AirPlay finally made its way to the Sonos speakers

Sonos announced on Wednesday that it had begun to be deployed Apple's AirPlay 2 protocol support on its wireless speakers.

As previously noted, AirPlay 2 is fully supported only by the company's Sonos One and Play: 5 speakers and its Playbase sound bars. Sonos users will need one of these speakers to directly activate the AirPlay 2 control, but if they have one of these devices in a larger installation, they will be able to control any other Sonos device.

Apple deployed AirPlay 2 as part of its iOS 11.4 update at the end of May, allowing its HomePod speaker to reproduce the same sound on multiple speakers in separate rooms, as well as to play a pair of HomePod in stereo. (The Sonos speakers already had the latest feature.) Several third-party audio manufacturers have promised to include the AirPlay 2 feature in their speakers, including Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Marshall, Pioneer and Bowers & Wilkins. With Wednesday's update, Sonos is the first non-Apple speaker manufacturer to support the protocol.

I tested a beta version of the AirPlay 2 update on Sonos One and Sonos Beam last week. it works as expected. You can start any audio playback from any iOS device (or Mac), go to the usual AirPlay menu, and send it to the appropriate Sonos enclosure with little delay, and it automatically appears in the list of compatible devices. You can use Siri from the source device to start music and control the volume after adding the speakers in the Apple Home app.

Sonos notes that you can use the built-in One and Beam Alexa Assistant to control the music started via Siri controls, though, to be clear, Siri is less involved here than on the HomePod where it's integrated from zero. There is at least one anomaly with the update: if AirPlay is enabled on non-Sonos speakers in the same area, you can not control the playback or volume on the Sonos speakers from the screen. locking of an iOS device. Instead, you must use the Sonos app.

Nevertheless, the update is important for users of Sonos. While Sonos has generally been successful at integrating most major streaming services with its application, the company has made it difficult to play anything from sources that are not officially supported on its speakers. The company still does not support Bluetooth streaming on its devices, and it has not supported AirPlay at all before this latest update. For Apple Music users, currently one of the two most popular music streaming services in the United States, it also allows a minimum of voice commands since Alexa's Alexa assistant does not support voice commands for Apple Music.

Although a more complete integration with Siri is unlikely for a speaker that is not manufactured by Apple, Sonos continues to promise that it will bring additional support to the Google Assistant but he only said that he was hoping to launch this support by the end of 2018. Sonos, as a company, filed an IPO earlier this month, stating that it sold 19 million products as of March 31 in connection with its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. [ad_2]
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