Sonos - my journey

andyjm

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Part 1.

I had been thinking about retiring my much loved Squeezebox system - I needed another player, and buying second hand was the only option to stay with Squeeze. I saw a play:1 on display in Peter Jones, and having given it some thought over a day or so, bought a Play:1 from Amazon.co.uk to see how it worked - unfortunately it didn't.

I live in a large-ish brick built house, far enough from my neighbours so that I don't pick up any Wifi interference. Over the years I have got my Wifi to the point it is rock solid, 3 separate wireless access points at strategic positions through the house give me complete '3 bars plus' coverage no matter where you are in the house.

As I found early on with Wifi - it is a pretty poor standard for all but close range communication. The allocated radio band is too narrow and the channels (1 to 11 in the US, 1 to 13 in Europe, 1 to 14 in Japan), overlap so that nearby channels of similar strength will interfere. Channels separated by at least '5' are considered to be non-overlapping (they do, but the overlap is limited), so the standard mantra on any US based website is use channels 1,6,11 as they are non-overlapping and should give best performance. This is of course nonsense. 2 and 7 don't overlap, 3 and 8 and so on. In Europe, better performance than 1,6,11 can be had by using channels 1,7,13 (even less overlap) or if you can live with some problems at marginal signal levels, 1,5,9,13 give a good choice to squeeze 4 channels into the band. I had chosen 1,7,13 for my three access points to give best Wifi performance through the house.

I was trying to set up my new Play:1 in my office which was covered by a wireless access point on channel 13. It transpired that my new Play:1 couldn't pick up channel 13.
 

The_Lhc

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To be fair, you DID get an answer to this on the Sonos forum, it appears you were unlucky in getting a european Play:1 that had the US configuration for wi-fi channels. As was pointed out other users have successfully connected their Sonos devices to their own wi-fi running on channel 13.
 

Andy Clough

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I have a Sonos system at home but one of my Play:3s is wired directly to my router and I then use the Sonos wireless mesh to connect the other speakers in the system which avoids any wi-fi/interference problems. I realise you don't have to do this anymore since the most recent upgrade, but would the problem be solved if you used a Sonos Bridge to create a separate network for your Play:1?
 

The_Lhc

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Andy Clough said:
I have a Sonos system at home but one of my Play:3s is wired directly to my router and I then use the Sonos wireless mesh to connect the other speakers in the system which avoids any wi-fi/interference problems. I realise you don't have to do this anymore since the most recent upgrade, but would the problem be solved if you used a Sonos Bridge to create a separate network for your Play:1?

That is still the recommended way to create the Sonos network but of course does require an additional purchase of the Bridge (or Boost but that's a more significant purchase, doubt we'll be seeing those given away any time soon).

I think Andy's main complaint was that his wireless repeaters were all set up with different SSIDs but the new Sonos "connect to wi-fi" feature only gives the provision for specifying ONE SSID and password, so what would work in one room wouldn't work in the others.
 

The_Lhc

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richardw42 said:
I still use a bridge, I think wi fi comes a poor second to Sonos mesh, and they only cost £30.

Normally yes, but Andy has chosen to cover the entire wi-fi spectrum with his own access points (I really don't understand why) on non-standard channels, so it's likely the Sonos mesh would experience severe interference in his situation.

His is far from a standard setup, unfortunately.
 

andyjm

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Part 2.

The way most manufacturers get around the different channel ranges for the three Wifi regions is to give a user the option of which region they are located in during system setup. That's why the 'select region' question is there for most products that use Wifi with all sorts of warnings about what happens if you select the wrong region. Sonos have apparently chosen not to provide this option, but pre-configure the device before shipping. Except in my case they hadn't. This was not an easy problem to find, but I was surprised about the lack of region question during setup, and it had set a distant bell ringing. I eventually found that there is an undocumented command line control to set region, but you have to delve into the depths of the system to find it. Unless Sonos have rock solid inventory control (which clearly they don't), the lack of region setting will come back to haunt them.

So, with my Play:1 configured for Europe, and picking up channel 13, all was well. Except it wasn't.
 

andyjm

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Part 3.

Now, to be fair, my system at home is not straightforward, but it is built using sound (I believe) design principles. I have two infinity lines into the house running at about 18Mb/s which go into a TP-Link load balancing router. The router is also my DHCP server.

After wrestling with my unreliable Play:1 for a day or so, while it would now connect fine to my Wifi, it became clear that it was having a problem getting a stable IP address. Wired or not, sometimes the Sonos control program on my PC could find it, sometimes it couldn't. It didn't appear in the router's DHCP reservation table, and when it did have an IP address, it was outside the DHCP range.

Each device on a network needs a unique IP address. You can set this manually and configure each device with its own 'static' address, or rely on a 'dynamic host configuration protocol' server to allocate an address each time a device connects to the network. Generally DHCP works fine, and most users don't even know it is going on behind the scenes. The DHCP server is hidden in the router provided by their ISP.

With the family's collection of iPhones, iPads, kindles, laptops, my home office, hifi and IP cameras, I have over 30 network devices on at any given time. I have never had a problem with the DHCP server. For some reason, the Play:1 wouldn't play well with the DHCP server in my router - I never got to the bottom of why this was the case. The Play:1 is the only network device I have ever had this problem with. When I disabled the DHCP server in my router and enabled a DHCP server in one of my wireless access points (lots of network products throw a DHCP server in for free) it soved the problem.

So now I had a reliable Play:1, time to buy some more Sonos players. What could go wrong?

I should add that Sonos helpline was excellent. This was not an easy problem to find and I was on the phone for over an hour with a very smart Sonos guy who worked through the whole problem from scratch with me. Best support I have ever experienced from any manufacturer.
 

The_Lhc

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andyjm said:
With the family's collection of iPhones, iPads, kindles, laptops, my home office, hifi and IP cameras, I have over 30 network devices on at any given time. I have never had a problem with the DHCP server. For some reason, the Play:1 wouldn't play well with the DHCP server in my router - I never got to the bottom of why this was the case. The Play:1 is the only network device I have ever had this problem with. When I disabled the DHCP server in my router and enabled a DHCP server in one of my wireless access points (lots of network products throw a DHCP server in for free) it soved the problem.

Which would logically suggest it IS the DHCP server at fault. I have a Play:1, works perfectly with the DHCP server on my router.

Do you reserve any of your IP addresses in your DHCP server?
 

andyjm

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While I would agree that my original DHCP server was incompatible with the Sonos, it wasn't clear which end was at fault. All of my other devices worked just fine. Perhaps the Sonos was using an unusual DHCP approach not used by my other devices, perhaps my other DHCP server was more tolerant of timing or protocol issues? It is beyond my ability to troubleshoot - I dont have the equipment or knowledge to get to the bottom of it.

I reserve xxx:xxx:xxx:001 to xxx:xxx:xxx:099 for static addresses for stuff that is usually on full time, router, NASs, servers, cameras, printers, the wireless access points and so on. I allocate xxx:xxx:xxx:100 to xxx:xxx:xxx:199 for the DHCP server.
 

andyjm

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Part 4.

Armed with the knowledge that Sonos would work in my environment, I went shopping.

5 x Play:1, 1 x Play:3, 1 Play:5, 1 x connect:amp, 1 x connect. Off we go.

As already mentioned, Wifi isn't much good. During a call, your cellphone will be monitoring the local towers for signal strength, and after a little negotiation, will switch from a weak tower to a stronger tower to maintain communication. Wifi by contrast will hang on to a signal until its last gasp, even if there is a much stronger signal nearby - a tendency referred to as 'clinging'.

In my house I have three access points, and if I move from one coverage area to another, my laptop will 'cling' to the first area, even though the first signal is now marginal and a much stronger signal is nearby. The way to avoid this is to name each access point a different name, 'kitchen, den, office' or similar, and force the laptop to reconnect to the stronger point by selecting it manually. It has been suggested that by naming all the access points the same, that by switching wifi off and on again on the laptop, it will connect to the strongest signal. In my experience this doesn't work, and the laptop will log on to whichever access point it tries first.

The 'name' of a wireless access point is set at the time it is configured and referred to as its SSID (service set identifier).

So, the Play:1 for the first room was set up. I set the Wifi to the SSID of the access point that covers that end of the house, no problems at all, it worked first go, wife very impressed. Next came the Play:3 for my office. I set it to the SSID of the access point that covers my office again no problems, it worked first go.

Except the first Play:1 stopped.

After a great deal of fiddling around, it became clear that when I had configured the Play:3 for my office it had reconfigured the first Play:1 to log on to the same SSID. In fact after digging around the forum, it turns out that a Sonos system can only support a single SSID across all players.

Why they have to have a common SSID is beyond me. I can only assume that Sonos are new to this Wifi game, and they haven't got it quite figured out yet. My old Squeezebox system allowed region setting and SSID setting to be player specific - why not have that on Sonos? Didn't make sense to me.

This mean't my carefully built, rock solid Wifi installation wouldn't work with Sonos. Back to the drawing board.
 

davedotco

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andyjm said:
Part 4.

Armed with the knowledge that Sonos would work in my environment, I went shopping.

5 x Play:1, 1 x Play:3, 1 Play:5, 1 x connect:amp, 1 x connect. Off we go.

As already mentioned, Wifi isn't much good. During a call, your cellphone will be monitoring the local towers for signal strength, and after a little negotiation, will switch from a weak tower to a stronger tower to maintain communication. Wifi by contrast will hang on to a signal until its last gasp, even if there is a much stronger signal nearby - a tendency referred to as 'clinging'.

In my house I have three access points, and if I move from one coverage area to another, my laptop will 'cling' to the first area, even though the first signal is now marginal and a much stronger signal is nearby. The way to avoid this is to name each access point a different name, 'kitchen, den, office' or similar, and force the laptop to reconnect to the stronger point by selecting it manually. It has been suggested that by naming all the access points the same, that by switching wifi off and on again on the laptop, it will connect to the strongest signal. In my experience this doesn't work, and the laptop will log on to whichever access point it tries first.

The 'name' of a wireless access point is set at the time it is configured and referred to as its SSID (service set identifier).

So, the Play:1 for the first room was set up. I set the Wifi to the SSID of the access point that covers that end of the house, no problems at all, it worked first go, wife very impressed. Next came the Play:3 for my office. I set it to the SSID of the access point that covers my office again no problems, it worked first go.

Except the first Play:1 stopped.

After a great deal of fiddling around, it became clear that when I had configured the Play:3 for my office it had reconfigured the first Play:1 to log on to the same SSID. In fact after digging around the forum, it turns out that a Sonos system can only support a single SSID across all players.

Why they have to have a common SSID is beyond me. I can only assume that Sonos are new to this Wifi game, and they haven't got it quite figured out yet. My old Squeezebox system allowed region setting and SSID setting to be player specific - why not have that on Sonos? Didn't make sense to me.

This mean't my carefully built, rock solid Wifi installation wouldn't work with Sonos. Back to the drawing board.

I'm probably missing something here, but given the size, cost and complexity of the setup, why are you not using Sonosnet and leaving your carefully built, rock solid wifi installation well alone.

Appologies if I am being dumb here, my Sonos knowledge is confined to sorting out a couple of systems for non technical friends, dead easy on both occasions.
 

The_Lhc

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davedotco said:
andyjm said:
Part 4.

Armed with the knowledge that Sonos would work in my environment, I went shopping.

5 x Play:1, 1 x Play:3, 1 Play:5, 1 x connect:amp, 1 x connect. Off we go.

This mean't my carefully built, rock solid Wifi installation wouldn't work with Sonos. Back to the drawing board.

I'm probably missing something here, but given the size, cost and complexity of the setup, why are you not using Sonosnet and leaving your carefully built, rock solid wifi installation well alone.

Exactly, Sonos even recommend that if you have more than a handful of Sonos devices you should wire one to the network and use Sonosnet. The wi-fi setup is only intended for the simplest of configurations.
 

andyjm

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Part 5.

Sonos are based in Santa Barbara, where Wifi runs from channel 1 to 11. Sonos only give users the choice of channel 1, 6 or 11 for 'Sonosnet' on the grounds that they are the 'only' non overlapping channels. Not true, but there you go.

Given my Wifi couldn't be used, what about using Sonosnet? after all, that is how Sonos made their name. The term 'Wifi' is a broad definition and covers a multitude of stuff, the types of transmitter, the channels used, the data protocol and so on and so on. You need to define all of this, and to get it right to call what you have Wifi. Sonosnet uses the same channels, the same hardware and transmitters, the same power as Wifi, but instead of using Wifi's data protocol it uses a different, 'spanning tree protocol' that allows each device to act both as a data receiver but also as a bridge to forward data along to the next device. The clever bit is deciding which box forwards to which box - the system figures this out by itself. Great if the next device is within Wifi range (remember it is using Wifi hardware), then the data can hop from box to box to get to its final destination. If however the devices are further apart than standard Wifi range, then no amount of Sonosnet protocol will help you out.

I had 3 wireless access points on channels 1,7,13 and had to find space for Sonos which could only work on channels 1,6,11.

I tried using 2 wireless access points, but there were dead spots in my house, so that didn't work. The only other option was to reconfigure my Wifi to channels 5,9,13 and allocate channel 1 to Sonos. This isn't the best '5 channel spacing', but a long as signal levels aren't marginal, the minor degree of overlap doesn't cause problems.
 

The_Lhc

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andyjm said:
The clever bit is deciding which box forwards to which box - the system figures this out by itself. Great if the next device is within Wifi range (remember it is using Wifi hardware), then the data can hop from box to box to get to its final destination. If however the devices are further apart than standard Wifi range, then no amount of Sonosnet protocol will help you out.

Well, yes. Are you now going to blame Sonos for not overcoming the laws of physics? That seems a little harsh.

Sonos is, like most consumer electronics, designed for the 90%, those people living in "normal" houses with "see through" walls for whom in the majority of cases it works perfectly. You aren't one of those cases and there's a limit to what Sonos can do to overcome the obstacles you have.

I have a "difficult" house, it's a Devon long house, built with very thick stone walls, wi-fi doesn't propogate from one room to the next, never mind from one end of the house to another (it probably wouldn't even if the walls were normal brick), I have a perfectly working Sonos system (nothing like the size of yours mind) which utilizes two bridges placed in convenient locations to get around (or over) the blockages caused by the stone walls. It works so well I even have a SkyHD boxed plugged into the ethernet socket of the Play:1 at the far end of the house which can access the internet via the router at the other end of the house. I have reserved all my Sonos IP addresses in my DHCP server, it's flawless.
 

The_Lhc

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andyjm said:
I tried using 2 wireless access points, but there were dead spots in my house, so that didn't work. The only other option was to reconfigure my Wifi to channels 5,9,13 and allocate channel 1 to Sonos. This isn't the best '5 channel spacing', but a long as signal levels aren't marginal, the minor degree of overlap doesn't cause problems.

This is one bit I don't understand, presumably you have all these access points because your wi-fi range is limited (by the construction of the property? I can't remember)? In that case then there's unlikely to be much interference, so why not just put all the wi-fi repeaters on the same channel?
 

andyjm

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Part 6.

My house has had bits added on to it a number of times in its life. What used to be outside walls are now inside, and because of this, internal walls in more than one area are cavity walls with a double wall thickness. Wifi doesn't go far.

I have had to be creative to cover the house with 3 access points. In two cases the access points are high up in loftspaces as it is easier to get wifi to go down through plaster ceilings and wooden floors than along through thick walls.

There is not much point mounting a Sonos player in a loftspace, so I wasn't able to replicate the optimal positioning of my existing Wifi with Sonos players. All in all, I have had to hardwire 4 of the players to get reliable coverage to all players via a combination of Sonosnet and ethernet. To be fair I have made life slightly harder for the Sonos system in one part of the house by having another channel only 4 steps away rather than the recommended 5 (1 and 5 rather than 1 and 6), but that is probably reflective of many suburban installations.

I estimate it has taken at least 3 solid days to get the system to work including trouble shooting and cabling. Not exactly ease of installation in comparison to my Squeeze system where only my 'Transporter' was wired, and then only because I wanted to ensure (rightly or wrongly) full fidelity.

I can't blame Sonos for the DHCP issue, as that may well be a problem with my router. Providing a player that wasn't set for European use (bought from Amazon.co.uk) and not having a 'region' setting is definitely a Sonos problem, and the inexplicable lack of multiple SSIDs is also firmly in their camp and caused me much grief.

Now all is well, the system seems reliable, and I have to say that their helpline was first class. I think their Wifi implementation needs further thought though.

I
 

davedotco

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andyjm said:
Part 6.

My house has had bits added on to it a number of times in its life. What used to be outside walls are now inside, and because of this, internal walls in more than one area are cavity walls with a double wall thickness. Wifi doesn't go far.

I have had to be creative to cover the house with 3 access points. In two cases the access points are high up in loftspaces as it is easier to get wifi to go down through plaster ceilings and wooden floors than along through thick walls.

There is not much point mounting a Sonos player in a loftspace, so I wasn't able to replicate the optimal positioning of my existing Wifi with Sonos players. All in all, I have had to hardwire 4 of the players to get reliable coverage to all players via a combination of Sonosnet and ethernet. To be fair I have made life slightly harder for the Sonos system in one part of the house by having another channel only 4 steps away rather than the recommended 5 (1 and 5 rather than 1 and 6), but that is probably reflective of many suburban installations.

I estimate it has taken at least 3 solid days to get the system to work including trouble shooting and cabling. Not exactly ease of installation in comparison to my Squeeze system where only my 'Transporter' was wired, and then only because I wanted to ensure (rightly or wrongly) full fidelity.

I can't blame Sonos for the DHCP issue, as that may well be a problem with my router. Providing a player that wasn't set for European use (bought from Amazon.co.uk) and not having a 'region' setting is definitely a Sonos problem, and the inexplicable lack of multiple SSIDs is also firmly in their camp and caused me much grief.

Now all is well, the system seems reliable, and I have to say that their helpline was first class. I think their Wifi implementation needs further thought though.

Thanks for the explanations.

I have never had to deal with complex setup in a difficult house, all relatively straightforward so far. Your posts expand my knowledge and given that I often get asked to 'sort out' hi-fi problems, will undoubtably be of some help sooner or later.
 

The_Lhc

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andyjm said:
There is not much point mounting a Sonos player in a loftspace, so I wasn't able to replicate the optimal positioning of my existing Wifi with Sonos players.

No but you could mount some Sonos Bridges up there, given how much you must have spent I'm reasonably sure a retailer would have thrown a few in for you for no extra charge, however given the way you've obliterated any free channel in the wireless spectrum I doubt it would have helped much. Incidentally more than a few people have mounted Connect:Amps in their lofts to drive ceiling speakers but that's not entirely relevant here.

All in all, I have had to hardwire 4 of the players to get reliable coverage to all players via a combination of Sonosnet and ethernet.

The recommendation has always been to wire as many Sonos devices as you can if possible. Having said that I've only got one wired device (my Connect).

and not having a 'region' setting is definitely a Sonos problem, and the inexplicable lack of multiple SSIDs is also firmly in their camp and caused me much grief.

I think the point of that is that you only have to set it once and it'll propogate to all devices (including any added later), it's a convenience thing, to avoid having to configure the same setting on every device.

Now all is well, the system seems reliable, and I have to say that their helpline was first class. I think their Wifi implementation needs further thought though.

Bear in mind it's only there to tick a box, to appease the short-sighted (including, sadly, this magazine) that somehow think using non-optimised wi-fi instead of Sonosnet is an advantage. It was done, seemingly, simply to remove the opportunity for nay-sayers to point another finger at Sonos and go "aha! Look, it doesn't do THIS!". In all but the simplest setups the advice is to wire a device and use Sonosnet.
 

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