Random No Sound Issues with Amazon Echo Dot

[afunnynut]

I am playing music on my Amazon Echo Dot from my iPhone running IOS 14.x

Issue:

Randomly the music stops streaming though the scrub indicator shows the music actually playing

How to Reproduce

1. Stream from Spotify to ECHO
2. During play (when a song is playing) click on a new song (spotify set to play on click)
3. The music will stop playing (3/5 times)
4. Music track indicator will show song still playing
5. Clucking in the speaker options and choosing This iPhone will actually continue plaing the music on your iPhone
6. Once you hear music on your phone, switch back to the Echo Dot and the music plays again

This does NOT happen if you just let the playlist play and do NOT skip tracks

This happens on ALL my Echo devices whether they are single or set up as a group

I have tried

• Different phones
• Different set of Amazon Echo speakers

Apple Music played via the Amazon Alexa DOES NOT have this issue. Nor does Alexa playing my spotify playlist directly

[Alex]

Hey there @

Thanks for the post.

Can you try to create a mobile hotspot from your phone, connect the phone and one of the speakers to that network and try playing some songs from the phone?

Let us know if the music stops like this as well.

Cheers.

[afunnynut]

Hey Alex,

Still skips if I connect like 3 devices to the hotspot and then play. With one device, remains stable like 9/10 attempts

With three devices, drops are like 5/10 attempts

All devices (Echo) are connected to their own WiFi network - separate router

Phone is connected to a separate router and network

ISP is the same. Wifi speeds is 300mbps on speedtest and wifi/lan speeds are 57mbps between networks. Two devices are Echo Dots and one is Echo Flex in case this helps

[Xenia]

Hi @afunnynut,

We're having difficulties recreating the issue on a similar set-up, so it'd be great if you could share a couple more details with us.

First off, did you try any troubleshooting, like reinstalling the app or making sure your Alexa devices have the latest updates installed? Those are good steps to start with and can help eliminate a variety of issues.

If that doesn't do the trick, could you provide us with the following info:

• You say that you've tested this with different phones - were they all iPhones?
• Do you experience the same if you use another platform, for example the desktop app or our web player?
• Can you also clarify how the music is controlled when this happens - are you using the lock screen or notification controls on the phone or the app itself?
• Does it happen when you skip tracks from the Now Playing view or when you select new songs to play from the list view?
• Is it happening right away or after some minutes of playback?
• And just to confirm, you have Alexa linked with your Spotify account - or are you using the speakers via Bluetooth connection?

Once we have that, we'll hopefully be able to narrow down the issue.

Keep us posted!

[afunnynut]

Ok weirdly I can no longer recreate the issue. Been trying for a while now. Only change is an upgrade to build 1030 🤦🏻‍♂️

But to answer the wuestions above in case this comes back - tried with two iphones and an android

Issue was seen when a song was playing and I browsed to my liked songs, scrolled through the list and randomly just clicked and tried playing a different song from the list

Hadn’t tried Bluetooth or the Mac app/web player. Will update in case the issue comes back and I can confirm the above. Will attempt a video capture if possible so issue is easier to understand. But at this moment, I have been skipping tracks for a while now and am not seeing a no sound issue post the app update

[afunnynut]

Actually scratch that. Just happened again. You can find the video of the issue here

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-M2WOIwC4Y_-6B1qPAwSOL5sslVK0ote

[afunnynut]

But it’s a lot tougher to recreate the issue on this build - just happened once in like an hour of trying

[Xenia]

Hello again @afunnynut,

Thanks for keeping us in the loop and providing all those details! We weren't able to watch the video - Could you make it public and try sharing again?

In any case it's good to hear that the experience has improved and the issue isn't occurring as often as before!

With that said, if it now only happens randomly it will be difficult to pinpoint the root cause of the issue, but when it starts happening again we recommend deleting the cache in the Spotify app Settings (under Storage) and if that doesn't make a difference, try restarting your Alexa devices (just unplug and plug back in after a couple of minutes).

Hope this helps. If you still need a hand with this, just let us know and we’ll see if we can think up some other things to try 🙂

[afunnynut]

Please try the link below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-MY3RhhWX7S_1smOBwV0rdyuL6WLKN0G/view?usp=sharing

Things I have tried thus far

• Reset the Echo devices and reconnected them to the dedicated network
• Uninstalled and reinstalled the app a couple of times
• Multiple IOS patches have gone through - so this is not a IOS patch issue (I think)

But anyway, thank you for looking into this. Let me know if Spotify app has logs or something that can help you guys in case that is needed.

But then again, guess if no one else is hitting this, just might be my devices/network whatever I guess. So no worries

[Ver]

Hey @afunnynut,

Thanks for the info and the video 🙂

It looks like the Echo speakers and the app are not syncing up correctly through the Connect API.

You mentioned that your Echoes are connect to a separate router. In this case it's a good idea to check if this also happens when all devices use the same router.

We understand that changing your network environment is cumbersome, but that might give you at least some insights regarding the cause. Also this could be used as a workaround.

Let us know how it goes.