Are there any advantages of Sonos multi-room over Apple Airplay 2 multi-room?

First, and foremost, you’re asking for opinions on a Sonos user board. In general, you’ll get more favorable to Sonos responses than not. Your question might be better posed on a more generic forum, like Home Theater, or The AVS forum.

All that being said, Apple doing (finally!) their part doesn’t mean Sonos has done their work…or even if Sonos can do it on their current hardware, if there are (and I have no idea if there are) issues with the receiving and/or processing of such a signal. It is by no means, in my mind, a ‘done deal’, I’ll need to get an official announcement from Sonos. And Sonos tends to be pretty close about making such announcement until they’re ready for release, so we won’t even get an indication that they’re working on AirPlay 2 Atmos until Sonos is about to release (or has just released) with a software update that makes it possible on some subset of their speakers. 

Right now, Sonos can only receive stereo from AirPlay 2, so it would be difficult to compare it with anyone else’s Atmos systems. 

However, that may not have been your question. You may be asking about multi-room, and the Atmos issue may have been misleading, so my first statement really applies. 

I don’t know that there has been any discussion about which multi-room system is ‘better’, at least in this forum. I think you’d need to define what ‘better’ means in that question, and you’d likely still get a bunch of Sonos-centric comments, as this is a Sonos-centric board. I can’t speak for other ‘audio’ boards, I usually only use them for specific research, while I spend most of my time here in this forum, trying to assist those who I think I can. 

Hi thanks for the reply (yes I posted here specifically for Sonos users thoughts) :-)

Sorry I should have been more specific on that point. I was comparing AP2 with atmos support on other systems vs Sonos inbuilt app which does support Atmos (though I am unsure whether it supports it for multi-room?) In other words if you use the Apple Music app via the Sonos app it will play in Dolby Atmos (but if you played the same track currently via AP2 it wouldn’t - however that is about to change as per that press release).

So I guess you’re saying Sonos Multiroom feature has no advantage over Airplay 2 (when AP2 gets atmos) ?

I don’t have enough knowledge as to how ‘new’ AirPlay 2 works for multiroom. In the past, it has not only been stereo only, but for each ‘room’ sent to in the AirPlay 2 menu, it has required additional bandwidth. So if you’re sending an AirPlay 2 signal to two Sonos ‘rooms’, you’re using double the bandwidth from your Apple device (etc.). However, if you ‘group’ Sonos rooms using the Sonos software, AirPlay 2 is only sending to a single Sonos device, requiring one ‘stream’ from the Apple device, and then using the Sonos software to share that signal amongst the ‘grouped’ rooms, which relieves a lot of extra processing and bandwidth from the Apple device.

Does that get to what you’re asking?

For me The advantage that Sonos had was the app queue and the ability to add music from many different sources by different people. The shared queue thing was a big thing in my house with everyone in my family playing dj. And that you could save this as a playlist for later use. I also found the multi room controls better. 

But I have used airplay a lot since May. It’s not perfect but it’s way better than I thought. In my use the only advantage Sonos has now is the multi source queue- when it works which isn’t every time. Airplay multi room allows all kinds of speaker brands so not just stuck to Sonos. These controls are easy to use, volume is responsive and speakers don’t randomly disappear from the controller.  Sonos app still sucks and tbh is a liability compared to native apps. Airplay on Sonos isn’t lossless but I can’t hear a difference. 

From my understanding airplay enabled devices download directly from the wifi router. I think I may have even read that they download directly from the web, indeed this is what I found with my AirPort Express (APE) which I had hooked up to an amplifier - when I switched internet off for the APE (via my router) the stream would stop, which would only happen if the APE was downloading directly from the internet.

I’m not sure whether that’s the case though or how it would work for multiple devices but for me personally I don’t think it would be an issue (so long as it works).

AirPlay now lets you let friends queue tracks :)

Regarding multi-device, yeah, I too found the controls via AirPlay more responsive than via the Apple Music app via the Sonos App. I often go through new releases and quickly scrub through tracks to see whether I like them, that would be unbearably slow via the Sonos app.

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So I would conclude that now Airplay will have Dolby atmos, there is no real advantage to using Sonos multiroom unless you want to queue tracks from multiple sources (which I think may be the minority of people, esp if that person has Apple Music)

One thing I do think could be an advantage, is if you have the Sonos Immersion Set you could use the two Era 300s in different rooms, then only put them together with the Arc and Sub in the TV room when you needed them. (Tho I have no idea how much bother that would be)

AirPlay 2 enabled devices will grab the data from your router if the devices being sent to are Apple devices. To my knowledge, there is nothing about a ‘hand off of source’ inherent in the AirPlay 2 signal being processed by Sonos. The Sonos devices would, at least currently, be receiving the signal from your Apple device. Which means the Apple device receives the signal from your router, then sends the AirPlay 2 signal to your router, and then the router sends the AirPlay 2 signal to your Sonos. Hence, automatically double the bandwidth (or more), as once to your Apple device, then back to the router, then on to the Sonos. 

I’ve seen nothing yet from Sonos that they’ll be processing an Atmos signal from AirPlay 2. Only a quote from Apple saying that they are making it possible…

This response, and the entire thread, may be useful to read,