OFF TOPIC: HELP! Need advice on Sonos/Ubiquiti setup

[Tomgru]

Just spent an hour on the phone with Sonos support.. person had never heard of Unifi and basically told me to call them.
Countless searches across the Unifi and Sonos forums yield many things to try, often opposing each other.

so, I come to you - the forum that has never let me down. For those of you running a Unifi setup and Sonos, please tell me how you did it. I was going to create a separate IoT VLAN for that and my other HA stuff... but I don't want to even get close to that until it just works normally.

My setup is USG, Unifi 16 port switch, and two AP-AC lites.
My sonos is 2 connects and a connect:amp, all wired into satellite (non managed) switches, 3 Play:1s, and 2 Play:3s (via wifi)
I've also connected a bridge to see if that made it any better... seems same issue either way.

Speakers seem to play mostly fine when by themselves, but when I start to group past 3, everything gets spotty. Volume doesn't work consistently, speakers drop off then come back no longer as part of the group, etc.

Some of what I've set based on research is:

• Auto optimize off
• In the switch, I have it set to STP and priority 4096
• Set AP power to “medium” on both AP lites

Any help you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated. This was rock solid on my older ASUS setup...

thanks.

EDIT: some additional debugging. I went to the 3 connects that are hardwired and tried to turn off wifi (based on additional research). the sonos app wouldn't let me... tells me to make sure they are connected to the router before I turn off wifi.

these are all connected to generic 8 port hubs that are connected to my USW16. there must be some setting I missed?

I tried connecting one connect directly to the USW, same error, so it's not the switches.

[harvito]

First - I have zero unifi knowledge so my input is for the sole purpose troubleshooting the way I would. I honestly have never liked SONOS on WiFi - SONOS added it (in my opinion) because some folks just had to have it - that may not be true just my opinion- SONOSNET has never let me down - I run one house with a boost and another with multiple speakers hard wired - it is a great mesh network. Have you tried this?

[Tomgru]

First - I have zero unifi knowledge so my input is for the sole purpose troubleshooting the way I would. I honestly have never liked SONOS on WiFi - SONOS added it (in my opinion) because some folks just had to have it - that may not be true just my opinion- SONOSNET has never let me down - I run one house with a boost and another with multiple speakers hard wired - it is a great mesh network. Have you tried this?

yeah.. that's basically what I had at first. figured 3 hardwired, and 4 via sonosnet. My understanding is that once you connect one directly, they no longer use wifi and only use sonosnet.

[dcorsus]

If you open a browser, take the IP address of one of the players, key in following URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/support/review click on "Network Matrix", what do you get? Perhaps post it.
Also try: http://xx.xx.xx.xxx:1400/status/showstp on a player that give you problems and try http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/status/ifconfig and check the error stats!!

[Tomgru]

If you open a browser, take the IP address of one of the players, key in following URL http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/support/review click on "Network Matrix", what do you get? Perhaps post it.
Also try: http://xx.xx.xx.xxx:1400/status/showstp on a player that give you problems and try http://xx.xx.xx.xx:1400/status/ifconfig and check the error stats!!

yep. here you go:

the showstp is on the red marked connect.

[dcorsus]

Seems to be issue with master bedroom player. Perhaps close to another wire access point or something noisy.
Which ones are wired?
Is the master bedroom player one of the players you use to test the grouping? If so, if you do grouping w/o the Master Bedroom, still have issues?
I would play with it a bit, perhaps power down the master bedroom player, see if there is a cause and effect or change the used channel

[Tomgru]

Seems to be issue with master bedroom player. Perhaps close to another wire access point or something noisy.
Which ones are wired?
Is the master bedroom player one of the players you use to test the grouping? If so, if you do grouping w/o the Master Bedroom, still have issues?
I would play with it a bit, perhaps power down the master bedroom player, see if there is a cause and effect or change the used channel

Master bedroom is wired... as is great room and deck.

i'll try that and report back. should this have a lot more green on it?

i'm using channel 6... from what I can tell in the UB stuff, there is nothing using it.

[Tomgru]

my wife is using the play1 in the kitchen. I tried connecting to the greatroom (hardwired)… nada. looks even worse now:

[dcorsus]

play with it, log cause and effect .......

[Tomgru]

so someone on the UB forum suggested just plugging one in hardwired, and then use sonosnet on all the rest. tried that.. looks even worse.

[mbdirtfarmer]

Do a scan of wireless 2.4Ghz channels using a wifi analyzer app and make sure sonosnet is on its own channel, away from any strong wifi. BTW there are only 3 20mhz wide channels that don't interfere with each other: 1, 6, 11. all others will bleed into other channels. this looks like wifi interference issue.

[Rvtravlr]

Only one Sonos should be Ethernet wired.

I found that disabling STP in each switch worked better than selecting STP and then setting a metric. You most likely have the default RSTP selected which is no bueno.

[paul]

I was having issues with RSTP when I had two Sonos devices hardwired, one of them would get blocked (which makes sense) and they would occasionally trade off, causing grief. Changing to plain STP resolved that for me. I have definitely had good luck with SonosNet rather than Wifi.

I'd be concerned about disabling STP completely, but that's more based on my lack of knowledge rather than knowledge. What is the impact on the rest of the network when disabling STP? I'm guessing that you just have to be careful not to create your own loops, though I assume Sonos will take care of preventing it's own loops with it's own STP.....

[Tomgru]

FWIW, I messed with this quite a bit based on feedback from the Sonos community. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on wired, etc...... in the end, I went back to wiring as much as I could, moved my boosts around a bit (I have lots of interference issues). so far, things are working better.... but time will tell. here's the thread if interested:

https://en.community.sonos.com/advan...boosts-6829218

[MNB]

Alright Tom, I read through both threads and am looking for a conclusion for the optimum UniFi and Sonos configuration recommendations; e.g. to STP or No STP, Only wire on speaker or Wire as many as you can or Wire Boosts, use WiFi or SONONet, ect.. I find the SONOS Network Matrix tool (right side) to help in determining areas that need help via a Boost or wired speaker. I currently have only one Sonos Speaker wired which is multicasting to my other eight speakers, I also configured my Switches to STP with

priority 4096 set for my level 0 switch and 8192 for my level 1 switches. Mike