Airplay Speakers Missing and Playback Issues in Roon with Sonos (ref#46YA29)

Support
1

Hi! What’s not quite right with Roon?

· None of the above quite fits

None of the above quite fits

· None of these quite match

Tell us what's going on

· I am using 3 Sonos speakers listening to Roon. My airplay speakers keep disappearing from my audio output. It keeps showing my Sonos speakers wanting to connecting via sonos streaming. Which will not work. Yesterday it showed my speakers connecting via apple air play. Today they are not even showing up in my audio settings. Another problem with Roon, when it was connected to the speakers via airplay, the music would stop. Sometimes it would restart if I changed it to another song. But now it will not play a whole song when I am connected viaairplay. I think they are both connected to the same problem. I have restarted Roon, my computer, and my iPhone 16 pro max. Still nothing. I am using a MacBook Pro, OS 26.5.2. I'm using Roon Server version 2.71, I'm connecting via a Quantum Fiber modem. My computer is in the same room as the modem. I do not use a vpn.

Tell us about your home network

· Quantum Fiber, my computer is in the same room

2

In my experience Roon Airplay to Sonos is not reliable. I tried to use it for a time, in large part to get transport controls (play/next/etc) initiated from the Sonos end to work. It was however too flaky, with tracks sometimes not advancing and/or stopping mid-track. I went back to Sonos Streaming, which usually works fine.

3

After upgrading to OS 26.6.1 Roon does not see my Sonos speakers at all.

Screenshot 2026-08-09 at 10.38.07 AM
Screenshot 2026-08-09 at 10.38.07 AM2758×2420 290 KB

4

I’m not a Mac user, so can’t help with any networking issues peculiar to Mac. FWIW the Roon core discovers devices for Sonos Streaming using UPnP (enabled by default in Sonos) and AirPlay typically requires mDNS / Bonjour.

Maybe a comprehensive reboot of all devices?

5

How do I connect the Sonos speakers to Roon? Right now It doesn’t see them. They are turned on and connected to my wifi.

6

Make sure Sonos UPnP is still ON (see here). Restart the Roon server. If the speakers don’t appear in Settings>Audio there’ll be some other network problem blocking the discovery, possibly a local Mac issue if that’s where the server resides.

7

It’s on. Still can’t see the speakers.

Are you a community member or an official Sonos Tech??

Steve

8

He would be a community member. Roon support works mon to fri. And if a user was official Sonis suppprt, that would be listed as required in their user flair information.

Just like you see my moderator flair under my username.

9

So, I have to wait until Monday for a Roon Tech?

Thx

10

A mere community member here. But I have been rather heavily involved with Sonos for more years than I care to contemplate…

11

Hello @Steve_Schneider

We have your logs and we can tell you what happened. Thanks for waiting, and thanks to Giles_W, whose point about the two discovery methods pointed in the right direction.

All three of your Sonos speakers were being found normally until 9:36 AM on August 9. Your Mac then restarted into macOS 26.6.1 at around 10:00 AM, and from that moment there is not a single trace of any of them in 21 hours of logs. Not one.

The reason is on the Mac, not on the Sonos side and not on your network. When Roon tries to search the local network now, the operating system refuses to send the request at all. The error is “no route to host”, which means the packet never leaves the machine. Before the update, the same search succeeded every time. The only audio destination Roon can still reach is your MacBook itself, which is exactly what you would expect if it has lost permission to talk to the local network.

This also explains why both problems appeared together. Sonos streaming and AirPlay use two different discovery methods, and both of them need local network access. They stopped at the same instant because the thing they share was taken away.

Please check this first:

Open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Local Network. Look for Roon in the list and make sure it is switched on. macOS resets this permission during major system updates, and if the prompt appeared while you were away from the machine it will now be off. If Roon is listed but enabled, please switch it off, switch it back on, restart the PC, then quit Roon completely and reopen it.

While you are there, please also open System Settings, then Network, then Firewall, and tell us whether it is on or off.

On your second problem, the music stopping partway through a song: that one is real and separate, and you were right that it looked related. Your logs show the Sonos speakers themselves ending the AirPlay session and telling Roon to stop. It happened 102 times, spread evenly across all three speakers, so no single unit is at fault. One example: on August 8 a track stopped 54 seconds in, with the buffer full, because your Kitchen speaker dropped the connection and that stopped the whole group.

Please note the exact timestamp and track name next time the issue occurs and provide it here.

12

Thank you for the info. I 'm not at home. I will follow your instructions later today or tomorrow.

Steve

13

Vadim,

I did what you said. Firewall is on, Roon is allowed to access my MAC book pro. Does the Roon restart automatically when I restart my MAC? I close out the Roon app then restart the MAC.

Anyway, I did this and I still cant see the speakers in the Roon app. When the MAC goes to sleep when I close the lid does it affect how the Roon Server in my MAC operates??

So, my friend who introduced me to Roon, suggests that I just buy the Roon Nucleus One server.

If I do, can I just plug in my music files that are on a SSD drive? Or do I need to buy a server with internal storage?

Thx, Steve

14

Do you have any more help for me?

Steve

15

Vadim,

Can you give me anymore help?

Steve

16

Please someone answer my last question

18

Hi @Steve_Schneider,

Please accept our apologies for the lapse.

First off, you might find it helpful to review some of Roon’s architecture in the resources below:

Roon itself, on a Mac, actually consists of multiple components. These include Roon Server, which functions as the brain of your system and communicates with cloud servers and streaming services; Roon, the GUI, which serves as the visual control layer; and, alongside and beneath both of these, RAATServer, the audio server, which interacts with your physical and networked audio endpoints over the local network.

To communicate with your Mac’s audio outputs (like headphones and speakers), RoonServer/RAATServer rely on the loopback network interface on the laptop. This gets deactivated when the machine sleeps, rendering all your local Zones undiscoverable until you refresh network discovery on the Settings → Audio page by hitting the “refresh” arrow. Restarting Roon will also refresh network discovery.

Your Sonos Zones also lose communication with RoonServer/RAATServer when the computer sleeps (with the lid closed), because those communicate through the regular network interface (either ethernet or WiFi). In the Sonos case, RoonServer/RAATServer rely on the network to reliably carry UPnP and multicast traffic. This stops happening when the laptop goes to sleep, and the connection doesn’t always re-establish properly when it wakes.

A Roon Nucleus One is always on, so you’d avoid the problem of your network interfaces (loopback and the main network interface) going down and back up.

That said, you can also install Amphetamine or another third-party tool on your Mac that keeps the operating system from sleeping:

Roon is also working on some improvements behind the scenes to our AirPlay 2 configuration. This may make your Sonos AirPlay 2 Zones (when you use AirPlay with these Sonos speakers) more reliable long-term with Roon, regardless of whether you have a Nucleus One or a Mac. These changes will be released at some point in the future.

Please let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll watch for your reply.