Server Version#: Version 1.40.2.8312
Player Version#: Plexamp 4.10.1
Last Tuesday, and now again today, the connection between Sonos and Plexamp is broken, when casting from Plexamp → Sonos. When displaying the “cast” options, you can see the connection to your Sonos Speakers “flapping” as it continually loses it’s connection from Plex to Sonos. It self-resolved last week after about an hour. It has been down all day today. It is also broken between the Plex App and Sonos, as this is an issue with the Remote Control functionality, not the app, I would guess.
Troubleshooting done so far:
Re-Auth dance (Both on the Sonos side and Plex side)
PMS application reboot
Full server reboot
Removed Plex from Sonos, re-added
Playing plex directly through Sonos app (works, but of course all advanced Plexamp features are out of the window and you can only play pre-existing playlists. Sub-optimal.)
Restarting various Plexamp applications (Android, PC)
Router/Network restart
Contacted Sonos support and verified no errors are reaching Sonos speakers
Additional symptoms:
Songs will play for 2-5 seconds successfully, but then fail consistently after that
Plexamp app becomes unusable until you manage to stop playback on plexamp as it “flaps” continually trying to play a song and failing, resetting back to a paused state, retry the play, etc etc.
When you open the cast menu, it’s clear that the connection between Plex and Sonos is flapping as each Sonos speaker shows up successfully, but will continually switch between showing the last played song and just “Sonos”. Over and over and over. A better way of putting this is it appears that Plexamp thinks it’s connected, but Sonos has closed the connection.
Strangely, when you play from the Plex app(Vs Plexamp) I am able to continue playing music as long as I don’t choose an option on the “Disconnect” error that comes up.
I am happy to provide logs for troubleshooting, but the reality is that this likely results from a networking or auth issue between Plex and Sonos either due to a recent deployment or an existing issue. Please advise.
As a side note: It’s extremely frustrating to have to take time out of my day on a regular basis to troubleshoot issues that are outside of my control and that do not end up on your Statuspage as an acknowledge outage. The Plexamp → Sonos connection completely opened the door for me to switch to Plexamp and get rid of Spotify, but it doesn’t really feel like this is a supported feature by the Plex team and I’ve seen multiple other posts throughout the years that articulate the same thing. Bugs that have been around forever, like having to hit play 2-4x every time you want to start a new queue are still around and have been for years. Having to magically re-authorize Sonos and Plex talking to each other, on both sides, without ever getting a notification that anything has expired or an expectation of when this auth flow expires. Not to mention the amount of digging one has to do to discover for themselves how to find the pages to re-auth. And that is 80% of all the posts I see on these forums as well as other sources like reddit when people have issues streaming Plexamp → Sonos. It actively drives away users who are interested in your solution and product. Reliability isn’t as sexy as coding new features, but new features that don’t work aren’t sexy from a consumer viewpoint.
