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Meros announced Wednesday the support of Apple's AirPlay 2, significantly enhancing the functionality of some Sonos smart speakers through a software update. If you have a second-generation Sonos One, Beam, Playbase, or PlayGase player: 5, you must update your Sonos iOS app and then use the new application to install the software update.
Be flexible with Sonos products: keep in mind that Sonos speakers do not make Bluetooth or AirPlay 1, so they've been pretty firmly locked into their own universe unless you've added a dongle or software bridge. But once a Sonos speaker gets AirPlay 2, you can do a lot more than just play audio directly on this speaker from a Mac or iOS device.
appears in the iTunes list of audio devices
Perhaps most impressive, all AirPlay 2 speakers can play music in perfect sync. If you have a HomePod or two and a compatible Sonos device, you can now select all of these devices and stream fully synced music to them. Best of all, if you have incompatible Sonos peripherals and you place them in the same group as an AirPlay 2 compatible Sonos device via the Sonos app, these speakers will also be synchronized . I was able to play music in sync in my house this morning, via a set of HomePods, a Play: 5 and the Play (incompatible): 1 in my bathroom.
Sonos AirPlay 2 speakers need to be added to the Home app, giving you access via Siri. To add a speaker, tap the plus button, tap Add accessory, then tap Do not have code, or tap Can not scan. On the next screen, my speaker appeared as a big icon, waiting to be added.
With AirPlay 2, Sonos speakers benefit from Siri support.
Siri control is rather great. I've been able to tell my iPhone to play music in the garage, and in seconds, the music has sprung from the Play: 5. You can also control Sonos devices via the HomePod: When you were listening music on a set of HomePods in my living room, I said: "Hey Siri, play also in the garage", and the music immediately resumed on the Play. : 5 in the garage, synchronized
With all these discussions on AirPlay 2, the AirPlay 2-compatible speakers also do not support the original AirPlay protocol. It's not as robust – everything has a buffering time of two seconds, for example – but I've been able to play a podcast of my iPhone using Overcast (which does not support AirPlay 2) on Play: 5 and my HomePods pair.
It's not because these Sonos devices support AirPlay 2 that they are losing their other existing features. Sonos has done clever engineering to bridge the gap between AirPlay and all the other Sonos speakers in your home. It starts with the ability to group Sonos non-AirPlay speakers with an AirPlay-compatible system to create a larger reading group, but that does not stop there. You can control playback from the Sonos app. You can pause, resume, and even skip to the next track, not just the Sonos speakers, but all the speakers connected together. This extends to checks on Sonos hardware itself. When my (Non-AirPlay 2) Sonos Play: 1 was playing with the Play: 5 and the HomePods in my living room, I was able to press the play / pause button in the bathroom and put music paused everywhere.
This update makes the Sonos One at $ 149 more attractive. This is not just a fraction of the price of a HomePod, but it's now a fully compatible citizen with AirPlay 2. No, you can not talk to him using Siri (he's embedded the Amazon's Alexa badistant), but you can control it by using Siri on your other Apple devices.
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