video sound from Beovision is ok, but playing CDs causes zones to temporarily drop even in compressed mode). Seems around 6-7 simultaneously grouped zones may be the limit for this style of setup.
Conclusion:
I like Sonos a lot. Their commitment to support is very strong. Having now gained an insight into how it all works and the thought that has gone into it, I like it even more. It fits nicely into a B&O/Apple environment and design ethos, integrates very sweetly into my iTunes library and plays "what's on their iPhone" for the kids. For what you can do, it's not actually bad value for money (even the ££ Sub that I have cranked right down rounds out the sound very nicely).
However, it's not quite as wirelessly open ended as I had hoped and I'm concerned that from time to time I will have to go back into techy mode to keep it all running sweetly. My wife appreciates the lack of cable running disruption compared to going Masterlink but she hates 'faffing around' controlling it over the iPhone ("can't I just go and put a CD on and control it with the remote?"). Like most things you end up making a compromise: I went down the Sonos route to avoid a lot of disruption running Masterlink; if I'm running Ethernet to Sonos then that disruption is going to happen anyway. I'll hardwire in the zone advised, then add in another two wirelessly. Then either I'm happy or there's an eBay bundle coming up.
Summary, after a thorough vet and some sequential reboots, is:
- zones are dropping out far less frequently
- although I've already already Ethernetted (!?!) two of the zones, I am going to have to hard wire a third which does start to defeat the object a tad. Hopefully that will resolve the remaining zone drops
- I am hitting limitations vv. playing CDs around the system (I have a Beosound 3200 that Line Ins to one of the Play:5s = streaming FM radio/HDD/video sound from Beovision is ok, but playing CDs causes zones to temporarily drop even in compressed mode). Seems around 6-7 simultaneously grouped zones may be the limit for this style of setup.
Conclusion:
I like Sonos a lot. Their commitment to support is very strong. Having now gained an insight into how it all works and the thought that has gone into it, I like it even more. It fits nicely into a B&O/Apple environment and design ethos, integrates very sweetly into my iTunes library and plays "what's on their iPhone" for the kids. For what you can do, it's not actually bad value for money (even the ££ Sub that I have cranked right down rounds out the sound very nicely).
However, it's not quite as wirelessly open ended as I had hoped and I'm concerned that from time to time I will have to go back into techy mode to keep it all running sweetly. My wife appreciates the lack of cable running disruption compared to going Masterlink but she hates 'faffing around' controlling it over the iPhone ("can't I just go and put a CD on and control it with the remote?"). Like most things you end up making a compromise: I went down the Sonos route to avoid a lot of disruption running Masterlink; if I'm running Ethernet to Sonos then that disruption is going to happen anyway. I'll hardwire in the zone advised, then add in another two wirelessly. Then either I'm happy or there's an eBay bundle coming up.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/10/sonos-play-1-fc...
any of our resident dealers heard anything about the Play:1 ?
if these are bookshelf size then i can find an excuse to buy more sonos!
any of our resident dealers heard anything about the Play:1 ?
if these are bookshelf size then i can find an excuse to buy more sonos!
As much as I personally detest power line networking why haven't Sonos implemented this in their units rather than sticking with a wireless connection. What is interesting is this is a dual band wifi unit i.e. 2.4GHz and 5GHz, they have probably gone down this route as the 2.4GHz band is now so congested it is degrading their network performance and people are complaining about it, I suspect some of the OP problems are due to wifi interference.
No doubt as more people use the 5GHz band it's fate will be the same as 2.4GHz, stick with a cable as it just works and doesn't suffer with this sort of interference.
Finally, why does everyone seem to think listening in mono from a sonos play is acceptable these days, same goes for low bit rate mp3? as it sounds terrible however the marketing people gloss it up.
No doubt as more people use the 5GHz band it's fate will be the same as 2.4GHz, stick with a cable as it just works and doesn't suffer with this sort of interference.
Finally, why does everyone seem to think listening in mono from a sonos play is acceptable these days, same goes for low bit rate mp3? as it sounds terrible however the marketing people gloss it up.
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