I use Roon with Bluesound Node 2i and a fast ethernet to my living room Anthem receiver. This is my optimum sound.
I also have a few Sonos 1’s in dining room and family room which connect through Roon via Airplay 1.
When playing ONLY through the Anthem, all is well, no dropouts.
Switching to grouped Anthem plus the 3 Sonos 1’s through Airplay and I get dropouts ONLY on the Anthem intemittently - sometimes a few times per minute, sometimes with no dropouts for 1/2 hour, but they just keep coming and it’s terrible.
I would truly appreciate a solution to this problem!
Thank you,
Steve
I don’t have any AirPlay devices other than my Sonos. I’ve tried Sonos native and Sonos over Airplay. Never had any issues over native, but lots of drop outs and sync failures over airplay. I gave up on airplay and just don’t sync my Sonos zones with anything other than each other. Realize that doesn’t help you. But hopefully that may shed some light.
Hey, @steve_morton we’re sorry to hear that you’ve been experiencing dropouts on the Anthem receiver when it’s grouped with other devices.
So we’re better equipped to assist, could you please share more about your setup details? I also have some additional questions for you, if you could answer those as well, please.
Roon Core Machine
Include your operating system and machine info (Model, CPU, RAM), as well as how it’s connected to your network
Networking Gear & Setup Details
Your network gear (model of routers/switches) and if on WiFi/Ethernet
Remotes in use
Include the model, manufacturer of your device, how it’s connected, etc.
Do you notice that this occurs when you’re playing TIDAL/Qobuz/local tracks?
Can you confirm that all audio devices are on the latest firmware update?
This may or may not be helpful, but I found that putting my Sonos speakers on a “wired” system solved most of my Airplay dropouts. If you have at least one of your speakers hard-wired to your router, this places all of your Sonos devices on their own separate network. It may or may not solve your issue, but it might be worth a try.
“Connecting one of your Sonos products to your router with an Ethernet cable will put your system into a wired setup. In a wired setup, the wired product will broadcast a dedicated wireless network that your Sonos products will use.”
Hello Ashley,
A Netgear CM600 modem, ISP (800 GB download, 40 upload through XFinity), with an eero mesh router system with mostly wired backhaul. There are 2 TP-link gigabit switches. The roon core and bluesound node are both wired into the wired portion of the network.
The Roon core machine is a 2019 Mac mini with i5 processor and 8GB RAM running the latest build of Mac OS.
The endpoint device is a Bluesound Node 2i. The Anthem (my Anthem 540 receiver) is basically irrelevant here.
The networking gear is the netgear cable modem and the router is the latest generation Eero mesh system. The switches are TP-link UNMANAGED gigabit Ethernet switches. There is wired backhaul between two of the Eero devices.
The remotes in use are an ASUS laptop running Windows 10 and your android phone (Galaxy S20 Ultra).Everything is running latest firmware and software.
The dropouts ONLY happen on the Node 2i when using Roon. They don’t happen when using the BluOS app.
I appreciate this - this dropout problem could not be more annoying. Thank you, Steve
Thanks so much for your interesting suggestion. I did manage to make my Sonos S1’s (3 of them) “wired” by wiring one of them. And this Sonos article is helpful for determining if you’ve accomplished “wired” Sonos Support .
Unfortunately I am still getting frequent dropouts with my Airplay group. If there is anything you did with Roon after you created your Sonos wired network that I might try . . . ?
Why are you running Sonos over airplay again? Only so you can group with the anthem? I’ll say there’s a lot of synchronization of real time streams going on… Roon is synchronizing the anthem with the Airplay zones, and Sonos is synchronizing the multiple 5’s. I can imagine why it would be fragile - and I know that’s not very helpful so apologies.
Me, I’d just accept that streaming over Sonos native is better and accept that I can’t group those zones. But this may be the one thing you’re trying to achieve.
I doubt this will solve your issue, but it’s a good idea to set your SonosNet to a different channel than your router:
“Changing the wireless channel is a troubleshooting step in reducing wireless interference. If you’re changing the wireless channel to solve a problem, try using your Sonos system on each of the three channels to find which one performs best. We recommend using Sonos on a wireless channel that is not being used by your wireless router.”
The only other thing I would have suggested is to hardwire your core to your router, but you’ve already done that. The specs on your network look great, so I’d be looking at the Node 2i to see if there are any changes you could make there to solve your issue.
@steve_morton thanks so much for sharing that information with us. I also appreciate everyone’s input!
At this point, we would like to review your logs to take a deeper look into this. Can you please reproduce the issue and let the dropout occur once more, make sure to note the time and date that this occurs. You can then use the directions found here and send over a set of logs to our File Uploader.
Please let me know once you have uploaded the logs, along with the timestamp, so that we can take a look. Thanks!
Yes Ashley, I will do that ASAP. I do need the help of my friend here. I’ll let you know once I have uploaded along with the timestamp.
thank you,
Steve
Hello Ashley,
I uploaded the zip file of the logs (hopefully successfully - my “expert” friend made that happen).
I can tell you that there were dropouts at 5:02 p.m. CST, 5:12, and several in close sequence at 5:25-26.
I did not listen for others after that time, and so there may have been more (actually before, during and after 5:02 to 5:26).
Thank you!
Steve
Good morning Johnny,
I’m somewhat of a newbie, but I think I understand your point here. I do remain hopeful that Roon support can find a solution so I can group my outstanding living room sound with Sonos (multiple 1’s) in my other 2 rooms.
I’m hoping to share that solution or whatever the end result of my quest will be.
Thanks so much for your insights!
Steve
No worries. The complexity of SonosNet vs SonosNet wired vs. Sonos over WiFi is really hard, and I’m not sure I understand it all even if I’ve stumbled through a lot of it. What Sonos doesn’t want to say out loud, but which is nonetheless true, is that Sonos is really an amazing networking product built for streaming, that just happens to have speakers built in. Running them over AirPlay works, but isn’t really taking advantage of their networking capabilities, and inserts another layer of trying to do something complex.
I’m not sure that I’ll be the right person to help, but never worry here about a “stupid question”. Though there’s a lot of “techy” folks (many more so than I), if your intent is good and you don’t act like a jerk, you’ll usually find someone who’ll be very happy to help out.
Hi Steve
I wrote this article a while back on Sonos with regards to setting up solid Sonos systems as it can require a few things. Sonosnet is generally key - as mentioned.
Hope it helps.
Sean I generally understand (I’m a newbie) and enjoyed reading your paper. I can see that it digs into important issues and will be sharing it with my Roon & tech savvy friend who helps me with these things.
Very cool that you dug so deep and spelled out what you learned - thanks so much for sharing this with me!
I’ll post anything I learn on these issues, hopefully when I solve my problem!
Best regards, Steve
Hi @steve_morton, we can’t thank you enough for your patience! The QA team was able to take a look at the logs and they’re hoping that you can test out some scenarios and let us know how each test goes so that we can gather more information about the issue you’ve been experiencing.
Important: Before completing the following, please reboot your Core device.
Group 1 Sonos device + Node 2i via Airplay — try to reproduce the issue
Group 2 Sonos devices together via Airplay — try to reproduce the issue
Group 2 Sonos devices without using Airplay protocol see if dropouts still occur
What happens in case that the Sonos zone is not grouped with anything and is playing in Roon when using Airplay
Repeat step 4 but do not use Airplay
Would you be able to try this out and let us know if the issue presents itself in any of these steps?
