HEOS App: Payback stops, pauses, is unplayable

[milkman76]

Hello - 20+ year Pandora user here. Ive never had issues connecting to or playing back Pandora media on... almost any computer in that time. 

We bought a Marantz series 30 and SACD30n pair with HEOS a couple years ago. On this HEOS system, we play Tidal, we used to play spotify, local media files, and internet radio without any issues. 

About a year ago, Pandora began stuttering, stopping playback, refusing to change stations, etc, on HEOS. We reset the entire device out of frustration, and Pandora began playing ok again. 2 weeks later, its back to skipping, stopping, unplayable. HEOS/Marantz are almost impossible to get in touch with anymore...

Can anyone please help me understand why this is happening? No other streaming (over bluetooth or wireless) has any issue like this on this HEOS box. Only Pandora. (I didnt see HEOS as a tag, so I couldnt tag this)

[milkman76]

Right, but I already cleared it all out at the start of this thread. This is subsequent to the full factory reset of the HEOS device. Did the factory reset not work to clear this the first time? Should I do it again, or have we miscommunicated? 

Correct - the HEOS (Marantz) is the only device or platform having any trouble in this house. The issue is present if we use the HEOS app on the android device to control pandora, or if we use the HEOS device's own remote control to navigate the internal pandora app manually. 

[TannerPandora]

Hey @milkman76 

Sorry for the delay, I've been out of office and I didn't want another moderator chiming in just in case it things got confusing.

So you mentioned you performed a full factory reset on your HEOS/Marantz it should have required anyone connecting to the device with the app to log in again. From my end this would appear as new more recent connection - which I'm not currently seeing. So there seems to be a disconnect some where,  so really strange on that regard. 

My proposed troubleshooting steps would be for your phone(s) and the Pandora and the Heos apps. Specifically, clearing the cache/app data for Pandora which would log you out, uninstall/reinstall the HEOS app, another fresh install. Both of these would create new creations and remove any cached info on the phone side.

There is no guarantee that this would help or resolve the issues you've mentioned, but it does help to go down the list and check off whats been tried.

Since you've been having ongoing trouble I've already reported your experience with our engineering team for further review and investigation. Since your original post, have you still been having the same experience with playback stopping or unable to change stations?

[milkman76]

We havent seen the issue again today(this is mostly a monday-friday thing, in a work space), nor on Friday, the last time we used it. 

I can definitely remove the HEOS and Pandora apps from our remaining android (Samsung) device, ensuring that local cache is removed, but Im pretty sure we did that already at the very start of this ticket. Perhaps the google play package manager isnt removing the cache, even though we reset it to defaults and logged in again. 

We will do that (on our phones) and reply back to this thread, probably tomorrow. Thank you for your time. 

[milkman76]

This..... has been challenging and frustrating. 

We have been very busy and testing/photographing/constantly resetting these 'apps' and devices to defaults hasnt been possible. 

Today, Pandora is constantly failing, constantly freezing and requiring our HEOS device to be reset to clear it, often coming back from the reset STILL FROZEN (the Pandora application only). We have images and videos of the issue from the other day. 

Today, we tried to totally remove Pandora and HEOS from all devices. While attempting to do so, the Pandora app itself, AND the HEOS app were generating errors that appeared and disappeared too quickly to screenshot. When we tried to logout, error occurred. When we tried to click into the Pandora app on HEOS, an error occurred. Finally I removed all of HEOS, all of Pandora, and signed into everything again. 

We already did this, of course, over the past few months, so I dont understand how a "connection from 2022" could possibly still have anything to do with our end, or any of our systems. Please advise: DOES PANDORA WORK ON HEOS, or is HEOS abandoned by their devs and simply unable to do this? Im tired of this. Here is a photo of what our device looks like when pandora isnt working right. Sometimes it changes to "cant connect" or something, but we havent been able to photograph that. Although I am certain (very senior sysadmin here) that you can troubleshoot this from your end more successfully than we on our end... so thanks. 

I could not upload video of the event occurring. Your page doesnt accept videos. 

Yesterday, 5/5 at around 10-11am PST, not only our HEOS device was failing to connect to Pandora, but also our kids' tablets were not able. Our network here is 100% solid, and I maintain it (and log it, monitor it) myself, so if we had a bounce I would have seen it. We didnt. I hope that this lengthy support interaction doesnt end up with Pandora simply having infrastructure issues. That would be indeed frustrating, in terms of how much $$ we have spent on Pandora Media for the last 20+ years.

Moderator Edit: Merged posts

[milkman76]

Another update. Im probably closing in on the end of my patience here. Im a sysadmin, so I did what I tend to do, and I reconfigured everything from the ground up, AGAIN, to prove everything. 

1. I reset my entire Marantz SACD 30n to defaults, again. 

2. Reset both android devices' Pandora app, wiped both devices' HEOS, logged back in.

3. Instantly, Pandora wont even connect at all through my HEOS app(on my samsung phone). Error says "unclassified error" and Pandora's front end doesnt even load for me anymore. 

4. My wife's samsung phone, identical to mine, also had its HEOS wiped and everything logged in again. Her device, somehow, can play Pandora through HEOS and she doesnt get the "unclassified" error in the same exact place mine shows an error.

The Pandora app plays fine on both android devices, including mine. Its just the HEOS/pandora integration. Hopefully Pandora corp arent using "AI" slop nonsense to run their network operations (nor HEOS/Denon...) because this isnt shockingly difficult. Again -- are Pandora and HEOS not compatible? It seems like it to me.