Pandora Drops on Network Receiver

[CharlesC]

Hello, I have a Marantz M-CR611 network receiver with the Pandora app and in recent months have experienced frequent drop-outs of Pandora.

It never drops out during a song, only after a song is finished, and there is no discernable pattern as to when it will drop out. Sometimes I'll have music for a full hour or more, sometimes the music will continue for several songs before dropping out, and sometimes it drops out after every song (which requires me to display my Pandora stations and re-choose the station, after which it will resume playing -- although sometimes again for just a single song). When a drop-out occurs the display on my receiver shows buffering at zero with no activity.

I spoke to a technician at Marantz (Denon) and they were not aware of any issue, and the unit streams internet radio and SiriusXM fine without any similar drops.

The problem occurs both when I have had the unit hard-wired to the internet with an ethernet cable, as well as when connected via wifi. The firmware on the unit is up-to-date and I've tried rebooting the unit and re-entering my Pandora name and password -- which sometimes helps for awhile before the problem again returns.

Any ideas? Is there anything in the Pandora internet stream that would cause such interruptions? Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

-Charles C.

[TannerPandora]

Hi @CharlesC Sorry for any trouble.

I've asked our support team to reach out to you. They will be contacting you via the email associated with your Pandora account. Please be on the look out for an email from them. 

Thanks for posting on community!

[CharlesC]

Thank you @TannerPandora , appreciate you passing it along to the support team. I'll keep an eye out for their email.

-Charles C.

[CharlesC]

Just wanted to post an update to the community on the status of my music dropping issue. The Pandora support team has been very responsive and helpful in trying to identify what is causing the problem, but so far we don't have a solution.  The issue was recently passed on to a Pandora engineering team -- and I am very hopeful they'll be able to solve it. 

To all those Pandora support and technical staff -- thank you for your continued efforts!  And to everyone else, continue enjoying the music!

-Charles C.

[AlyssaPandora]

Thanks for your feedback, @CharlesC!

Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.

We appreciate your patience while our engineering team looks into this.

[joekix]

Did this ever get resolved?  My Denon avr-4520ci does the same thing.  It continues to play, but it will lose connection and reboot after a few songs, but then end up playing again.  I also notice, I can get it to lose connection by skipping songs 4 times.  On the 4th song, it will lose connection and restart pandora.

[joekix · Accepted solution]

I actually figured it out.  My Denon was losing connection I think when it would try to go to an ad.  I did think it was weird that I never heard ads.  Anyway, I upgraded to the paid version and all is well now.

[CharlesC]

Hi joekix, glad to hear that worked out. Perhaps the signal strength is stronger for the paid version? 

Unfortunately my problem has never been solved.  I do have a paid Pandora subscription, but just the Plus and not the Premium.  I'm wondering whether it has anything to do with my internet provider; I currently have FIOS, and my wife mentioned that when we had Cox Cable it rarely if ever happened.

Fun with technology. Anyways, enjoy the music!

[jandonnell]

I am having the exact problem with my Yamaha receiver.  Firmware is up to date.  No problems with other apps I use.  Just Pandora.

I have repeatedly unplugged my receiver, the problem is resolved but only for a few minutes, then the connection to the network drops, my song is ended, then a new song will start.  SO frustrating!  Please help.  Ive been a subscriber for 10 years and am totally dependent on Pandora for my music

[g5395decker]

My Integra starting doing the same thing.  It sometimes plays only one song and the drops or sometimes it will play for an hour.  I go downstairs, unplug and re-plug in and then it works.  So frustrating.  I have a paid version of Pandora too.  Need resolution soon or I’m dropping Pandora 

[Duoadrift]

Why do I feel like Pandora employs you?  

[Lumpydawg]

While I haven't tested it thoroughly enough, I think I found a possible fix. I have a Denon AVR-X4700, with routing provided by a TPLink XE75 Deco mesh, and my service is Starlink. I bypassed the Starlink router in order to use the faster TPLink. I also have several other Denons and Yamaha receivers, but the 4700 was consistently dropping connection where Pandora streaming would simply stop. After a ton of troubleshooting, I found that the DNS entries for the 4700 were set to 1.1.1.1 (Cloudfare). I decided to try 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS services). After changing that, it played for about 3 hours without dropping connection. I'll try playing it for longer periods before I claim total victory, but give that a try to see if it works for your Marantz. And btw, Pandora was exhibiting the same behavior on my ole Marantz AV-7701 preamp, so it seems to be a Denon/Marantx/Pandora issue.

Good luck!