SONOS Compatability with Orbi

Yeah, the sonosnet channel option is missing when all my speakers are using Wifi. It is normally on iOS: Settings > Advanced Settings > SonosNet Channel

Ah well.

Are all orbi units on the latest firmware update? Do you have multiple satellites?

I only have one sattelite.     The main router is using the latest firmware (1.4.0.16).     I don't know about the Satellite firmware though because when I go to the Settings, it lists its firmware as 1.1.0.16, but under Status it is always suck on "Please wait a moment".     I tried logging out and back in, accesing it from both a computer and the phone, and the status is always stuck there.    I've even unplugged and re-plugged the sattelite, but no avail.   Has anyone else had this issue with the inability of upgrade the satellite firmware?  

I have to pairs of Sonos stereo speakers (total of 4 speakers) and incidentally, the two speakers closest to the satellite are the ones that I'm having trouble with.

 I wonder if this old (is it?) satellite firmware partly is to blame for my issue with Sonos.  

Ah, yep. I had this issue when I got my orbi. Current manufactured shipping units are not shipping with the current firmware. Worse than that, auto updates don't work on satellites with earlier firmwares (that's something that is fixed in a later firmware. So this process below should only need to be done once.).

To fix this you have to download the latest satellite firmware from netgear manually. should be here: https://www.netgear.com/support/product/RBK50?cid=wmt_netgear_organic#RBS50%20(Orbi%20Satellite)%20Firmware%20Version%201.4.0.16 . You need to extract the image file out of the zip you download.

Then you need to connect to the satellite ip directly. You can find that on your orbi router home page under "attached devices". It should be under connected satellites.

Go to that ip directly in the browser and it will ask for orbi username and password. Same as the main one.

You can then use "firmware update" from the menu and select the image file extracted from the zip. This took several tries on one of my satellites complaining the process timed out.

Once you do all of this and it (finally) succeeds, it should be up to date and working. I would not be surprised if Sonos starts working after that. (I would also unplug power, leave out for 10 seconds and plug everything back in on All Orbi and Sonos units.

On the sonos front, when I swapped to the new wifi network, I had to re-add those speakers by plugging them in via ethernet and re-add them / run the wifi setup wizard again. It was really frustrating. Then I had to unplug them, move them back to their original location and they joined the orbi network fine after that.

I have still not had any issues with Sonos all day with just wifi.

Wow, that advice was super helpful, thank you.    I had no idea!      This is the price us early adopters always end up paying...

Indeed. I will say that eero does not suffer from this "it's not updated" nonsense precisely because their cloud controls the update rollout.

But performance of a working Orbi beats a working eero in nearly all cases (haven't had my own eero, but all reports put orbi well ahead here). The cost of power/performance is usually ease of use/maintenance. Eero is stupid simple. And when it doesn't work, not much you can do about it.

--Derrek

FYI: Sonos went down again for me and it was because the Orbi satellite was down again.

This time there was no Sonos wired to the orbi. So I don't think that has anything to do with it at this point. Everything on that Orbi becomes unavailable and stays gone for several minutes.

Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

I hope I was able to help you with your problem! I may be sending this back soon and trying eero.

--Derrek

Yeah, I'm aware of the drops in speed from hops between access points. That's the primary reason I bought orbi first. However, at this point I may need to drop the goal of getting my internet max speed everywhere in my house and just settle for stable wifi that's a bit slower than max. I would take a slower system if it is hands off and just works.

I guess by that argument I should just go back to my airport extreme. *sigh*

Dumb question: Did your sonos work right on eero?

I have always used the Sonos Boost instead of my Wifi network.  Sonos Boost is the way to go if you have more than one Sonos product.  I have never had one single issue with Sonos and Orbi.

This doesn't work well if the sonos unit that is wired loses connectivity because the satellite goes down. ;)

But, yeah, it looks like this is 100% an orbi issue. If orbi doesn't work, sonos isn't going to. Fun.

I returned my Orbi system today. I suspect eero and google wifi will not provide the performance I want, so I will likely be back.

I am hoping I just got a bad kit. Maybe the next one will work out of the box. But I still want to see other meshes work.

I got to the point where I was being dropped from video conferences every 3 minutes. I just couldn't deal with it.

--Derrek

Derrek,

Please check back with us on here to let us know how it goes with Eero/Google, and how they compare to Orbi for you.    BTW, I never got around setting up Sonos on the Eero, so can't be helpful there.    

Best of luck!

I just got an Orbi as well and am having a miserable time trying to get sonos to work with it. Really brings back bad memories of sonos. Funny thing is when I cast to 5 Google Home's in my home I have no issues at all. Seeing how others are having same behaviors with Orbi, thinking I'll be returning this netgear product.

Not sure if using Sonos bridges made a difference for me, but I spent an hour or so trying to setup Sonos using the Wifi without the bridges.  Was getting ready to call them when I decided to use the bridges that I had.  Most of my Sonos gear is on the first floor and my router/Orbi is setup on the second floor.  Plugged one router into Orbi and setup the second bridge on the first floor.  I did not have any problem setting up the rest of the Sonos speakers and Soundbar on the first floor.  But I could not get it going without the bridges.  Have not noticed a drop in sound with the Sonos.  Played music for about 5 hours the other day.

JK12,

Just to be clear, I actually don't think this is a Sonos specific issue. It is simply shown by Sonos because it constantly uses (and requires) stable wifi on at least *one* sonos unit (be it bridge or speaker). I actually think they have a much larger connectivity stability issue. As I traced it more, I found more and more devices were having connection issues. Those devices just don't usually constantly use wifi and usually missed the down time.

Do you mean Google Wifi? The brand new thing? Or actualy google home or onhub? I have both Google Wifi and eero coming this week. I'll report back. I suspect neither of them will get to my performance desires. I have heard both great things and nightmare stories about eero. Google Wifi is too new to have any first hand reports.

--Derrek

Rugby49,

If one of your bridges is plugged into the Orbi router, you may be dodging the issue. My issue is all speakers are either wifi or wired on one of the Orbi satellites. Neither satellite produced stable signal (though one worked better than the other one seemingly). So, whichever satellite was the wired source of sonosnet still needs to be stable. So, in my case, a bridge would not help. However, plugging in a speaker or bridge into the Orbi router instead of satellite, it may have fixed the issue in terms of sonos. The signal would have originated at the router and been stable. As far as I could tell, the router had no issues.

Doing that with sonos would not have fixed the issue for all other devices experiencing the issues. Hence why I gave up and returned it. Once I realized it wasn't sonos specific, it's a pretty massive flaw. It may still be that Sonos somehow triggers the issue, but I don't care. My airport extreme works better than orbi everywhere in my house. No point in spending more money that doesn't give me better internet in all rooms.

FYI: Sonos works fantastic purely on wifi with my airport extreme. Nothing is wired. Sonosnet settings are not available because of that. I would like to use Sonosnet, but, for me, it requires a mesh network that can get a wired port in a different room from the router. When I get another speaker for my office, that could be the source of the sonos net plugged into the router, just not currently. In a way I'm glad. I may not have found the networking issues early enough to reasonably return the orbi.

--Derrek

Dlelute, I meant Google Home (not the new Wifi product). Think I'll give Orbi a few more weeks to see if anything changes or new firmware comes out. However, I've tried everything like Boost vs no Boost. Think my setup is more "involved" than most people. I use the line-in with  Play5 and group several speakers. I've tried all wireless vs Play5 only wired. Same results....sound drops and sometimes all speakers just seem to stop.

I also use SmartThings, which controls the muting/unmuting of Sonos in each room based on motion. This worked for the past couple of years without the issues I'm seeing with Orbi. Frustrating thing is that Google Home lets me cast to 5 Home speakers just fine. Unfortunately, I can't (yet) manipulate the mute state of Google Home. Whenever that happens, think I can rethink Sonos.

Just hope this is an Orbi firmware issue that will soon get fixed. I have more faith in Netgear than Google (Wifi) or startup Eero. Guess we'll see.

Should also add that my previous router was a netgear (N700 I think). So, I have hope this is a Netgear-fixable Orbi issue.

Having some issues primarily with Entertainment devices not maintaining a stable signal or dropping signals completely.  Primarily TV, Roku, Xbox One S and PS4.  Tablets, computers and phones connect without a problem.  And I do have my Sonos setup through the bridges, nothing else connected to it.  When I test the Wifi signal throughout the house on phone or computer it is solid.  Not sure why the other Entertainment devices would be having a problem.  Will try the powerline networking later today.

I assume it is fixable. But the question is when. I have found that waiting for firmware updates makes about as much sense as waiting for the new version of any technology product. By the time the firmware is stable, there are possibly price reductions and/or new products like google wifi that could potentially make other things obsolete. Asus and linksys have yet to jump into this race. They may come in with something spectacular.

Hence why I'm trying eero and google. I agree, netgear deserves more "faith" as this is all they do and they are not a startup. Google is known for discontinuuing products when they no longer have interest to google. Eero is still a bit young, and it's update process means you could suddenly have something that doesn't work for you. I've heard they can lock you on an older firmware on request. Google wifi is the same way as eero.

Still, if eero or google wifi (or orbi) lasted me 2-3 years, it will have lived its lifetime. New wifi technologies will replace it no matter what. So, when I purchase, it works on day one, can be made to work immediately after day one, or it goes back.

Incidentally, this is why I return apple products routinely now (12 apple watches so far, the current one is working though. 7 6s and 7 phones. In fact I never kept a 6s). They are no longer the "just works out of the box" company. By the time things are stabe (if ever) something better is out.

Sonos is the only product I've bought in the last few years that "just works" and works well. I love them, and I will be buying more of them. Especially now that I know any issues were due to bad connectivity.

That's my story.

--Derrek

That was the primary thing I saw. Basically anything that needs a constant connection to work in order to stream data was unstable. Games, movies, video conferencing, sonos. But things that "wake up" use internet for a bit and than stop (phones, laptops while browsing, etc) tended to miss the connectivity issues. So it seemed to be stable for them. (it wasn't).

Also, it was rare for wifi on both satellites to be dead at the same time. So devices that could move easily did. But devices that don't roam well or needed a solid connection would still have issues. Many of the devices that had the biggest difficulty were wired to one of the satellites so they had no other choice but to wait for the satellite to return.

Anyway, I'm an advocate of returning. Makes companies fix issues faster as it costs someone something. Either stores won't carry products with high return rates or the manufacturer has to absorb that.

You can always buy it again.

--Derrek

Interesting.  I never really thought that much about the systems requiring a constant connection, but they are the ones having problems for me.  My Sonos setup was purchased when you needed the bridges so I always had the bridges setup.  So they are hard wired into the router and not the satellite.  All the devices for me having a problem would be running off the satellite wifi.  I guess I do not need to buy an additional satellite for $260 as the problem would still exist.  My pre Orbi setup was an Asus AC88U with a Netgear extender but I had the entertainment devices hooked up using a 4 port powerline setup and that provided a stable network.  I am past my return date for Orbi so I will hope for a fix and see what happens.  Will definitely setup the powerline today to see if I can get stable connections.