Trouble with speaker groups

[Losian]

So I have a bit of a long running problem that's driving me a bit crazy.

Four Nest Minis and two Chromecast devices (one is even brand new Chromecast with TV, tried to upgrade it to see if it helped with this issue and it doesn't.)

Playing music to a speaker group including all of them has two major issues that have persisted.

Sometimes the Chromecasts only will begin to have choppy playback and just go totally garbage. Restarting them doesn't fix it. This even happens to the Chromecast that is literally a few feet from the router (ethernet isn't an option else I would do that..) and does not affect the Minis at all. Chromecast in question is brand new out of box literally.

The more persistent and problematic issue, however, is it will stop playing and disconnect from the media player quite randomly. Sometimes it's fine for 30 minutes or an hour, sometimes several hours, sometimes it works all day, sometimes it's worthless and fails constantly.

I would normally chalk it up to a Spotify issue but, on a whim, I recently decided to try YT Music and see if that worked. Long story short: Same problem.

This leads me to believe it's an issue with the speaker group/Google Home and not the app casting the music. I've noticed if I immediately open the Home app after it happens my speaker groups don't show - any of them - and it takes a few seconds for any of them to show up at all again.

Restarting doesn't help, plus it's a huge pain to have to go through and reset six or seven different devices anyways and that is not a solution. I bought the devices specifically to play music to as a group and that's the only purpose they serve.

Each mini is placed around the house with mic disabled and already has the movement detection or whatnot turned off to minimize issues. Not sure what else to try - I already looked online and can't find any kind of debugging/error log I can look at to even know where to start.

The issue is intermittent - some days it works all day. Some days the music stops after 5-15 minutes several times in a row.

All devices are Google devices - Chromecast on the TV and Mini speakers otherwise.

[Mohsen_nazem]

I exactly have the same issue for months now.

[Losian]

It's incredibly annoying.. literally the only reason I bought any of these devices and it seems like such a simple thing. Just play music, it's a speaker, it's all it's even meant to do! Can't even play two songs today without dropping out and having to re-cast the media. So frustrating.

[Orca]

I suspect a more fundamental issue of the speakers randomly dropping off the network. My Home Max is particularly problematic. It's had factory resets, I've had to make new Home setups entirely, etc. It just crashes all the time. I can reboot it, it finds the WiFi, acquires an IP (tried both static and whatever), and a few minutes or hours later it'll have crashed. The first I know is when I go to cast something, or ask it a question, and it's entirely unresponsive. The Google Home app tells me it's not online again. It's been doing this for years now since some firmware update. All subsequent updates haven't helped, incI. the betas. The 'release notes' for every firmware released on Google's official page say "bug fixes and reliability improvements" or words to that effect. Incredibly unhelpful, cut and paste job. £300 for a giant white paperweight. It actually makes me quite sad I can't listen to it most of the time, because it's a great sounding speaker, when it's not crashing, which is nearly always. I feel disillusioned with, and neglected by, Google.

One thing I can tell you is that turning off the 5GHz band (reluctantly) has made my Google speakers less confused and they stay up longer. Another thing Google recommends on their help page is giving every device a unique name in the Google home app. I had two Minis at one point. By default both were named 'Google Home Mini'  in my router device list, though they had different IPs, but apparently it's the names the Home app uses for each device which need to be unique. I find it incredible that one of the world's biggest and most innovative tech giants can't program a home management app able to discern home devices by IP, but there you go.

I hope you have some joy getting it sorted out. Sadly, I suspect if Google could have fixed some of these long-standing, basic, game-breaking problems, they'd have done so ages ago. I'll be ditching Home as soon as possible and learning to set up something local and open_source like Home Assistant. It's a learning curve and it'll eat up a lot of my time, but I'll be happier than now.

[bobtimms]

Whats worse for me is may be the new google home app. Many times when  my google speaker group doesn't start I can start one speaker device (mini/hub) and add the group through the app or add individual speakers with just a click. I did a tryout on the new app and when I clicked on a device to add to the media from the app on my phone I was only given the option to mirror my phone - not the mini or hub which I started the media player on. I've got plenty of alexas also but I hate the alexa app - to many options to click. Guess I may have to learn it anyway.

[Losian]

Any actual support available, here? I've got hundreds of dollars of products purchased for this one specific purpose (an advertised function of these devices, mind you) that simply fails to work numerous times every day. Is there not some kind of error reporting so I can at least try to figure out what's going on?

[Muddi]

Hey folks,

Sorry for the delayed response. I understand how difficult it can be when you encounter problems playing music on speaker groups. Can you please confirm if you are experiencing the same issue when playing music on individual devices? Are you using a dual-band router? Have you tried creating a new speaker group with fewer devices? Additionally, please provide a list of all the speakers included in the speaker group and let us know their distance from the router.

Looking forward to your response.

Cheers,

Muddi

[Mohsen_nazem]

It is dual band router. When playing on individual speakers, no problem.

i tried different groups with fewer speakers, but i had the same issue.

[Muddi]

Hello Mohsen_nazem,

Thanks for the information. May I know the make and model of your router? To further isolate the issue, please try setting up two of your devices on a different network like mobile hotspot. Please note that you will need two mobile devices for this setup (one will serve as a router and the other to be used to set up your Google Home/Nest device).

Cheers,

Muddi

[Muddi]

Hi there,

It's me again. I want to make sure you're all good — how did the steps go?
 

Cheers,

Muddi

[Muddi]

Hey Mohsen_nazem,

It is possible that it has something to do with the settings on the router. To confirm, have you tried setting up two of your devices on a mobile hotspot to check if you will have the same issue?

Cheers

Muddi

[Princesss]

Hello Mohsen_nazem,

We haven't heard from you in a while so we'll be locking this thread if there is no update within 24 hours. If you need assistance or want to discuss topics, feel free to start a new thread.
 

Best,

Princess

[Muddi]

Hi there,

I just wanted to follow up on this. Have you had the chance to try connecting your devices on a mobile hotspot?

Cheers,

Muddi

[Mohsen_nazem]

The routeur is Bell, in Canada. You think the problem might be from the router?