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I have an older Mac Mini, A1347, from late 2014, hooked up to my home theater system for some games on it. Apparently this model doesn’t send audio out through the HDMI cable. My system in that room uses a Playbar, two Sonos 1 players, and the woofer (forgot what it’s called).

 

When I try to use AirPlay so I can play the audio from this Mac through my theater sound system in the same room, that system (based on the Playbar) is not on the list of Sonos devices I can use for playback. All the other Sonos devices in that building and in the house (all on the same LAN) show up, but not the theater setup.

Is this a solveable problem or is there some reason the Playbar and combined system of 4 speakers can’t handle AirPlay when all the smaller devices can?

Playbar is too old to be able to support Airplay. You'd need to target one of your newer speakers and group the Playbar with it. 

Playbar is too old to be able to support Airplay. You'd need to target one of your newer speakers and group the Playbar with it. 

Trying to clarify this.

Since I have 2 newer speakers in the home theater setting, can I “break” the system, start with one of the Play:1 (I think it’s two Play:1 devices), and then still have the same system as before, just based on the Play device instead? (I assume I’d have to rebalance the audio when I do that.)

The Play:1 is also too old to support Airplay. In any case, speakers used as surrounds cannot be used as Airplay targets. 

The HT system has to start with the soundbar

@ratty has set out the only way to use Airplay on speakers that are not Airplay compatible 

 

In addition, AirPlay 2 does not support sending a 5.1 signal to a non-Apple device. So, you can send a 5.1 signal from a Mac to an Apple TV, but you can only send a stereo signal to a Sonos that has AirPlay 2 capability. 

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