Hi all…
I recently replaced a Connect with a Port in order to be able to play music via AirPlay to a pair of Play:1s in the same physical room (my old setup: I would AirPlay to an Airport Express that sent audio through an amplifier to a Connect that then talked to the Play:1s. Complicated but it did work).
Using the guidance here I did the following:
- Created a Room for the Port and a Room for the pair of Play:1s
- Enabled Group Non-AirPlay Products in settings.
- Created a Group for the above two Rooms.
The good news is that I can get this setup to work in order to stream music from a browser over AirPlay, as desired (I sometimes use a web-based streaming service that Sonos doesn’t support). However, the experience is incredibly clunky: the grouping must be maintained from the macOS desktop Sonos client (S2 groups on iOS do not work), the Group gets unpaired all the time, and often the Port can’t be selected as an output option from macOS Sound settings. Basically I have to go into the Sonos desktop app, fiddle with the Rooms and Groups as well as my own macOS sound preferences and hope that AirPlay to the Port works eventually. The experience is not good.
I’m almost ready to return the Port and go back to the clunky-but-less-clunky way I was doing it before. For less than the price of the Port I could also just replace both Play:1 speakers with One SLs, which would support AirPlay 2 out of the box. The thing is, I believe the Port *should* work as an AirPlay 2 bridge and do so reliably.
What am I doing wrong? Is there a different setup that should work?
Thanks so much for any advice,
Dave
PS. Technical specs: I’m on macOS 10.15.7...haven’t yet tried this from Big Sur. Running Sonos Controller for Mac 12.2 (61182310)