Spotify Connect stops working on Pioneer wireless speaker

[Karol_Z]

Plan

Premium

Device

Galaxy S10e

Operating System

Android 10

My Question or Issue

I've been using Spotify with my home audio devices for years. I have a Pioneer amplituner (Pioneer SX-N30AE) and two wireless speakers (Pioneer MRX-3).  Everything was working smoothly until around 2 weeks ago. After an app update on my phone, problems started to occur. I play a song, choose a device (wireless speaker) it plays ok for 30 seconds, sometimes a minute and then it stops. The app shows it's not connected, what's more the device is no longer visible on the the list of spotify connect devices. I'm not able to reconnect or anything.  I have to restart the device to make it visible again. What's strange, is that it only happens with the wireless speakers. The amplituner seems to be working fine. 

The only thing that has changed is the spotify app. The firmware and app for audio are the latest version, but hasn't been updated in last few weeks. I tried to reinstall the app app, then even did the clean reinstall and nothing helped. 

How it can be fixed? As in current state the speakers are useless to me.

[Karol_Z]

* The current device is Samsung S20 FE, running Android 11. Before it was S10 E, also running Android 11.
* I have the latest version of spotify, which is 8.6.8.1094 , but it also happened in previous versions 
* the speaker is MRX-3 with 2150-8000-0000-0011-0000 firmware, which is the latest available

When it comes to the trouble shooting, I've tried everything
* reinstalling app
* cleaning cache and saved data in the app
* doing factory resets on phones
* doing factory resets on speakers
* changing a phone to a different one, with a brand new os
* disabling any kind of battery optimization for spotify
* doing factory reset on the router
* changing the SSID and all WiFi settings

So basically everything that comes to my mind or was suggested anywhere in the internet. Nothing helped it still occurs, not 100% of the time, but when it starts happening then you know you are **bleep**, because it doesn't go away, until something magical happens and it starts working again, for some period of time.

[Karol_Z]

Another update on this. Previously it was happening only on the wireless speakers,  with the latest update it happened on the amplituner as well, but only once so far. On the speakers though it happens currently 10 out of 10 times, which makes thoses devices useless when it comes to using spotify on them.

[Katerina]

Hey folks, 

As a reminder, make sure to leave a comment with the most recent/up to date details requested in the Status Update and add your +VOTE to this Ongoing Issue.

This helps us better understand how many users are affected or if it's something limited to that individual reported setup. Details requested are also important for reporting this issue. 

On another note, @Karol_Z thanks for sharing this update! Keep us posted if anything else changes.

We'll be keeping an eye out to this thread, thanks!

[Karol_Z]

@Katerina 

Well, there is not much I can do as it's most probably app's fault. You need to investigate it, I've provided all the info I can get based on all the troubleshooting I was able to figure out on my own.

Since the last post, I've also tried:
- switiching all devices to the same network frequency, 2.4 ghz
- changing the channel of the Wifi network for one that is less crowded
- disabling all kind of batter/app optimization on the phone
- changing the DNS provider as I've found it may somehow impact the DHCP issues

- assinging static IPs to all audio devices and my smartphone as well

The result it the same, the connection is breaking up usually within the 1st or 2nd song being played.  So the whole user experience is bad, same as alll the support I've received here so far.  A lot of questions, not many answers and most importantly, no results.

I've started this thread in November, 5 months ago and as far as I'm informed, your dev team hasn't even looked into it. That's just wrong.

[annestahl]

I have a different Pioneer and used an iPhone to connect. It stopped working about 4 weeks ago. I tried everything from rebooting, resetting, all Wifi, phone and stereo. No joy. This renderes my Pioneer HiFi pretty useless for me as airPlay has latency and I think the sound suffers too.

[Karol_Z]

As I'm already pretty desperate, I've tried another thing. I did a clean factory reset on my phone and didn't use any backup of apps and settings, in case somewhere there was the hidden source of this problem. Unfortunately this doesn't change anything (the only result was me having to download 100+ apps manualy), so I'm writing this as a warning if anyone else would have the same idea. Save your time, it doesn't change anything. 

Still no answer from Spotify or Pioneer on this.

[Karol_Z]

Ok, as I was banging my head against the wall here, I've decided it was high time to reach for the last solution that was on the table - buying a new router. Rather drastic, but if that wouldn't work, I was ready to look for new speakers, as this was driving me crazy.

Long story short - it worked.

I've setup a new WiFi network for my flat, but with the same SSID/names and etc. , so all devices connected automatically and it works like a charm ever since. I've been testing this for 8 hours, both PC and android phone, two different speakers and amplituner, not a single connection was lost.

My previous router was ASUS RT-AC87U, a high end, but already a couple of years old device.  Apparently somewhere down the road (probably around november last year) either asus changed something in their firmware or spotify changed something in their code, because before that everything was working more than fine. Not a factory reset or changing all the settings could make this work again, this thread is a testimony to all the struggle I've been through for the last couple of months. 

I don't know if that's Asus problem in general, or only this model, but now I went with TP-LINK ARCHER AX73, that came out earlier this year and like I said, all the problems are gone. 

So if you are desperate as I used to be, check a different router. There is a high chance, that's the solution to your problem, when everything else fails.

[Ver]

Hey @Karol_Z,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop 🙂

Glad to hear that you can enjoy your favorite jams again.

We moved the thread back to the Help Boards as this seems to be an issue caused by individual network set-ups.

We'll be right here if you have any questions.

Cheers!