SONOS problems with XT8

[bertucaru]

My 3-node XT8 (hardwired backhaul, tri-band smart connect) XT8 mesh system has firmware 3.0.0.4.386_46061-g9a06866 - the latest public released version.

SONOS S2 has problems in this network

a) SONOS S2 wifi-only setup succeeded in adding 5 Play1 and a Connect gen2 to the system BUT

• when I added a new SONOS ONE Gen2, all other devices disappeared and a new system was created. It was not possible to add the other speakers to the new system,
• even when I reset all SONOS and rebooted ASUS and SONOS, placing the speakers near the router, switched off 5GHz and switched off the closest satellite node to make sure they did not connect to anything except the 2.4GHz of the router. they refused to set up a system and when the SONOS ONE was added the speaker burped and all other devices were impossible to add to the new system

HOURS wasted trying to add speakers which boot painfully slowly, fail to connect, resulting in sore fingers from pressing various buttons until things blink in various colours and chime

b) While S1 had no problems, S2 cannot map an SMB share from a NTFS drive USB-attached to the router; It only maps SMB shares from FAT32 usb sticks!!

ASUS and SONOS support apparently have no fix for this and keep asking me to do experiments which their developers should have done before launching products on the market.
ASUS ( Italy ) keep writing - "unless you do this, we shall not escalate your problem to our experts"!!!!

 

[UrineMonster]

My 3-node XT8 (hardwired backhaul, tri-band smart connect) XT8 mesh system has firmware 3.0.0.4.386_46061-g9a06866 - the latest public released version.

SONOS S2 has problems in this network

a) SONOS S2 wifi-only setup succeeded in adding 5 Play1 and a Connect gen2 to the system BUT

• when I added a new SONOS ONE Gen2, all other devices disappeared and a new system was created. It was not possible to add the other speakers to the new system,
• even when I reset all SONOS and rebooted ASUS and SONOS, placing the speakers near the router, switched off 5GHz and switched off the closest satellite node to make sure they did not connect to anything except the 2.4GHz of the router. they refused to set up a system and when the SONOS ONE was added the speaker burped and all other devices were impossible to add to the new system

HOURS wasted trying to add speakers which boot painfully slowly, fail to connect, resulting in sore fingers from pressing various buttons until things blink in various colours and chime

b) While S1 had no problems, S2 cannot map an SMB share from a NTFS drive USB-attached to the router; It only maps SMB shares from FAT32 usb sticks!!

ASUS and SONOS support apparently have no fix for this and keep asking me to do experiments which their developers should have done before launching products on the market.
ASUS ( Italy ) keep writing - "unless you do this, we shall not escalate your problem to our experts"!!!!

This isn't an ideal solution and I know it's a pain in the butt. But I was able to solve ALL my wifi disconnect problems with smart devices by just splitting out the wifi bands into different SSIDs. Yeah it was a pain to set up going through all my devices but I just left all of them (only the switches, smart speakers, thermostats, etc) on the 2.4ghz wifi band while having my laptops, TVs, phones, etc on the 5ghz band, and so far I've updated to the most recent FW with no problems. I was even able to configure my router into PPPoE mode and get rid of my ISP's gigabit modem.

That being said, I only use wired backhaul. I know some people still have issues with their backhaul dropping to 2.4 so I just got moca adapters and use it that way.

 

[bertucaru]

Thanks

My 3 mesh-pod system is cat6 hardwired as the attenuation from solid walls and ceilings does not allow wireless backhaul of any kind.

I tried setting up SONOS S2 with only the router 2.4GHz radio active, satellite nodes powered off and all speakers within 2m from the router - the SONOS ONE kicked all other 6 SONOS "speakers" off the system and they could not be added back.

Had to reset everything and start over with one speaker wired so as to generate SONOSNET.

As for the USB3 devices with SAMBA shared folders, SONOS S1 had no problems seeing a1Tb NTFS SAMSUNG USB3 SSD with an ~43Gb folder with numerous subfolders and adding it as music library

By contrast SONOS S2 seems incapable of recognizing:-

• the same 1Tb NTFS SAMSUNG USB3 SSD with an ~43Gb music folder
• a 64 Gb FAT32 USB3.1 stick with the ~43Gb music folder
  
  as music library

SONOS S2 does recognise 8Gb USB2 sticks with less than 7.2Gb used space - the max capacity is in reality <7.8Gb - 8000000/1024

BUT if you fill the stick to near max capacity, it returns an error - "//<Meshnode IP or Meshnode Netbios name>/<volume >/<music folder> is no longer available - ....."

I have now mapped 2 such 8Gb USB sticks on two different ASUS Meshpods. to the music library - with a total of around 14Gb SONOS library so it is not a limitation of the size of the music library but some other cause.

NOTE that the DLNA service is not activated in these meshpods. Activating dlna creates several large files in the ".minidlna" folder on the USB devices.
ASUS Mesh pods create a number of other small files on the device when it is shared and a file smb.conf in the /etc folder of the node.

It seems that S2 has some bug which prevents either any USB3 device or large folders on any device to be mapped.

Windows and Android have no problem seeing the SMB (samba) shares which SONOS S2 cannot recognize!

Although SONOS S2 has the tick box "show dlna servers" ticked, it does NOT see any dlna shares form the router with the 43Gb music library. BUT - VLC on Android, VLC on Windows, smart BluRay players, etc. do see the dlna service of the router and can play music and display photos and videos

 

[u1elm]

Hi,

I just created an account here to answer your question.

I too have a few sonos products, beam and four ones connected to my Asus XT8.

After installing the "3.0.0.4.386_46061-g9a06866" firmware, all sonos speakers refused to connect to my wifi.
I troubleshooted for two days, creating different wifi networks and enabling and disabling stuff in the router until I found another forum post that helped me solve the issue.
after installing the "3.0.0.4.386_46061-g9a06866" firmware, you need to fully reset the Asus XT8 devices to factory and set up the network from scratch. Do not restore from backup .cfg file.
After the factory reset of the XT8 system, I factory reseted all the sonos speakers and reconnected them to the wifi. works perfect now. No SSID splitting necessary, no need for sonosnet or cables to speakers. #wifilife.

Hope you can resolve your issue aswell.

 

[bertucaru]

I have older devices - play1 and connect -
I had reset all ASUS and SONOS, turned off satellite node(s) and 5GHz bands.
With or without these crutches, SONOS wifi-only setup worked well adding all the old devices but, as soon as the SONOS ONE was added, all other devices disappeared and could not be added back - many hours of wasted time as both the ASUS mesh pods and the SONOS speakers are LINUX and take ages to do anything, besides SONOS using something like NFC - but 802.11-based to add speakers to the system, with fingers getting sore from pressing SONOS speaker buttons until LEDS flash in various colours and chime.

It was for me much easier to wire one of the, or several, speakers to the mesh pods and use SONOSnet:-

SONOS speakers are then on their own 2.4GHz "spanning tree protocol" peer-to-peer network where each speaker can act as a router to neighbouring speakers.
The signal strength is acceptable for low bandwidth audio playback in spite of thick walls and ceilings in between.
Besides that prevents dropouts or hiccups in playback if other network devices consume WiFi bandwidth.

UNRELATED:- while S1 could index any size SMB shared music folder as music library , S2 fails if the folder is large - 7Gb works, 20Gb fails.

 

[ninjabob]

My XT8 Mesh System will not index (I get the same drive disconnected error) my 400odd GByte USB hard disc on S2. I dug out my old faithful Asus RT-N66u with Merlin Firmware and sure enough it will index the drive. Something not right on the XT8 SMB1 implementation I deduce? Sonos support could not read any system diagnostics sent from the XT8 - they were always corrupted.
To be honest I am going to sell the XT8s as I just cannot get a reliable system up and running with them, I have spent way too much time messing about with different firmwares and getting somewhere and nowhere.

 

[bertucaru]

My XT8 Mesh System will not index (I get the same drive disconnected error) my 400odd GByte USB hard disc on S2. I dug out my old faithful Asus RT-N66u with Merlin Firmware and sure enough it will index the drive. Something not right on the XT8 SMB1 implementation I deduce? Sonos support could not read any system diagnostics sent from the XT8 - they were always corrupted.
To be honest I am going to sell the XT8s as I just cannot get a reliable system up and running with them, I have spent way too much time messing about with different firmwares and getting somewhere and nowhere.

If it formated EXFAT it will not load on xt8. Use ntfs or, if possible at all for your drive, fat32.
Check out which formats ard accepted by xt8 here

Plug-n-Share Disks Compatibility List

 

[ninjabob]

If it formated EXFAT it will not load on xt8. Use ntfs or, if possible at all for your drive, fat32.
Check out which formats ard accepted by xt8 here

Plug-n-Share Disks Compatibility List

The disk works fine on Win 10. Sonos S2 will not index the disk on the XT8 if the contents are over a certain size (7gb) as stated in a prior post. However the RT-N66u will allow the index to work.
The Sonos S2 System (I am using Sonosnet) does not sit happily on the XT8 with all sorts of strange issues. If I could work out a way to return to S1 I would try that but I believe you need to start with one Sonos Speaker that has not been upgraded to S2 to accomplish the downgrade.

 

[bertucaru]

Yes, you need a connect gen1 or another speaker which cannot have been updated to s2 as it is not supported. Several connect gen1 on sale on ebay.

 

[bertucaru]

My XT8 Mesh System will not index (I get the same drive disconnected error) my 400odd GByte USB hard disc on S2. I dug out my old faithful Asus RT-N66u with Merlin Firmware and sure enough it will index the drive. Something not right on the XT8 SMB1 implementation I deduce? Sonos support could not read any system diagnostics sent from the XT8 - they were always corrupted.
To be honest I am going to sell the XT8s as I just cannot get a reliable system up and running with them, I have spent way too much time messing about with different firmwares and getting somewhere and nowhere.

there is a beta merlin firmware for xt8

GNUTon's fork recently added support for the Zenwifi XT8.

https://gnuton.github.io/asuswrt-merlin.ng

Anything related to wifi will be identical to stock firmware, as that portion of the code is closed source, and cannot be changed.

---
Eric Sauvageau - https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/

 

[ninjabob]

there is a beta merlin firmware for xt8

GNUTon's fork recently added support for the Zenwifi XT8.

https://gnuton.github.io/asuswrt-merlin.ng

Anything related to wifi will be identical to stock firmware, as that portion of the code is closed source, and cannot be changed.

---
Eric Sauvageau - https://www.asuswrt-merlin.net/

Thanks, yes already loaded and running fine.

 

[bertucaru]

Thanks, yes already loaded and running fine.

Can you now read large SMB shares as SONOS music library?

 

[ninjabob]

My configuration has changed. I have GT-AX11000 as main unit running Merlin's firmware and the two XT8s as Nodes running the Merlin Fork. Looking at the XT8 forks SMB settings I believe that set to SMB1 the index would work ok as it does on the GT-AX11000 the implementation looks identical. Sadly for me the fork was not available when I was trying to sort out the XT8s so bought the 11000 as a front end for my system as Merlin had his firmware available for it. I have no idea why ASUS original SMB Firmware does not work but Merlin's does and has done right back to my days with a N66U. I have about 40k MP3 tracks indexed taking up about 450gb of space (from memory!). Initial indexing can take an hour but indexing subsequent additional albums take only minutes to complete.

 

[bertucaru]

tried the GNUTON fork on all 3 XT8 nodes but no change in mapping the SONOS music library