Airplay and sorround simultaneously no-no?

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I just replaced my two Play:1s that I was using for sorround with my playbar, with two Ones Gen 2 because I missed. I tried different things, but I was only able to do either airplay as a group or sorround. Googling a bit told me that it’s either sorround or airplay. Can this really be true?

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AirgetlamAnswer

When you 'bond' a speaker to a PLAYBAR, the PLAYBAR then becomes the "control" device and as such your AirPlay 2 would be disabled. You're better off reconnecting your two PLAY:1s to be used as surround speakers, and use the Sonos One gen 2 speakers elsewhere, where they can be used for AirPlay 2, and then you can "group" the PLAYBAR's room with them as well, if desired.

Bruce

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K6mrn

Contributor I

When you promote a product to have airplay 2. You dont expect the feature to be taken away.

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Tejs Dyrvig Ernst

No one said you were dumb, just use common sense and quit being a Sonos disciple. Will let you grow as an individual. Why do you think Apple sells a ton of Pro type devices for higher prices and higher margins. Because they are the best of the best of their products. They don’t put that tech in the lower end products first it goes to their top line products. Any company can figure that out and follow that model.

Consumers want that and Apple’s model has shown that as have others. Wake up and learn. I know I will be returning my PlayBar until Sonos updates it. Not paying more for less tech wise and many others feel the same, as in all the forums, constantly seeing the similar comments.. Just pure laziness on Sonos part!

Then buy a Playbase. Basically the same sound and features of the Playbar but with Airplay. But difficult to wall mount of course ;)

But really, in my opinion, Airplay is inferior to using the Sonos-system. Using the Sonos-app allows multiple users to change music, continue playlists etc from different devices without interrupting anything. With Airplay, you are stuck using one device, which can’t be used for anything else when streaming music and which will be drained from power in doing so.

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PorthosJon

Lyricist I

Then buy a Playbase. Basically the same sound and features of the Playbar but with Airplay. But difficult to wall mount of course ;)

But really, in my opinion, Airplay is inferior to using the Sonos-system. Using the Sonos-app allows multiple users to change music, continue playlists etc from different devices without interrupting anything. With Airplay, you are stuck using one device, which can’t be used for anything else when streaming music and which will be drained from power in doing so.

Your information on Airplay is incorrect. I use it constantly as well as using my phone for a dozen other things at the same time. It does not drain a lot of power to Airplay2 to devices, as it doesn’t use bluetooth necessarily, it can stream over WiFi, which is why it can be multi-room, even without Sonos Devices. Airplay2 is part of Homekit, which uses whichever device is acting as the “hub” to provide the signal to Airplay2 receiving devices.

On other notes: I agree with others that the Sonos app can be better to share, but for those of us that don’t want Amazon and Google to listen to our conversations and start targeting us with advertisements, we don’t have an option other than Siri for voice control. Since Sonos has declined to update their app to be part of the Siri Shortcut system, I can’t even make shortcuts for the most common things that I do.

Basically the implementation of Sonos with Airplay2 just wasn’t well thought out.

It would have been very easy to just make something like the “Port” which has an implementation of the Sonos App that would be transparent to the user. Then it could “decode” the Airplay2 Stream and then broadcast it to whatever room (whether new or old speakers) via the Sonos Net instead of making my device talk to each room.

The main issue is that Sonos want to sell their new equipment and not update their old equipment (same model as Apple, Samsung, and every other tech company). If they don’t want to include the new tech in the Playbar (or a Rev. 2 of the Playbar) then they shouldn’t sell it alongside a cheaper model that doesn’t have as good sound, but lacks features that the cheaper hardware has.

I cannot name another company that provides more features on a cheaper platform than is available on the same companies’ more expensive platforms.

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