M1 Mac Mini
Wired Ethernet for Core
Wi-Fi for Sonos
BT Wholehome mesh Wi-Fi
Vodafone router with Wi-Fi off
Sonos speakers on Wi-Fi
30k
W
Every time I select something new to play or skip a track playback stutters/drops 3 or 4 times during the first 30 seconds of each track. Then it settles down until the next track where it happens again.
Hi
Thanks for your reply.
I have 3 and 2 are connected vi Ethernet. Only the one in the bedroom is connected via Wi-Fi and I discovered this morning that the Sonos in the bedroom works fine. The difference being that it is on the Sonos S1 setup. The rest of the house is on Sonos S2. I really don’t think it’s the BT Mesh Wi-Fi that’s causing a problem. Sonos works fine without Roon without a single drop at any point that I can remember in the past few years.
The roon core os connected to the Vodafone router via 2 Ethernet switches (no Wi-Fi).
I am on Sonos S2 version 15.3
Here’s how it goes every single time I play anything via Roon…
The track playback on Roon doesn’t pause but the sound drops on Sonos intermittently over the first 30 seconds or so
The same issue with sound dropping at similar intervals repeats for every subsequent track.
To be clear, this is only happening with Sonos speakers on Sonos S2. My speakers on Sonos S1 work fine. The speakers on Sonos S2 work flawlessly when using the Sonos app. Every other audio device I have seem to work with Roon without playback issues (Bluesound, InnuOS, iOS devices, Roon ARC etc.).
Does anybody know how to raise a support ticket with Roon to get some technical assistance?
I am not very impressed with the support from Roon. It’s been 2 days and no response from Roon whatsoever. Sonos is an audio device they say should work with the Roon system. Roon is a fairly expensive service not to work without any support. I remember support being a problem when I first tried it and it doesn’t seem to have improved.
Thanks for the info, but this is supposed to work with a fairly standard setup. I have an M1 Mac mini setup with Roon as a core. There should be no problems. My Sonos hardware isn’t exactly brand new but fairy upto date.
This is the Roon Marketing message from their own website to tempt customers to pay for the service. I haven’t seen any evidence of Sonos working properly with Roon or getting a response from any technical support.
Just came to add the same advice, but you are on itđź‘Ť
Hi @Robert_Borley,
Thank you for your patience. The team has investigated automated diagnostic reports sent to our servers from your Core. A deep dive into logs revealed the following:
Additionally, try the above suggestion from other helpful users regarding bit rate (change from 24 to 16 in the Sonos endpoints themselves).
In general, please try the following network best practices with Roon, if you haven’t already.
Do you have any dropouts with Airplay using these S2 endpoints? If so, that indicates that your mesh network might contain multiple subnets or have problems with multicast. Please let us know.
SonosNet relies on UPnP, a network device discovery protocol. If you have UPnP options available in your router setup page, make sure they are turned on. There were UPnP errors throughout logs from your Core.
Enable multicast and IGMP snooping in your routers or any managed switches and access points.
Verify that your access points are on the same subnet.
The Sonos 15.2 and 15.3 updates introduced a WiFi diagnostic tool. It might be worth entering the Sonos app to see if there is additional information regarding network health available.
Bear in mind that overall network stability is far more important consideration with hifi streaming in Roon than network speed (up or down). SonosNET is build on top of the local network, so if there are any inconsistencies or blockages in the network infrastructure, lossless playback of high-quality streaming content from Tidal/Qobuz in Roon will usually be the first situation to reveal them.
I am sorry, I have no idea what any of this means.
I don’t use Windows for my Roon Core or Roon Rock (I believe that is a Lynx build?). I like it on my Mac Mini M1 for a host of reasons.
I have no idea how to do this, or if it’s something that needs to be done in the Sonos settings or Roon settings.
No idea how to find this information.
Robert in Roon navigate to Settings->Audio and click on the Setup Icon for anyone you want
Click on the Cog and choose Device Setup
Click on Show Advanced and change Mac bits per sample to 16
Press Save and then give it a moment and play something new.
I have all my older Sonos set this way and I almost never drop a beat including when I play to multiple rooms of stereo connected Sonos devices at the same time
I hope that this makes sense
EDIT : I am one of those that discovered during previous Sonos/Roon problems only having one Sonos device connected to Ethernet (ideally router or close by switch) can be a real reliability win, especially when you have a fairly large Mesh network, that Sonos tries to confuse at times by creating its own mini mesh network inside of it.
Thank you Michael
I have done this now. However, the problem still persists.
I am slowly working through the troubleshooting steps provided by Roon Support. There is a lot there to contend with. Roon still isn’t a simple turnkey audio product as the marketing suggests. Although perhaps the hardware version would be.
I still don’t get why the only problem I have with Sonos is Roon. Everything else works fine (actually, entirely faultless).
Robert, Sonos keep making changes as they want to keep things working well for Sonos and ignore people like Roon who are not using their direct API.
As someone that has been using Roon with Sonos for more than 4 years it is a tail of ups and downs.
Sonos builds its own wireless mesh and that was the cause of many early issues for me and I rebuilt my network several times to accommodate this (hence my recommendation for only having one wired).
My two main listening rooms are now free of Sonos gear and I sold my Sonos Amp and bought a Roon ready Amp, but I still have 5 rooms of Sonos gear that I use multiple times a week without issue.
It needed me to change my setup to get here and the Roon recommendations are good, the question is whether you want to go down this route or not.
Roon is a heavy piece of networking technology, it really isn’t the a simple turnkey product as it needs the network to back it up
Hi, I have worked through all the troubleshooting so far. The problem still persists, but here are the answers to your questions…
I have done this. The problem still persists.
I do not use Tidal or Qobuz with Roon (because Apple Music isn’t supported by Roon yet). So, local content only.
No, never.
General best practices…
No, never. AirPlay is working perfectly with S2 endpoints. The problem Sonos Zone doesn’t support AirPlay, but works great when grouped with a device streaming from AirPlay.
I cannot find any UPnP options in my Router Settings.
I have absolutely no Idea what this means or how I would enable them.
I have no idea what this means.
I can find any options in Sonos with regards to Network Health. I also have no error messages.
Although, if this helps, these are the Sonos speakers for this zone. There are 4 in one zone, but they aren’t grouped in Sonos as they show as one zone.
I did that and it works perfectly. No drops with Roon whatsoever. Until the ethernet cable is unplugged again. But, this is impractical and not a long term solution. Particularly as my favourite thing about Sonos and the surround sound setup I have is that it is wireless.
This Sonos zone works perfectly with all kinds of streaming options, from within or external to Sonos app including; Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect and AirPlay but not Roon. Maybe it’s because all the others are lossy (apart from AirPlay).
I tried this, it made no difference. Maybe a bit worse if anything but that could be coincidence.
Yes, I have ethernet running to my Smart TV, Apple TVs, Sonos Port, SkyQ, Bluesound Node, MacMini (Roon Core), NAS, InnuOS Zen and others. However, not Sonos. The whole point in Sonos (for me) is that they work great wirelessly (excl. Roon). Ascetically, they look great wherever they are, without requiring wires. Roon would ruin that if it required hard wiring speakers.
Thanks for the encouragement, but I am definitely not going to be wifing my playBar to ethernet just to get Roon working. It’s too impractical (I could hide the wire, but I’d need to add yet another switch amongst an already crowded area behind the TV). If I had issues with this Sonos zone with anything else I would consider it, but it has never dropped a beat.
Definitely not resolved.
Hi @connor,
I’ve pretty much tried/checked everything in your post and answered your questions as best I can.
Please let me know what you think may be causing the problem and what I could potentially do to fix it.
I look forward to hearing back because I’m keen to see if I can get Roon working before my trial runs out.
Regards
Rob
It is no longer red. It is orange.
It’s never caused a single problem before I tried Roon. In fact about a year or so ago, before I took a break from Roon, Roon worked perfectly with it.
This is not the case with my setup, each disk is wired with Ethernet back to the router.
I understand that it works when the PlayBar is wired by Ethernet but the only benefit for me would be a workaround for a problem with Roon which would better be resolved wirelessly.
I do have my Sonos Port wired with Ethernet which is just in the next room. I do wonder why the playbar doesn’t use this in its own mesh network rather than the wired BT disk a few feet from it. I would have thought it be clever enough to pick the most stable connection?
Anyway, I am assuming that the solution lies with Roon as it’s the only streaming system/audio server that is not working with my Sonos setup.
Just some more context here…
If I let an album play uninterrupted, there is no problem (apart from the initial 30 seconds of playback of the first track).
When I populate the play queue and let it play, as with an album, there are no issues with subsequent tracks.
It’s only when skipping to the next queued track or selecting a new track, or scrubbing through a track that the problem persists.
Apart from this initial 30 seconds issue, everything works perfectly with this Sonos zone and everything else within Roon. There are never any other dropouts.
Seems to me to be some sort of buffering issue.
