AirPlay cuts out on pause

I can understand your frustration, but there are loads of Sonos users who don’t experience this problem (my wife, for example, Airplaying to various speakers in our Sonos system).  It may be some obscure combination of conditions, at least some of them local, that causes this to happen.  That is no comfort to you, I realise, and you need a solution for your system, but this is not a widespread problem or there would be thousands of posts about it, not a few 10s.  Your request for a technical note implies a generic problem, but there isn’t one.

Hi all.

This was brought to my attention on another post - thanks @joycean 

I have done some investigating and found out the following:

• AirPlay 2 requires that a buffer be filled prior to playback. Airplay 1 does not. As live system sounds cannot be buffered (you’d need time-travelling software code), when AirPlay-ing from macOS system settings AirPlay 1 is always used.
• AirPlay likely times-out if no data is sent (ie. silence), though I cannot find a figure for this period.
• AirPlay 1 is not supported by Sonos, but tends to work. Therefore, if you are using AirPlay 1 and sending all system sounds to Sonos, it works, usually, but may have issues like those described here. As AirPlay 1 is not supported by Sonos, we will not be addressing these issues.
• macOS Applications (like Safari, Apple Music and Spotify) do support AirPlay2, but you must initiate the connection from that application, not the Mac’s settings. The media stream can then be buffered to the speaker and synced for playback.

In our own testing, we were unable to produce this issue when using AirPlay 2. If you experience these issues while using AirPlay 2 (initiated at the application level rather than at the system level), we would very much like to hear about it. Please get in touch with our technical support team if this is the case, as this is something that we would want to resolve (be it a networking or software issue).

It would be interesting if any of you could recreate the issue as you have before, but while having one media paused (YouTube for example), start something else playing over the AirPlay 1 connection - when you restart the paused media, does it play through Sonos immediately? I suspect so, as the second media playing will have kept the connection to the speaker live. I suspect @eldiets1’s fix of having a minimised window does exactly this.

I hope this information helps you all to use your Sonos speakers with your Apple products in a satisfactory way.

Thanks a lot @John B and @Corry P for your inputs. I hope you understand the frustration it produces in your customers to join the Sonos family in pursue of great audio and connectivity, only to find the simplest of use cases doesn’t really work all that well.

Maybe supporting AirPlay 1 in full would help, judging by the comments above… just a suggestion! :)

Looking at immediate solutions, I’ve just found in a Reddit thread a third-party solution: Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil. It’s a bit pricey, but well worth the $ considering it gets the job done and supports a ton of audio targets beyond Sonos.

To be fair, we have never claimed to be making computer speakers. The fact that it works is at all is just a side-effect of the technology by which music can be streamed to Sonos, primarily intended for iPhone, iPad, iPod users to play their iTunes (Apple Music, now) libraries stored on those devices. That it works for video sources too is a welcome bonus, but these are compressed formats that can be pre-loaded, just like Sonos’ normal mode of operation.

AirPlay 2 was released before Sonos ever supported AirPlay, so AirPlay 1 support is not something we’re looking to develop. 

Those are respectable product design choices, I just think the following particular use case is under-served:

• Home office where a lot of hours are spent, music is often playing in the background
• Mac computer
• Ethernet cables to everything, including computer and Sonos, because who wants to deal with WiFi issues when cabling is viable
• Music library in non-Apple cloud music service (YouTube Music in my case)

The Sonos Desktop App in this has very limited functionality in contrast with the YouTube Music web app and its desktop incarnations, so generic streaming via AirPlay is the way to go.

In any case, I understand products can’t be everything to everyone. Sonos clearly pours a lot of talent and sweat in theirs, so all is good :)

Just to be clear, all Sonos employees are clearly marked as such, and I am just a fellow user.

Even so, I think there is zero chance that Sonos will support Airplay 1.  Until Airplay 2 came along, Sonos made it pretty clear that they thought Airplay 1 was technologically flawed and unreliable, and they wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole (my choice of words).

Of course you have every right to highlight what you believe to be a gap in provision, and have certainly argued your case clearly. 

Hello Corry,

in the documentation article about Airplay https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1230?language=de it is clearly being stated by Sonos to use systemwide sound output on a Mac.

In fact, I am wondering how you propose to use AirPlay2 in Safari video playback for sound transmission - using the Airplay icon in a video player to switch to Sonos would either stop the video from playing or to continue playing audio internally on my Mac (Big Sur).

Apple Music is working fine, but I am looking to use Sonos and Airplay in Safari for video streaming without the very annoying audio timeout happening in system-wide audio output.

Also when switching to my grouped speakers, the mute on my One SL is being lifted. This speaker is muted to activate an Airplay group with two Play:3s but not to play itself.

Do you have a solution to this issue? 

Unfortunately this is still an issue after I bought a pair of Sonos One last week.

I found a work-around (doesn’t work 100% of time though) which basically uses Apple Script to simulate the action of connecting to Mac’s default speaker and then connect to Sonos, which I then trigger with one key press using Better Touch Tool

tell application "System Preferences"
	reveal pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "System Preferences"
		tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
			click radio button "Output"
			tell table 1 of scroll area 1
				select (row 1 where value of text field 1 contains "Macbook Pro")
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

tell application "System Events"
	tell application process "System Preferences"
		tell tab group 1 of window "Sound"
			click radio button "Output"
			tell table 1 of scroll area 1
				select (row 1 where value of text field 1 contains "Sonos")
			end tell
		end tell
	end tell
end tell

if application "System Preferences" is running then
	tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end if

I wish I would have seen this thread before buying 2 Sonos SL Ones for my Mac.

I wanted to connect my audio output (system wide) to the Sonos configured as a stereo pair.

It works until I stop the music for a short while and then I need to reconnect. Mac (Big Sur) does not even detect that it lost the connection, the sonos speakers are still connected.

For your customers this is a really frustrating problem and it is not very customer minded to tell them to **** off and whine with Apple. Sonos should, as a trusted partner of Apple, talk to them and somehow work together on a fix, not push the work onto the customer's shoulder. Reporting an issue to Apple as a regular small customer makes practically no impact at all. Sonos states that it only supports Airplay2 and that Mac OS is sending Airplay1 … well nice to know, but that is something that the tech people of Sonos should discuss with Apple to get a fix implemented.

I am now thinking of sending back my Sonos and never look back at the company … this is really not an acceptable customer support. This problem should be put as a warning to all potential Sonos buyers because it is not something that is evident to know/understand as a non tech buyer.

*Moderator Note: Modified in accordance with the Community Code of Conduct.*

Sonos will never add Airplay 1 to Sonos. It is a flawed technology that Sonos deliberately eschewed when it was the only option.