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How does the Android phone connect the Sonos Arc or Beam 2 soundbar to play the music? 

It doesn’t the phone app is just a controller for the Sonos hardware.


On the other hand, if you’re using ‘play from this device’, your phone is acting as a location for the actual app on the speakers to reach out and grab the data to play. As @Stanley_4 states, the actual ‘music playing’ part of Sonos is never on your controller device, and always on the Sonos system device. 


On the other hand, if you’re using ‘play from this device’, your phone is acting as a location for the actual app on the speakers to reach out and grab the data to play. As @Stanley_4 states, the actual ‘music playing’ part of Sonos is never on your controller device, and always on the Sonos system device. 

Do you mean there is no way to pair the Android phone to the Sonos soundbar by the app to play the music?


Music stored on the Android cannot directly play through the ARC, however, if you are using an App, such as SPOTIFY, you can play the SPOTIFY stream through SONOS. As others have pointed out all of the playing is done by the SONOS player(s). In the case of SPOTIFY, once you start the SPOTIFY stream and assign it to a SONOS player, you can close the phone’s SPOTIFY App or turn OFF the phone and the SONOS system will continue to play the SPOTIFY stream.

Some of the SONOS players, such as ROAM and MOVE will accept Bluetooth from a phone/pad/computer.


On the other hand, if you’re using ‘play from this device’, your phone is acting as a location for the actual app on the speakers to reach out and grab the data to play. As @Stanley_4 states, the actual ‘music playing’ part of Sonos is never on your controller device, and always on the Sonos system device. 

Do you mean there is no way to pair the Android phone to the Sonos soundbar by the app to play the music?

You do not need to, unless the musici is stored on your phone, see https://support.sonos.com/en/article/play-music-stored-on-your-android-device. The devices get their music from music services you add to the systen through the app: https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/add-a-music-service-to-sonos and https://support.sonos.com/en-us/services