Lets say you have a Gen2 Play:5 which will show up in Airtunes. So you play music to the Play:5 in airtunes and the play:5 will now start playing. Then say you want to have a Play:1 also play that stream … then go into sonos app and group the Play:1 with the Play:5 and therefore the Play:5 will send its sound also the the Play:1.
So you can group a non-compatible Airplay speaker to a compatible speaker so it plays along with the compatible speaker (you have to group in the sonos app).
Because there's not enough processing power on the PLAY:1 in order to interpret the AirPlay 2 signal. So, you can get a capable component to receive and process the signal, and then invoke Sonos' normal "grouping" mechanism to play the sound on both speakers. What you can't do is play the signal on only the PLAY:1. The other speaker, being the receiver and processor, must be part of the group.
On the following page (https://support.sonos.com/s/article/1230?language=en), it says this new feature works with Beam, One, Playbase, and Play 5.
Then, it says:
You can also group any other Sonos speaker with an AirPlay 2 compatible Sonos speaker for multi-room playback.
Peyton,
The real 'key' here, in your initial post, is the word 'group', so you need to do that (group) your Play:1 Speaker to one of the new Sonos AirPlay-2 devices, such as the Beam and your Play:1 will play the music, albeit the other device will do all the real hard work like buffering, syncing and controlling the Airplay stream in perfect sync across all devices.
The 'old' Play:1 Speaker, just doesn’t have the processing power/memory to cope with the modern Airplay-2 demands by itself, especially as a main-controller in a Sonos-group situation, so Sonos leaves the control of Airplay-2 to the 'Big Boys' like the Beam & Sonos One etc. which all have the power/memory to do these things.
great thing is volume is still completely controllable between the speakers. So say you want to play airplay to the Play:1 but not the Play:5. You can make the Play:5 the target for airplay but mute it and group the play:1 with it and play it at full volume. Essentially then just making the Play:5 an airplay hub.
great thing is volume is still completely controllable between the speakers. So say you want to play airplay to the Play:1 but not the Play:5. You can make the Play:5 the target for airplay but mute it and group the play:1 with it and play it at full volume. Essentially then just making the Play:5 an airplay hub.
I have put a standalone 'Sonos One' speaker in my downstairs hallway (by the front door) at home, just for this very purpose. It’s great for Airplaying to all my older speakers... love it !!
I just wish that once the 'Sonos One' is muted by a user, that it would stay muted until the user changes its state... that, for some reason, doesn’t happen, when using Airplay ... I have recently reported this matter as a possible 'minor bug' to Sonos.
