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Here’s a weird one.

I have a variety of Sonos speakers and other Airplay 2 devices. I generally play to my speakers via Airplay 2 using iPhones, iPad, Macs, or AppleTVs. All is well, even with the vilified new Sonos app.

Except…

Airplay playback from Apple Music or Radio Paradise to my Sonos Move stuttered. Unlistenable, and only to the Move. Curiously, Sonos Music via the Sonos app was fine. This perhaps because of the Sonos wireless backchannel?

So, in a fit of system-beating pique, I added Apple Music and Radio Paradise as connected services within the Sonos app. They both play fine if used from within the Sonos app. Hmm. Gets better. After playing Apple Music thru Sonos app, I can return to the Apple Music app and play directly and flawlessly from there.

The playback remains fine until the speaker turns itself off. After restart, the stuttering returns, but a quick play thru the Sonos app restores things. 

Any ideas what’s happening?

Makes no sense to me. I’d likely submit a system diagnostic (or perhaps several, after each case) within 10 minutes of experiencing this problem, and call Sonos Support to discuss it.

They would likely be able to pass on this ‘hard’ data to a coder, and get it prioritized. Although I’ve not seen any other posts about it, so the priority may be low. But every coder I’ve ever worked with prefers hard data for the bugs, not anecdotal data. 

Hmmm…that is strange….

  • I streamed AppleMusic tracks via Airplay2 mixed in Lossless and Spatial Audio (the later of course was not in Spatial Audio output) to my Move2 in stereo pair.  No skipping or stuttering. 
  • I streamed AppleMusic tracks via the Sonos App mixed in Lossless and Spatial Audio (the later of course was not in Spatial Audio output) to my Move2 in stereo pair.  No skipping or stuttering. 

Sounds like a network issue. Follow @Airgetlam’s advice to submit a diagnostic as outlined.

A lot of times AirPlay 2 does a hand off to the speaker it is “streaming to”, and the source device just acts as the controller (play/pause). So the audio stream will take the same network path as playback via the app, but I don’t know that it is guaranteed to be the same stream (encoding, bit rate, etc): almost certainly the app-requested stream is going to be different. None of that helps fix your problem, but it might at least offer some insight as to why they behave differently. 

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