Delayed start of song/playlist across multiple Sonos speakers.

[sonderstrupc]

Hi,

I have problems getting my Spotify Premium to start simultaneously when playing on multiple/ more than 4 Sonos speakers. 

First the setup:

I have 12 Sonos Play 1, in 6 stereo pairs. My plan is to expand this to 22 Sonos Play 1 in 11 stereo pairs, - but the expansion is on standby until I can get what I have to work first.

I have 8 Unifi Access Points throughout the house (its large), all the Access Points are hardwired to the Unifi Switch and all wires are confirmed to be Gigabit capacity. I have a 600 mpbs fiber connection.

I have two WiFi SSID, one on 2,4 Ghz which is only used by Sonos, and a different SSID on 5 Ghz, which is used by my laptops, iPhones etc.

I have Spotify Premium, I can control it without issue from both my iPhone and laptop.

The issues:

Whenever I group and use more 6 or more speakers (i.e. from 3 stereo pairs) and up and start streaming music from Spotify, I get a split second of music on some speakers, then silence, and then slowly one set of speakers will join the chorus over the following 20 seconds. I.e. it takes up to twenty seconds (and never less than 10) for all the speakers to start playing. This happens each time I start a song or playlist. It does NOT happen whenever one song ends and another begins.

What has been tried:

I have been in contact repeatedly with Sonos, who suggest I “wire my wireless speakers”, - which undermines the logic of wireless speakers and of Sonos, - but I have tried that anyway. It makes no difference. I have tried stitching up the speaker groups in different sequences, - no differences. Rebooting and resetting, - no differences. Most Sonos community forums conclude that going all wireless is actually better. I observations are inclusive, - neither solves.

I have tried putting all the Access Point on the same 2,4 GHz Wifi channel and on different channels, it makes no difference. My house is far from neighbors so there is limited radio interference. Also, had that been the issue it would also apply to when I play music on only 4 speakers.

I have been in contact with Unifi customer support, who (super helpful) have guided me through a set of changes on my network and Wifi settings. These changes were also recommended in many Unifi community forums. The changes made no difference.

My brother-in-law suggested I test with another streaming service. I thus signed-up to SoundCloud, - and EUREKA, - now all 12 speakers start within 0,1 seconds of pressing Play, no lags, no delays, no drops. To some extent that exonerates Sonos, - yet… Spotify is my preferred streaming service, it is integrated into the Sonos app. Sonos works perfectly with Spotify up to 4 speakers/ 2 stereo pairs.

My asks:

1). Can you/Spotify confirm that this is the best I can expect from the combination of Sonos and Spotify, - cause then I can stop trying/troubleshooting and just swap my streaming services?

2). If you know there is some issue the causes, I would love to know what it is, - just because I am curious and wanna know things.

3). Is there anything you would advice me to try across Spotify, Sonos or my Unifi network that is not in the top 10 list of obvious things, and which is not wiring my wireless speakers?

[hwink]

I have the same issue. Did you get any responses to your post?

[MacTavish]

I also have the same issue, and switched to Apple Music, now there are no delays whatsoever, but Spotify is my preferred streaming service, there must be a fix for this so we can continue to use Spotify ?

[Petercc]

Same issue. Any solution?