Can you play Spatial Audio from Apple Music over AirPlay2

I constate same issue.

We need to play music from Sonos S2 App 😢

However, the experience is really different. Dolby Atmos is crazy.

I have Arc, Sub 2nd Gen. and two One.

Lossless and Dolby Atmos are two different things. Dolby Atmos is an object-based surround sound technology while lossless is a type of audio compression that ensures there is no data loss which results in higher quality audio.

There are currently two ways to play Dolby Atmos music from Apple Music on compatible Sonos speakers:

1. Directly from Apple Music on the Sonos app
2. Directly from the Apple Music app on an Apple TV 4K

There is currently only one way to play lossless music from Apple Music on compatible Sonos speakers:

1. Directly from the Apple Music app on an Apple TV 4K

Neither Dolby Atmos nor lossless is supported on Sonos over AirPlay.

I’m surprised to see Spacial/Atmos go live for Apple Music on Sonos but no support at all for high resolution playback for those of us without an Arc, Era etc. 

I was excited to play Apple Music on Sonos from today and see an Ultra HD (or even HD) tag show up - but nothing. It’s very much all or nothing - Atmos or vanilla…

Anyone else keen to get high res Apple Music content on Sonos?

Or is it already high resolution, just without a tag??

From my experience, it’s not too surprising.  Apple has to provide the data stream obviously, and Sonos can handle atmos and lossless since they do both with other streaming services.  We’ll never know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Sonos had to pay Apple a bit of a fee to get Apple spatial, since it will help Sonos sell more speakers and probably not a lot of new Apple subscriptions.  Maybe.  Don’t who’s the horse and who’s cart in this situation, or even if it’s the right metaphor.

Lossless on the other, probably doesn’t sell quite as many speakers, but I am guessing.  Does Apple get more subs if they have lossless through Sonos?  Don’t know.  Doesn’t help them sell more homepods.

The fact that you can’t tell whether you are listening to high res or not unless you have a tag to tell you what you heard...doesn’t make it sound like it’s really that important to your listening experience.  I mean, maybe just forget about it and enjoy it?  I don’t mean that to come as a knock on you specifically, I think we (myself included) sometimes get too caught up the specs that we lose track of whether it really makes that much of a difference.

Thanks for the reply. That all makes sense, especially the’ what’s in it for Apple’…

I tried as you said, play apple music from the sonos app, dolby atmos appears on the image with the artist, but if I check in about my system it appears that:

Audio in:

Normally it should appear

Audio in: Dolby Atmos

The Sonos app will only show the audio format after “Audio In:” when playing TV audio. It won’t show anything when streaming music from the Sonos app or a mobile music app.

Thanks for the answer, I understand..
If instead I give play to the apple music application installed on the TV, in the audio in: appears Dolby Digital 2.0, am I to understand that only with apple tv does Dolby Atmos work?

@GuitarSuperstar do you you know if a voice request to play Apple music, either via Sonos Voice Control (SVC) or Alexa, will result in atmos music on an Era 300 or Arc?  

I would expect it to be the case with SVC, and maybe not via Alexa.

Dolby Atmos audio will only work if played from the Apple Music app on an Apple TV 4K. It won’t work on the TV’s native Apple Music app.

Not sure. I just set up my Era 300s late last night and am planning on testing it out tonight. I don’t think it works using Alexa because it hasn’t worked in the past. I have never tried it using SVC. But I’ll let you know.