Sonos ZonePlayer Airplay 2 Support

No one knows for sure, but we can have a bit of guessing, based on the way Sonos works now.

1) They won't be able to act as "receivers" for the signal, since the hardware isn't likely to already be in the Zone Player that would connect.

2) They should, however, be able to stream if you have another player that can act as a "receiver". I believe at some point the Sonos One was indicated to be one of the "receivers", and there's a possibility that the PLAYBASE might be as well, although we're not sure. Kind of like the way you can stream to a zone player from a line in currently, many of us are assuming.

3) Sonos won't tell us until they're ready to actually release it. Since Apple hasn't officially released AirPlay 2 yet, except in beta, it's unlikely that Sonos has put a lot of effort into it, since it's likely been changing frequently. Once Apple officially releases it, I'd guess that Sonos will take 3 5o 6 months in order to code it, test it, beta it, and release it. That's a complete guess. It might be longer, it might be shorter. We will know when Sonos is ready to talk.

MacObserver reports that Sonos has officially announced which products will have Airplay 2 capability. Sonos One, Play:5, and PlayBase will be the only existing products that will gain Airplay 2 compatibility. Still no more details about how this will be implemented, i.e. will any non-compatible Sonos products that happen to be grouped with Airplay 2 compatible products be able to play together over Airplay 2? https://www.macobserver.com/news/tmo-scoop/sonos-airplay-2-details/

So, you skipped over the sentence that says " Sonos will allow AirPlay 2 to work on any speakers that are actively grouped with an AirPlay 2-compatible speaker."? Or perhaps they changed the article after you read it?

I'd also encourage you to read Sonos' own information, which probably is less filtered than through a reporter, although I'll bet that both legal and marketing folks had a run through on it :)

https://blog.sonos.com/en/airplay2-coming/

Besides how good it may be, how does that sit 'legally' with Google? People here keep saying Sonos can't allow YouTube sound on Sonos as it's against the T's and C's of the service to split the video and audio in this way. Does turning the device display off stop the audio with Airplay 2?

Besides how good it may be, how does that sit 'legally' with Google? People here keep saying Sonos can't allow YouTube sound on Sonos as it's against the T's and C's of the service to split the video and audio in this way. Does turning the device display off stop the audio with Airplay 2?

Well I presume it must be legal as the SonosTube App lets you play YouTube on Sonos nowadays anyway... I’ve not seen anything that has tried to put a stop to that App. If that counts for anything?

@Airgetlam, I didn’t skip over that point. I just didn’t feel that was info from Sonos and it seemed like the author’s speculation to me. I now see the official statement from Sonos thanks to your link. It is what we all hoped to hear.

Not sure. Hundreds of times people ask for it and are shot down saying Sonos can't do it as it's against the terms of service etc. and a large company are very different to a 'bedroom' coder etc. Maybe things have changed as you say. Maybe technologically it's doing something different. Maybe it stops the audio if you close the display. Or maybe it was just easier to defend Sonos' stance and inaction by saying they weren't allowed to do it. I'm interested to know what's changed as Sonos are bigging up this new functionality.
Maybe now all those 'freeloaders' can now listen to YouTube to their hearts' content on their Sonos system.

saldog, no worries at all. And, in fact, I've seen articles change after posting with no "edit" moniker. On the web, there's no guaranty that what I see is the same thing that you saw. 🙂 Happy to provide the "official" link. I tend not to actually follow Sonos' blog, I get most of my information here in the boards.