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Quick question. Just getting everything setup and would like to understand one thing with respect to Apple Music. Assume I’m an Apple Music Subscriber and I’ve got it all setup correctly in Sonos S2.

Here is the question:

  • Within Apple Music, I have a song “downloaded” for offline listening.
  • Inside the Sonos app, if I play that song, will it stream it from my iPhone to the Sonos device? Or will it stream it from the Apple Music server?
  • Same question but lets say for an entire playlist. A playlist that I’ve created inside Apple Music. If I have told Apple Music to download the entire playlist to my iPhone, what will sonos do when I ask it to play that playlist? From within Sonos App.

I’m actually hoping that for downloaded songs on my iPhone it still streams it from the Apple Music server. That way it won’t burn up my battery on my iPhone and will instead offload it to the device for streaming. It should be a choice I suppose. That way you could decide for various conditions what works best for you. For example, if I’m at a remote cottage that has crappy wifi, perhaps it’s better if it streams the downloaded copy from the iPhone and not from the apple server. But if I’m at home on my fiber internet service with unlimited bandwidth, it might as well stream from the Apple Server and not task my iPhone.

 

 

Unless you’re using AirPlay 2, it can not stream from your phone. Back in August of 2019, Apple made a change that blocks companies like Sonos and others from playing directly from content on your phone, except when using AirPlay 2. 

Ok thanks for the answer. So it seems like the best way to manage my music overall is as follows:

  • Manage all my playlists and such inside Apple Music.
  • Download music for “Offline listening” onto my iPhone for when I’m out and about in the car or whatever.
  • Then when I’m using Sonos speakers, use the Sonos App to access all my Apple Music content (playlists, etc) and let it stream via the Apple Servers (leaving my phone completely out of it - it’s basically a controller and that’s all).

Note that my old method prior to using any Sonos products was to simply airplay to Apple targets that were usually all Airport Express devices plugged into amps (then speakers, etc). That worked pretty good. But then I added in a single Sonos One to the mix. Eventually the Sonos One would always get out of sync with all the other devices during simultaneous Airplay to multiple devices. So I finally gave up and drank the Sonos Koolaid. So that’s why I think the Sonos App would be better for playing music. Right?

However, I think I just had a revelation. I suppose now I could also use Airplay if I really wanted to and the SYNC issue would not be a problem. Because I’m guessing it would only Airplay to a single device in the group. Then I’m guessing the Sonos device would pass it to the other sonos devices via it’s own 5gz network thus alleviating the sync issue. Maybe I’ll formulate a new Airplay question.

Note the Sonos app doesn’t play music. It is merely a remote control that tells the computer on each speaker what to do. 

AirPlay 2 goes around that system, essentially, and then you’re using something on the Apple device to actually play the music, and then sending the result to the Sonos speaker which acts as a simple receiver of the signal. 

In practice, I’ve found the processing power on my iPhone for multiple streams, or perhaps even bandwidth from the device, to be limited, so I have always found it more robust to send a single AirPlay 2 stream to a Sonos device, and then use the Sonos software to group that single ‘receiver’ with any other Sonos speakers. That way, my iPhone and/or bandwidth isn’t overwhelmed . 

To add a couple of points to Bruce’s excellent analysis..

  1. Downloaded content will play using the Sonos app if the Sonos system can access the Apple servers, because that is really where it is playing from.  If the system is offline the content is unavailable.  This is Apple DRM and has always been the case, even before Apple scuppered the ‘on this iPhone’ facility, which was for music bought outright and stored on the iPhone
  2. If Airplay is used to send the content to a Sonos speaker then it will also play on any grouped speakers (grouped within Sonos).  This has absolutely nothing to do with 5GHz direct routing, which is relevant only to communication between Sonos devices in a HT setup

To add a couple of points to Bruce’s excellent analysis..

  1. Downloaded content will play using the Sonos app if the Sonos system can access the Apple servers, because that is really where it is playing from.  If the system is offline the content is unavailable.  This is Apple DRM and has always been the case, even before Apple scuppered the ‘on this iPhone’ facility, which was for music bought outright and stored on the iPhone
  2. If Airplay is used to send the content to a Sonos speaker then it will also play on any grouped speakers (grouped within Sonos).  This has absolutely nothing to do with 5GHz direct routing, which is relevant only to communication between Sonos devices in a HT setup


Thanks John. Regarding 1, I just wasn’t sure if Sonos had the ability to setup a stream from the iPhone to the Speaker to play any “cached” songs. Sounds like the DRM prevents them from doing that and it ALWAYS goes to the Apple servers to play any Apple Music content.. I guess I could do a simple test and convince myself LOL.

Regarding 2. So Sonos only uses the 5ghz direct routing for HT setups? So if I have just a vanilla group of speakers all grouped together, it always uses WIFI for streaming the music to all speakers in that group? Sorry for the questions, but I wasn’t able to find this information.

Note the Sonos app doesn’t play music. It is merely a remote control that tells the computer on each speaker what to do. 

Yep I know. I’m just trying to understand exactly how it deals with cached Apple music content (downloaded). It sounds like it can NOT play cached Apple Music content because of DRM issues. ie setup a stream from the speaker to the iPhone to retrieve the cached file instead of going to the Apple Servers for the same content.

So Sonos only uses the 5ghz direct routing for HT setups? So if I have just a vanilla group of speakers all grouped together, it always uses WIFI for streaming the music to all speakers in that group? 

Wireless data traffic between speakers uses WiFi if the system is in WiFi mode and SonosNet if it is in SonosNet mode.  In SonosNet mode the ‘best’ paths are chosen using STP,.  But in either mode Sonos may prefer to use direct routing rather than the ‘default’ path.

Just FYI, every group has a ‘group coordinator’ - the speaker from which you start the group, which directs the traffic, handles the timing cues for sync etc.

The Move is an exception to this, as it doesn’t connect to SonosNet and doesn’t use direct routing.  (At least, I think that’s right.)

I found some great information from this guy Mike Connelly. https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/7381

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