Stan wrote:

It really sounds like there some kind of "phone home" being attempted, and when the "call to home" fails the speaker stops. 

Last month I had a weird experience where one of my two Beosound Moments would play 3 minutes of Deezer and then turn itself off.  The other Moment acted normally.   It didn't matter whether I started the song with the moment or with my phone.  I could get around it by starting music in another room and using the join function.

I honestly don't know what solved it, but it lasted a few days.  I might have rebooted the network or something.

Anyway, I agree that the device is probably trying to "phone home" and shuts down if it can't get through for some reason.  That seems very odd.

In my experience, playback issues with Deezer have to do with account login issues.  I ran into this a couple years ago.  I don't remember the exact behavior, but my solution after many fruitless interactions with Deezer support and internet forum searches was to cancel my subscription.  I missed it after a while and re-subscribed so you got lucky in that you only had problems for a few days.

I made a bluetooth connection with my BS Balance and played a song, but it did not pause after 3 minutes.

The wired ethernet connection remained intact btw.

Another update: I let my speaker rest a bit with Bluetooth disconnected and after reconnecting to it and playing another track it once again muted after 180 seconds (this is with the speaker firewalled with no internet access). I did a few more tests prior and it seems so far that this issue is specific to when the following conditions are met:

(A) The speaker is connected to a wireless network with a valid IP address, gateway, and DNS servers, and;

(B) The speaker is thus able to communicate with other devices on the same network (thus features like AirPlay work fine), and;

(C) The speaker is unable to connect to B&O's services for whatever reason.

In my current test config I moved my speaker back to my main network with internet access to facilitate easier testing, but the speaker has been firewalled (nftables "ip saddr x.x.x.x drop") on my gateway.

On this configuration music playback mutes after precisely 180 seconds of the first track after connecting to it via Bluetooth.

If I remove the nftables drop -- thus allowing the speaker full access to the internet -- the issue seems to disappear. We can thus conclude that the speaker is throwing a fit and stopping music playback after 180 seconds if it cannot phone home to do whatever it is programmed to do.

c-larsen: I'd appreciate it if you could try and get a Balance set up in a similar environment to attempt to reproduce the issue. In my exact situation the speaker was firewalled right from the beginning (i.e. no internet access during setup) and I had to wait some time for the initial software update check to time out during the first time setup, but it did eventually let me complete the first time setup of the speaker.

Thank you for participating in this thread as well, much appreciated! Cheers!

Oh one more thing: the speaker now once again shows that its software version is "0.0.0" (after it being firewalled again) despite it originally showing "1.8.10009.11619" back when it had internet access. I didn't reboot the speaker at any point. I'm really leaning towards some kind of phone home that's causing this issue; it could either be a process crash or a timeout that's causing the the speaker to mute.

Another thing I've noticed is that when this issue happens, the exact second the speaker is muted all of the lights on top of the speaker turn off. The Bluetooth connection is retained though, so when I tap "pause" and "play" on my iPhone audio immediately resumes.

Again, appreciate it if this could be looked into. Thanks a lot!

Oh also: the issue that I have where I have to press "Play" twice seems to be related to all this. When my speaker had internet access music would start playing the first time I press "Play." Without internet access the speaker pauses the track immediately after the first time I press "Play" thus necessitating me having to press "Play" twice to start an album.

Anna, good job so far troubleshooting!

I do not intend to divert the conversation but I’m also starting to wonder what the Balance or any other (Mozart) speaker does or shares with B&O and in what way it depends on the mothership in order to work as it should.

Is there basically a server + client relationship where if B&O one day lays off the service on their end, basic functionality will cease to work? I would think no and that it simply would not get any more updates.

If it has to connect to the internet in order to tell which software version it is running on, I assume it’d fetch it from somewhere, so to me it would make sense if it connected back home to whatever server it is getting a response from. But does it really need to do this rather than just check itself locally and inform the version in the app without having to go through a server. I’d still assume informing the app about the firmware version requires any connection incl. Bluetooth only for the sake of connectivity between the speaker and your phone but nothing else.

I never really thought about it when I was in contact with B&O Support the other day but they also hinted that they were able to pull logs from my Balances even when they were disconnected from the internet. So the speaker must upload its logs either at certain intervals (e.g. daily) or perhaps more often like every hour. What if it stopped being able to send its logs for whatever reason? Will it keep trying to connect and stop playing? I wouldn’t expect it to.

Of course a no-brainer is software updates, the speaker pulls new versions from a server. If I don’t get any more updates in the future, it is pretty clear to me the speaker would still be as functional as it was with the latest installed version.

So I’m really curious to know what dependencies it has towards B&O, for what purpose and what implications it could have on the speaker if the cord was cut. There are very likely some differences on this front between the Google Assistant-enabled and non-GA version but I am only curious about the B&O side. Mine are at least without GA. Google probably makes things much more complicated.

Csaba wrote:

but I’m also starting to wonder what the Balance or any other (Mozart) speaker does or shares with B&O and in what way it depends on the mothership in order to work as it should. (...) I never really thought about it when I was in contact with B&O Support the other day but they also hinted that they were able to pull logs from my Balances even when they were disconnected from the internet.

This likely happens through the B&O App. Even if the speaker doesn't have a direct connection to the internet, the B&O App has under normal conditions full access to both the speaker and the internet and is thus able to act as a proxy.

I say "normal" because on iOS at least you can disable an apps ability to access your local network, which I do.

None of this would surprise me the slightest given that B&O has -- in my opinion -- a trash track record when it comes to respecting the privacy of its users. One simple case in point: the BeoSound 1 & 2 both give users the ability (*ahem*) to opt out of anonymous data usage sharing with B&O (you can access this either via the Web UI of the speaker or through the "Configure" menu in the B&O App of said speaker). B&O however does not honor this setting and even if you "Decline" it, it will revert back to as if you have accepted it after a couple of days.

I'm quite OCD when it comes to verifying the settings of all my products (and I remember them), and after I configure both my BeoSound 1 & 2 and declined the sharing of usage data within about two days when I go back to verify the configuration of my speaker it conveniently says that I have accepted them on both my BeoSound 1 & 2.

And people wonder why I have my speakers completely isolated from the internet. On the Balance you aren't even asked if you wish to share usage data with B&O, which is quite disgusting given the price we pay for their products.

All this said if this little issue with my Balance isn't solved sooner rather than later I'll say goodbye to the brand for good...

...and I'm likely one of the younger customers here :)

BeoAnna wrote:

I did a few more tests prior and it seems so far that this issue is specific to when the following conditions are met:

(A) The speaker is connected to a wireless network with a valid IP address, gateway, and DNS servers, and;

(B) The speaker is thus able to communicate with other devices on the same network (thus features like AirPlay work fine), and;

(C) The speaker is unable to connect to B&O's services for whatever reason.

Another update: there seems to be another condition which is required to trigger this issue; the first track played needs to be longer than 180 seconds. I decided to do a little more troubleshooting over the weekend and I was running into a weird quirk where I somehow wasn't able to trigger the "180 second mute" in a predictable manner. I eventually realized that I never had this issue on a specific album I own, and I saw that the starting track of said album is only about a minute long. So a track change within the 180 second interval seems to prevent the mute issue from triggering. I now only test with one album where the starting track is about 10 minutes long and am now able to trigger the "180 second mute" predictably.

What part of privacy sharing are you actually concerned about?

Where I live I have near to nothing to worry about and I have nothing to hide. When offered a choice I still try to only accept required settings and share as little I can, but my life would have a really bad quality if I started to watch all my devices and all my clicks. Same as covid. I have to be able to live my life without thinking what infection might each and every person I pass at all times.