Having trouble with Speaker groups? Read this first

[kelanfromgoogle]

Hi everyone, 

Thank you for continuing to notify us of the reliability issues you’re facing with your Speaker groups. I escalated these issues internally and the team is actively investigating a resolution. If you’re able, all feedback is appreciated! Please keep it coming by saying “OK Google, Send Feedback." Providing details, such as mentioning that the issue is with the "speaker group," is especially helpful.  As always, we appreciate your feedback and are working hard to alleviate the issues. 

Thank you for the patience,
Kelan

[kelanfromgoogle · Accepted solution]

Hey folks,

Thank you for your continued patience while our team has been working to address the issues with Speaker group functionality. I want to give you all an update and confirm that a fix was identified which will address a specific problem where some devices, when acting as the group leader, cause an issue with audio not playing on other speakers that are part of the same group. However, you may experience that the main (or leader) device will still play the media as expected.

The following devices will cause this behavior when used as the group leader:

- Chromecast with Google TV (4K)
- Chromecast with Google TV (HD)
- Google Home (Fixed as part of firmware update 3.73)
- Google Home/Nest Hub (first-generation)
- Google Home/Nest Mini (first-generation) (Fixed as part of firmware update 3.73)
- Nest Audio (Fixed as part of firmware update 3.73)
- Nest Hub (second-generation)
- Nest Hub Max
- Nest Mini (second-generation) (Fixed as part of firmware update 3.73)
- Nest Wifi Point
- Pixel Tablet
- A small percentage of third-party speakers were also affected

Note: the issue must be fixed on the device that is the leader of the group in order for the other devices in the group to start playing consistently

The fixes are specific to each device type, and are dependent on upcoming scheduled update rollouts. We will update this post as the fixes begin rolling out for each device so you can test your own speaker groups.

There may be some devices that take longer to receive the update so if you’re still encountering issues, you can try these temporary workarounds:

Cast directly: if you’re trying to play audio in multiple rooms, cast the audio directly to the individual speakers.

Restart your devices: If you’re having trouble with your speaker group and are unsure which device is the group leader, try restarting all devices that are part of the speaker group. This can often resolve the issues.

As always, we deeply appreciate the feedback and your patience. If you are still running into issues with Speaker groups, please leave a comment below with clear descriptions of the behavior you're encountering. This feedback will help the team further investigate and mitigate anything else that might be causing this feature to not work as intended.

Thanks again, we're working diligently to get everything back to how it should be.

Kelan

[Yevhen1]

Проблема осталась и я не понимаю, что сложного решить её? Это не сложно, но Гугл по прежнему топчится на месте 🤔

[RussdaFuss]

It's sad. Google is researching quantum computers and can't get a bunch of speakers to play the same music at the same time.

[JohnLand]

I have 15 devices that I want in a group just to play music. I also have another 4 devices to speak commands to control the speaker group etc. Then add in 3 Chromecast with Google TV, 7 Nest Cameras both inside and outside. This all worked until google mucked it all up well over a year ago. 

I have been able to determine that a speaker group will always pick a chromecast audio as a group leader. I believe it creates this in my router logs (user.notice IMPROXY: INFO[imp_verify_multicast_addr@258]: Group) based on the time stamps, I don't have confirmation on this. What I do know for a fact is when adding more than 5 or 6 devices I can see the leader upload choke out the group when the upload get near the 1 mbps. Even with just 5 in the group I can choke it by opening up my live 7 camera feeds. If I close the camera feeds sometimes it will settle back down after a few minutes and resume playing.

Sounds like a wifi router problem? Yah that was my thinking also so I replaced my router setup again for the 3x last May. It's a Wifi 7 with 3 nodes, 2 on main level, 1 in basement in a small 1,000 square foot ranch with 1 Gigabit fiber drop inside.

I have finally found a solution that has been working steadily for the past 3 days with a group of "14 devices" in it! Google sold a "Ethernet Adapter for Chromecast" the store shows it out of stock and the install instructions are still up. You can still get the same adapter from other manufactures. I installed one on the audiocast picked as a group leader. The upload speed has been 3 to 6+ mbps with no stammering or stuttering even with the 7 nest live feeds running! Another very interesting thing the download speeds on other speakers in the group jumped from say 20Kbps to almost 300Kbps.

Again this all worked before google mucked it up and I have no doubt they will muck it up again. Already working on a replacement plan.

[mrxree]

Utterly useless community management

[JohnLand]

Congratulations again! You clowns shoved out another untested firmware version 3.74.437716. Just who is testing this????

I actually had a few weeks of 14 speakers actually playing all together reasonably well. Just last Friday before you again shoved this down our throats I played music for 13 hours.

That's IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Groverjkelley1]

Not fixed as of 11/19/2024.    

Good luck and please try fixing this problem soon 

[mr7uca]

Fyi adding an old Chromecast Audio device to the group of various devices with this issue also allows them to play as a group. I just added one and I finally can play music in a group with my Chromecast with Google TV and my Marshall Acton II Wi-Fi speaker.

[Lardo]

What's weird is, my Google Home Max is the one causing me the issues. Any group it's in, it won't play on any other speakers. 
The firmware for the Google Home Max is different to that of any of my other Home speakers!!! Why is this???

[scragin]

Correct. My Google Max speakers show: 

System firmware version: 275994

Case firmware version: 1.56.275994

My Max stereo pair had been working fine (finally!) when I only launched music from Spotify on my iPhone (change device to Stereo; shows Left playing). But today, it randomly stopped playing. I reselected Stereo in Spotify several times, but it always just stopped minutes later. So I got tired and "Hey Google'd" my kitchen display to play the same list on Stereo and it's been working fine. So many intermittent issues with these **bleep** speakers!

[scragin]

More intermittent info. I tried getting my Stereo Max speakers to play today and they didn't show up in Spotify. When I went to Google Home app, it showed disconnected (like SO MANY times before). I said F-it and listened thru earphones from phone. Then, I noticed that Stereo showed up again in Spotify. And it also showed up in Google Home. WTF? That never happened before. I used to have to reset both speakers to factory, re-register in G-Home and Re-pair. So I guess the moral of the story is that there is no consistent bad behavior--it's the worst of all issues, the intermittent failure in multiple modes. WTF did Google do to create this clusterf--???

[scragin]

Well, my Max speakers were reconnecting on their own for a while, but now I'm having to do the same old factory reset; reregister in Home; re-pair. I haven't even tried any other speaker groups because they likely wouldn't work. I just wanted a single Max stereo pair that works. Unfortunately, it has yet to happen reliably. I'd really like to cut lose with some fine expletives to express what I feel about Google right now, but I'd probably get banned...

[Anonymous]

For several weeks now, my Google has been speaking the weather forecast in English instead of Dutch with some gestures. When I shout Hey Google, what will the weather be like? Today's weather is in Dutch, but when you shout Hey Google, what will the weather be like or how warm, she will speak English. Is there a known bug?

[okey1]

Same here, used to work fine in groups, but now the stereo nest audio speakers do not work in a group All my Google minis and soundbars work fine, It's definitely an issue with the Google nest audio

[Whyvonne]

I have two Nest Audios, paired, two Nest Minis, and all four speakers in a speaker group (House Party).

My morning routine includes playing a podcast from the Nest mini in my bedroom. This went fine, until I tried to get the podcast to play on the  House Party speaker group. The cast icon read "Connecting..." but never connected.

When that didnt work, I tried to change the speaker to any of the other individual speakers and the speaker pair. For the individual speakers, it said it had connected, and looked connected in the Google Home app, but was not playing and speaker volume could not be changed.

I tried playing the same episode from other apps, including Podcast Addict, Spotify, YouTube Music.  The audio would either (1) not connect to any speaker, speaker pair or speaker group, or (2) say it was connected but no audio.could.be heard and the speaker was unresponsive in the Google Home app.

I have (1) restarted the router, (2) removed myself from Public Preview and reinstalled the Google Home app, (3) reset all the speakers.

Any help would be appreciated. Google Assistant was a workaround earlier today, but now Assistant is playing the wrong media (noted in a separate post). It is getting to be pretty frustrating to use Google Home.

[Eddie18]

I have exactly the same problem that only statrted happening today

[Hgodfrey3]

I have 7 speakers total. One home, 6 minis.  I have Google Fiber. I create my group with all 7 but they constantly disappear. The group disappears all the time also. It seems like once I connected the 2nd router, this got worse. The mesh test says it's perfect.  I deleted EVERYTHING, reset all speakers and started over. Still not working! It's so annoying! 

[Dastud]

I have given up on playing any speaker group thru a command or routine. No telling what speaker will play. I now tell my hub to play "whatever" and it plays a Pandora channel. I then add the speakers thru the hub screen and everything plays fine. Never underestimate Google's ability to F things up.

[Ericpapaluca]

Are you going to push a fix for Chromecast Audio? My group is still not working with one nest mini, a nest audio stereo pair, and a Chromecast Audio for my subwoofer. If there's no plan to make it work you should buy these devices back from us. Please let me know.

[BeerNecessities]

I have similar problems with my chromecast audio working with 2 nest minis and my nest hub.  Only sometimes in the morning will I get my nest hub and minis to join in with my chromecast audio and JBL Link 20.  I am aware that google is working on firmwares for other speakers not updated yet.  It would be nice to know how long this could take as I've been waiting for a year for a fix for this.

[CHAZZER]

Agreed.

In fact I am thinking of testing 2 echo's for my outside speaker group to work inside my Google home environment. 

[NF63]

Still facing these issues and while the groups were created and are visible in Spotify, I can no longer edit my groups in the Google home app. 

In fact some cast devices dong show up at all

[ski22]

Glad I found this. I've been fighting this problem for a while without realizing it's a known issue. The only way I found to fix it is to find the group leader using Wireshark and then reboot it.

So annoying; I wish I could go back to the older firmware when everything worked.

I mean, seriously, does Google not have QA labs to test this stuff out before creating misery for its users?

[RussdaFuss]

Welcome to those who suffer from Google's incompetence.
What you write is very interesting. How is the group leader displayed in Wireshark? How do I recognize it?

[ski22]

I actually use MikroTik wireless routers at my house. They have a tool built into the routers based on tcpdump/Wireshark called 'Packet Sniffer.' I simply start it, monitor traffic sent to a random Google speaker, and look at what the source IP is; this tells me the group leader.

If you're running Wireshark on a computer, your wireless router would need the ability to mirror an Ethernet port or mirror wireless traffic to the computer running Wireshark.

I happen to be a Tier 3 Advanced Network Engineer, so this is basic-level stuff for me. Clearly, I understand this is more sophisticated than what the average home user would know how to do, so for most people, this isn't going to be an option.

And to be honest, the latter method is high on the PITA department in general.

The easiest solution would be if Google made it possible for the Home app to identify the group leader or just actually fix the problem by letting users go back to older firmware.

[RussdaFuss]

Thank you for the explanation! You have provided an important answer to a question that has been asked several times. A question that Google has not answered several times.

[RussdaFuss]

Based on your observations, can you say what determines which device is the group leader? I suspect that it is not as simple as automatically always being the device on which the voice command is executed?

[Lardo]

I'm not sure if this helps anyone, but I think I've solved the issue I was having with Speaker Groups on my own system.

Basically, my Google Home Max Speaker would ALWAYS steal control from all other speakers, and none of the others in the group would play anything. The only thing that worked before, was creating a group which excludes the Google Home Max speaker.

Last night I had a hunch that maybe they were connecting on different WiFi bands, so delved into my Router settings. It turns out, the Google Max Speaker was connected on 2.4ghz, whereas the other speakers were on 5ghz. I cannot choose which they connect to, and despite the Google Home Max speaker being closer to the router than the others, it still chose 2.4ghz by default. 

I turned off the 2.4ghz band on my router settings, let everything disconnect and then reconnect, and now they're all on the 5ghz band and weirdly, everything seems to be working perfectly again. 

I have no idea if this is a known cause, or a known fix, or if I will see the problem again in the future, but I hope Google can somehow fix it so all speakers connect on the same band, when a router doesn't give options to choose which one they connect to.

TL:DR

Forced my Google Home Max speaker to connect to 5ghz band on my WiFi router, and it seems to have fixed the groups issue.

[RussdaFuss]

I predict that this won't help for long. Not to mention that it's unfortunately not a practical solution. Nevertheless, thank you for your discovery.

[Lardo]

I'm with you on how long I think it'll fix things for. WiFi band shouldn't affect anything anyway, and maybe just the act of disconnecting them all from WiFi and having them reconnect has kicked it into action for a day or two? 😞

[ski22]

Some wireless routers do not pass multicast traffic between bands by default, or you may need to enable an option that allows multicast to be transmitted between bands. This option is sometimes referred to as IGMP snooping or something similar. Multicast is initially used to determine the groups to which the group leader then streams the music. If multicast packets can't get between Wi-Fi bands, other speakers may not be aware of speakers on a different frequency.

[RussdaFuss]

My lord, that is by far the best and most plausible explanation for a possible cause of the problems here in this forum! Respect! I would have hoped for such a well-founded explanation from one of the Google employees many months ago, but you obviously seem to know more about the subject than many Google employees. Remarkable. If we assume that this feature has always been present in many routers, then that does not explain why music playback on speaker groups worked relatively stably before September 2023. Unless Google was forced to change something about the handling via the multicast protocol due to the patent infringement and the successful lawsuit by Sonos. It should not be impossible to develop a routine in which the group leader can also communicate with the client speakers across networks?!?

[marcolopes]

"Some wireless routers do not pass multicast traffic between bands by default" 🙄

Wireless multicast is a "**bleep**"...let alone the limitations that some routers have (stated by you) https://wirelesslywired.com/2019/05/02/multicast-over-wireless/

So... The BIG question is...

Everyone here that has problems with Speaker Groups (i don't use them - only STEREO pairs) has devices configured on BOTH WiFi Bands? (2.4 and 5Ghz)??

You just have to confirm that to reach a conclusion... Configure every device in the SAME WiFi Band and test the problem! (I have a rule of thumb when it comes to these type of configurations, and keep the same "type" of devices under the same WiFi Band... that's my rule)

[BeerNecessities]

I have confirmed in the google home app that all 5 of my speakers are on 5ghz.  I have an ASUS RT-AX82U router and had an older ASUS router earlier with the same problem.  This has been going on for a year now.  Sometimes in the morning the whole group will work (maybe after device lease expires and resets.  2 days on my router) or after a router reboot.  I think most peoples fixes are just temporary.

[jopnc]

This thread is a bit hard to follow since replies are all over the place, but:

- I've moved all of the speakers from the 2.4 GHz band to the 5GHz band and then factory reset the speakers; no dice.

- I've enabled IGMP Proxying; no dice.

Short of the wireshark assessment covered by ski22, I feel like I'm chasing a concept I'm not well equipped to remedy myself. (Also, I can't entirely turn off the 2.4GHz band, because the smart plugs/lights only operate on that band).

[Lardo]

I think we're all just clutching at straws until Google fixes the issues. Although I'm not holding my breath. 

They're releasing new products all the time, but this just means we'll get less support on the ones we already have. 

Maybe when they rework stuff with the new Gemini AI bits, they'll fix it up properly, like how it used to be 4 or 5 years ago. 

[RussdaFuss]

The question of why users don't simply configure their devices on the same WiFi band comes up again and again.
The answer is simple! Separating the two WiFi bands means losing important and useful functions that modern routers offer today.
I use the FritzBox 7590AX premium model from the European market leader, which is widely used in Europe.
Functions such as uninterrupted WiFi roaming, mesh functionality and intelligent cross-band repeating are then simply not usable. In addition, there is no option available to the user to activate the forwarding of the multicast protocol between the WiFi bands.
Not to mention that this simply cannot be the solution, since the Google devices and speaker groups have worked more or less well in the past.

[tobiasrubin]

The firmware of 3.73 does not fix the issue of low audio streaming  from YouTube Music or Spotify to a Google Nest pair.  I would like to know why Google has yet to resolve this issue.  If it comes to it I am happy to leave Google for another alternative and happy to tell others to stay away from your Nest products.  I can only imagine those who have your Nest Thermostat and software issues they could be experiencing.

[Uncle-Googs]

Agree.  The threading on this forum is about as user friendly and reliable as our nest speakers.  A simple reddit style indent format... where you can follow ONE thread to completion would be nice.  Then the ability to move on to the NEXT thread to completion would do wonders.  Maybe we could actually track to a resolution and conclusion on some of this troubleshooting?!?

But like anything google - they have to mess around with what works... and here we are.

Im all for progress.  But progress has to work to be progress.

This forum format is terrible... and a step backwards on just the very basics of usability.  Just like our nest speakers.  All these features and updates to our speakers to make them 'better'... but the very BASiCS are busted. 

By the way... the mics off....

[Tijhuisje]

Reddit link 1 

Reddit link 2 

Please take this a little more seriously, Google. Your Google Home/Google Nest platform is almost dying right now.

[Ericpapaluca]

I've given up on this and gone and bought a whole new hifi system.

This response to this issue shows you that you can't trust Google to do the right thing or ensure the expensive products they sell you work.

If anyone else wants to jump ship look into Logitech media server (now Lyrion media server) for multi room playback and sync. 

Will not recommend Google products to anyone.