Hi Trackbeo

I will give it a shot. However, I had the problems before the apple tv was connected. 
By the way: I am using a Ethernet via power grid from the router to the Apple TV. All the B&O speakers are connected wireless. 
Also, if the problem was the sleep-command, would Spotify connect then work so consistently?

thanks again for your replies.  

Reminder: soak my opinions in a brine bath...  What I *suspect* is: Because of the way Spotify Connect works -- streaming direct from their server, piercing your router's NAT & firewall, requested direct by the playback speaker -- and not streaming thru your iDevice running the Spotify App -- that the setup & teardown protocol is so complicated that the playback speaker was already completely awake.  Why?  Because it had to tell Spotify's server, over the Internet, where to reach it.  That still doesn't explain why the very beginning of that setup process doesn't fail too -- but it is, at least, different, and probably why it works.

(If you didn't really mean "Spotify Connect" but you meant "the 'More Devices' menu item which shows all my Airplay speakers in Spotify's 'Available Devices' menu", then I *really*, really don't know, because that should work thru the same mechanism as any other Airplay output from that same iDevice.  In my current home setup, Spotify Connect only shows up in the "Available Devices" menu as routing to my Sonos , and all the other devices are off the Airplay menu item.  But I no longer have the A6 and don't remember if it did Spotify Connect, or not.)

Hi. 
they appear (the A9 and M5 - M3 does not support Spotify connect) under ‘devices available’ directly  If I then select ‘AirPlay’ the speakers often times don’t show up.  

Hi Mbolo01,

Unfortunately this is inconclusive as well, I think. (I am no network expert).

When I ping the speakers, I get inconsistent results. Right now, I can ping the M3 and M5 with good results. The A9 is unreachable. 

Only the M3 is available for airplay. The A9 and M5 are available for Spotify connect. 

And now a weird thing: The A9 (and my iPhone) are now listed as connected to ethernet port 3 on my router even though they obviously are connected via wifi. This happens often - devices connected via wifi appear as connected through the ethernet ports. Dont know if this is of any relevance.

I connected to the A9 and M5 separately through Spotify connect. This seems to have woken up the M5, which is now available for airplay. The A9 is still not available for airplay, and cannot be ping'ed

After a power cycle of the A9, it is reconnected to the network (same IP address). It responds to ping and can be connected to via airplay.

I am about to give up here.....

Hi Mbolo01,

I tried to ping all the units. Unfortunately this is inconclusive as well, I think. (I am no network expert).

When I ping the speakers, I get inconsistent results. Right now, I can ping the M3 and M5 with good results. The A9 is unreachable. 

Only the M3 is available for airplay. The A9 and M5 are available for Spotify connect. 

And now a weird thing: The A9 (and my iPhone) are now listed as connected to ethernet port 3 on my router even though they obviously are connected via wifi. This happens often - devices connected via wifi appear as connected through the ethernet ports. Dont know if this is of any relevance.

I connected to the A9 and M5 separately through Spotify connect. This seems to have woken up the M5, which is now available for airplay. The A9 is still not available for airplay, and cannot be ping'ed

After a power cycle of the A9, it is reconnected to the network (same IP address). It responds to ping and can be connected to via airplay.

I am about to give up here.....

MWJ wrote:

I am about to give up here.....

Don't give up!

I don't know your router, but it is really suspicious. Your local area network seems very simple according to your description: an ISP provider router / switch / WiFi with a handful of network nodes connected wireless, you should not have such issues. Ping test resulting in high latency variation, packet lost and host unreachable is a sign of a very serious network problem.

Do you have other issues such as Internet browsing, watching Youtube video or listening to Internet music from your phone? Have you contacted your ISP? Do you have a mean to share your router configuration? even by PM, hiding any private information.

Rel to Wifi devices appearing connected to an Eth port, it could be by design in this type of router, while being very strange ... it is like if you had an external Wifi access point, connected to the relevant Eth port, showing all wireless devices connected to this external Wifi access point. I wonder what would be shown if all Eth ports were busy with real wired network devices?

In another post, where similar issues have been reported, I advised to install the Discovery free app (there is an IOS version). With this app you can see all products and all services advertising themselves on the network via the mDNS protocol, including Airplay, Google Cast and Spotify Connect. Maybe you should give a try and see if same inconsistencies are seen, i.e. by clicking on a given service such as _airplay._tcp. (Airplay receivers), you'll see all the products that have announced themselves so normally all B&O speakers. This will not solve the issue, but may may confirm what you are already seeing through the B&O app or IOS, i.e that service information such Airplay is not propagated well which would double confirm a network issue, so a router issue.

If you could borrow/purchase a Wifi Access Point, plug it to one of the ISP router Eth port, disable the ISP router Wifi and see if you have improvement, this would definitively confirm an issue with the ISP router.

Thanks again

I downloaded the app and will check for inconsistencies. 
I have another router, which I will try to set up later to see if it is more consistent  

Did you ever figure out a solution? 

I'm having the same problem and it's definitely a multicast DNS issue over WiFi. It seems to me that this is a bug in the B&O software or a problem with the WiFi hardware in the B&O devices. I've talked to B&O customer support but they don't yet have an answer.

I have several B&O products, some are wired and some use WiFi. The wired ones work reliably with AirPlay but the WiFi ones don't. If I wire one of the WiFi ones it then works reliably. I also have Apple TVs (some wired, some WiFi) and Apple HomePods (WiFi only) and they have no problems. 

The B&O devices that disappear from AirPlay all work on the network fine: I can ping them and they can stream TuneIn radio stations without any interruptions and if I AirPlay to them they don't ever drop the music. So they are networked and the network seems to be fine. The network is a simple Ubiquiti UniFi network with a UniFi switch and several UniFi access points (that are all wired) scattered around the house. 

Because they stay networked reliably, it seems to me that the B&O devices just stop answering multicast DNS queries for a little while and then start answering them again. 

I've been watching all my AirPlay devices on my network using dns-sd to browse AirPlay devices which runs continuously and says when a device is available and when it isn't. What you don't see in the output is all the AirPlay devices that advertise themselves and never change state.

Here's the output of dns-sd -B _airplay._tcp (on a Mac)... the first column is the time of day, "Add" means the device is advertising itself and "Rmv" ("Remove") means it's not, "4" and "6" mean IPv4 and IPv6, that's why there's 2 of each of them. You can see that 2 of the devices (a Level and a Balance, both on WiFi) come and go every few minutes:

8:58:15.712  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 8:58:15.712  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 8:58:27.608  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 8:58:27.608  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 8:58:39.463  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 8:58:39.476  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 8:58:39.525  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 8:58:39.531  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:07:36.865  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:07:36.865  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:07:36.865  Rmv        1   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:07:36.865  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:09:39.665  Add        3   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:09:39.665  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:09:39.690  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:09:39.690  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:10:22.760  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:10:22.760  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:10:22.760  Rmv        1   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:10:22.760  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:10:26.714  Add        3   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:10:26.714  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:10:26.734  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:10:26.921  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:23:45.648  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:23:45.648  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:29:46.248  Rmv        0   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:29:47.355  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:41:55.044  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:41:55.135  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:44:04.414  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:44:04.587  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:46:12.977  Rmv        1   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:46:12.977  Rmv        0   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:46:17.885  Rmv        1   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:46:17.885  Rmv        0   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:46:27.441  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:46:27.479  Add        2   4 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance
 9:46:27.626  Add        3   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Beosound Level
 9:46:27.626  Add        2   6 local.               _airplay._tcp.       Lounge Balance

I have 2 other Balances, one is currently wired and the other is on WiFi but they are fine right now, but later today the WiFi one will also disappear from AirPlay and come back. I also have 2 Beosound Stages (both WiFi) that seem to be more reliable but they also come and go at times. Again, all the wired B&O devices and all the Apple TV and HomePods whether they're wired or WiFi work reliably.

Hi

Yes I did. 
the problem was caused by my 5ghz network. Apparently it produces interference which gives problems with airplay

Initially I had the 5ghz network set up with a different ssid and password than the 2.4ghz, but that still caused problems. 

once I deactivated the 5ghz network, everything worked fine and has worked perfectly for long now.

hope this works for you.