I use a pair of Play:1s as surrounds with my Arc and Sub and they work great with Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Atmos audio from Blu-ray and UHD discs.

Thank you, strange that they can handle hd audio when in a home cinema set up but not when streaming. Qobuz required streaming to be done over airplay 2, play one does not support this, perhaps that’s why it can’t do hd audio?

Hi. Where did you read that the Play:1 can't do 24-bit? I am not sure that is true, provided it is in an S2 system.

I am not sure it isn't true either, as I am totally indifferent to hires music, and so haven't investigated. 

It definitely can not be a target of an AirPlay 2 stream directly, it can, however, be grouped with a Sonos One that is receiving the AirPlay 2 stream. 

But as John says, it’s part of an S2 system, which includes Amazon HD, so I’d think it can handle hires. 

FWIW, the following TechRadar article indicated Play:1s are not capable of playing 24-bit streaming.

https://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-speakers-finally-get-hi-res-audio-streaming

”The ability to support 24-bit streaming first came to compatible Sonos products with the introduction of the S2 app; these include the Sonos One, One SL, Five, and Play:5 speakers, Sonos Arc, Beam, Playbar, and Playbase soundbars, and the brand's portable speakers, the Sonos Move and the Sonos Roam. The discontinued Play:1 and Play:3 speakers don't support 24-bit streaming unfortunately (as well as any Sonos speakers that still use the S1 app), though you'll still be able to stream in 16-bit via Qobuz.”

These threads take me back a couple of decades when I was in the business of selling HVAC controllers and our pitch against the competition was that ours was 16 bit against their 8 bit. The idea was to fool customers into not asking the obvious question: what can a 16 bit controller do more for my HVAC use case that the 8 bit cannot...because then the answer, nothing, would leave us to compete just on price, which is a marketing nightmare.

Things never change.

Is it not  important to ask the same questions here as well though?

Hi Mick,


Sorry about that, it was not my intention since I did not realize I didn't add my last part to the email. Yes, you can play Hi-Res audio to your Sonos Pay:1, we have recently added Qobuz as the first music service to offer 24-bit audio streaming on Sonos (you can read more information here )  and a couple of months ago 24-bit (44.1kHz/48kHz, FLAC/ALAC) was introduced for music library.

Although we cannot share any details of upcoming features, just make sure your system is updated to the most recent version of S2 yo enjoy them as they become available. Let me know if you have any more questions or doubts.

Regards