HEOS playback (Marantz SACD 30n) 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]

This issue is ruining our ability to play Pandora on our main stereo, and I am becoming quite frustrated with this, given the amount of money we pay Pandora monthly for this service, and for *how long* Ive been doing so. We have reset our HEOS device to factory defaults in attempts to fix this, but only Pandora has the issue. No other streaming services have this trouble.  

Is this forum monitored by customer service, or is there a better way to get support? If we cant get this working very soon, we will cancel and use our own media, as we did before Pandora existed. 

[MariaPandora]

Hi @milkman76 , thanks for posting.

Sorry for the continued trouble. To help, I've removed the device association from your account. This will automatically sign you out once this change takes effect. Please be patient as this may not happen instantaneously.

Next, click here to select steps specific to your device in order to set up Pandora once more.

If you do not see your device listed, click here for general activation steps.

Let me know if this helps.

[milkman76]

2-3 weeks ago I reset our HEOS device to factory defaults... and set up Pandora on the freshly wiped device. You want me to remove / restore Pandora on that device again? 

[MariaPandora]

Hi @milkman76 ,

We checked your devices but the last HEOS device that was linked was linked on 2023, so we removed these HEOS devices from our end to make sure they are fully unlinked and so you can try to link them again.

Please let me know how it goes.

[milkman76]

Not sure what just happened, but I tried to reply but the "accept as solution" button was where the "reply" button should be. When I clicked "NOT solution" it erased everything. 

The first time I signed into Pandora on my HEOS device was 2023. Since then I have fully reset the device, as Ive mentioned a couple times, once in the last couple weeks. The "link" between my systems and Pandora is a stored hash that contains identifying info about my hosts, network, etc, so the link is in Pandora's control, no? Im a 35+ year net/sysadmin, so this is part of my job. 

I will sign into Pandora again and reply back to this thread to confirm. I assume the "un-linking" was done earlier and I will be doing a good test. 

[milkman76]

Pandora on my HEOS device is playing normally again, as it did the last time we reset it. 

I will update this thread if/when it starts again. It took 2 weeks for the issue to come back last time...