The new Ace must ‘at the very least’ have a 5Ghz WiFi adapter onboard for the described SoundSwap feature with the Sonos Arc, because the Arc does not have a Bluetooth TX. The ‘unique’ feature is also later coming to the Beam Gen2 and I think the Sonos Ray is mentioned too. The Bluetooth chip is clearly a Qualcomm one aswell - I wonder if the headset will go onto support the new Lossless (snapdragon) codec? - but personally the audio from APT-X Adaptive/HD is going to sound just great anyway.

I’m looking forward to reading the reviews, because Sonos do make excellent, well built, products, even if the controller ‘remote’ App has taken a backward step for now. I’m sure that will greatly improve and overtake the S2 platform in the months ahead too, but I have more faith, than some others, it seems.

I’m yet to encounter any poor sounding product from Sonos and I can’t see the Ace being anything other than an extremely high quality product.

Given the primary mode of using these headphones is bluetooth I’ve just been assuming I would have to use 3rd party apps to listen to music on them (with Sonos mobile app only being used to modify settings on the headphones). Is this assumption correct or can the new Sonos mobile app also be used as an on-phone music player for the headphones (especially considering it can now be used outside the home network)? 

If Sonos mobile app can be used as a player, I’m wondering if this can extend to acting as a bridge between music sources on the local network (like local library and sonos aux in ports) and the headphones?

The Sonos App is a ‘controller’ App, not a player - it has never been a player. The audio source plays direct to the connected Sonos products. At the moment that’s been over a wireless connection, I don’t know if that’s going to happen over a Bluetooth connection, we will have to wait and see. 
 

There is no doubt though, that the Sonos Ace can play over Bluetooth from all the usual 3rd-party Apps, like Spotify, Amazon, Apple Music, Deezer etc. and it should therefore definitely also work with Prime Movies, Netflix, Disney+, YouTube etc. too.. in fact ANY audio source a Bluetooth enabled device (iPhone/Android/PC/TV etc.) can transmit. 

Always having been a controller up to now doesn’t mean the app can’t or won’t gain new functionality in relation to new products

No doubt they sound good, likely as good as their major competitors (Apple, Bose, Sony, B&W, etc.). But for them to stand out, they need to be better sounding and offer non-gimmicky features that the competitors don’t. And for people like me, iPhone users who don’t own or want to own a soundbar and are just looking for lossless stereo playback (no spatial audio, please) and seamless integration with their Sonos system, the Ace is a fail.

Why seamless integration? Here’s an example. We’re currently experiencing a heat wave and my apartment’s windows are wide open. I have a pair of Ones on either side of the kitchen window. Up early this morning, I wanted to listen to the news but, because I’d need to turn up the volume to hear the newscast over the sounds of dishes being washed, coffee beans being ground, etc., I couldn’t without disturbing neighbours. How great it would be to have the headphones on when in the kitchen and then remove and continue listening to the Era 100s in my office without interruption.

As it is, I’m having a hard time seeing why I should fork over C$600 for the Ace when the excellent Sony WH-1000XM5s cost C$200-250 less on sale. What does the Ace offer that the Sonys don’t? The value proposition just isn’t there.

I’m thinking what could really be handy in my own use-case, is this Ace SoundSwap feature. Just to explain…

At the moment if I want to connect my Sony, or other branded, Bluetooth headphones to my main LG Television, I have to go into the TV settings and switch off Simplink (CEC protocol) to be able to switch the TV output to anything other than a HDMI-ARC/eARC connection and when that’s done, I can then BT pair my current headphones to listen to the TV audio sources and built in Apps.

Now it appears that the ‘messing with my TV’ will become a thing of the past and I can leave the TV settings alone and use the Sonos SoundSwap feature instead. The documentation says, that it can all be done with a long press on the Ace ‘Content’ button to play the TV audio on the Ace Headphones - so just that feature alone, has already made me want to get my hands on the Ace to use with my LG TV and it’s connected Arc soundbar.

It also sounds like this type of TV connection is an ad-hoc 5Ghz wireless connection in a ‘similar’ manner to the way that ‘bonded’ Surrounds and Sub currently work with Sonos soundbars. That surely can only mean …that the TV audio will be crystal clear and in perfect lip-sync. That’s If my thinking is correct here, I just can’t wait to see/hear the headphones in action with my TV.

Spatial Audio and Head-Tracking aswell - what’s not to like? - and that’s all in addition to what’s available with Apt-X music audio.

Well, if the product was branded Noson we could at least enjoy that Sonos executives have some humor. And we could enjoy the product as a competitive Bluetooth headphone alternative. But a Sonos without the zone ability? Nah. What a disappointment.

@Ken_Griffiths - I’d interpreted the same too with switching between soundbar and headphones.  I wonder though how many users would use this feature versus wanting to switch audio as @carswell mentioned?

I’m keen to see the reviews of this though as even for TV viewing, I’d be interested to know if you had two Arcs, how would the Ace know which one to switch to and if they are selling the headphones in pairs too, a great feature would be to have both paired to the Arc - just think, kids sleeping and parents watching TV with with cinema-like audio on the headphones.

My Kids have long flown the nest, but you’ve made some really good points here and we will have to wait and see the detail you mention.

I ‘may’, very occasionally, want to group two Ace Headphones ‘perhaps’ for the Wife and myself  to listen to the same music, or TV audio late at night and to not disturb others, but I’m not bothered about grouping my Sonos speakers with Ace, as I can’t think of a valid reason why I might want to do that, either for TV, or music, audio - If audio is playing on my speakers, I’d just listen without headphones… I have portable speakers too to move about the Home to continue listening, plus there’s the Sonos button-grouping option to play audio in other rooms etc.

I suspect there are licensing/contract issues with the Sonos mobile app acting as a music player.  For example, Spotify probably wants users to use their app, with all the features these built into it, when playing music from your phone.  They don’t want users to experience it through a 3rd party app. So if the Sonos app were to ever become a player as well as controller, or Sonos just made a separately player app, I am thinking it would exclude any music service.  That means it would be for Sonos radio, aux sources in your system, TV audio, and local libraries.

Sonos radio makes sense, and I’m a little surprised that it hasn’t been done yet, since radio is a source of revenue for Sonos.

I don’t know that aux and TV audio makes sense.  You really need to be at home to control these sources, so what would be the benefit of playing the audio away from home.  It would also likely require cloud resources, possible something Sonos would want to charge a subscription fee for.  I’m sure someone has a need for it, but probably not a big priority for a lot of people.

That leaves local libraries.  Sonos isn’t doing great with local libraries right now, and it’s not exactly a growing market.  Besides, Plex already offers this service and works at home through Sonos or away from home.

I agree that it would be great to have a single app that plays any streaming music source as well as any other source you have whether you are home or away, but I just don’t think things will line up that way as things currently stand.

I suspect that you have to actually setup Ace to ‘bond’ to a specific Arc in a similar way that you bond surround sound speakers and a sub to your Arc. So if you have 2 Arcs, I don’t think you could just switch Ace to play audio from one Arc or the other that easily.  You need to go through the setup process again, the same way you do from surrounds and subs.

As far as being able to use 2 pairs of Ace headphones with a single Arc, I asked that question earlier in the thread.  You can’t do that, only one at a time.  Sonos stated that research shows that people really only want one, but I think it’s a technical limitation that’s really the reason right now.  Even if people typically only want one, there would likely be enough people who want 2 Aces, or the capability of 2 whether they use it or not, to warrant the feature if it could be done with existing hardware on the Arc.

Cant even use them with the amp 🤪🤪🤪🤪

Hi everyone,   

Went through the conversation here and will answer some of the questions I saw:

Eventually SVC will be supported with the Sonos Ace, but not at launch. It will be added with a future update.

The main difference here is the lower quality of BT audio and that it wouldn't submit Atmos sound from your TV to the headphones. Also if connecting a BT headphone directly to the TV latency could become an issue.

 Android compatibility for the TV Swap feature won't be implemented at launch. But we are determined to add Android compatibility asap.

Currently it is not possible to replace the battery in a Sonos Ace. If that becomes an option with a replacement service in the future I can't say at this point.

The Sonos Ace connects to the soundbar in the same way as a surround speaker using 5Ghz WiFi. This won't work with other Sonos speakers than a soundbar.

Yes, it is limited to TV audio. Only TV audio (via HDMI or optical) can stream to Sonos Ace.

Greetings,

Marco

I don’t have a need to have speakers playing audio while I have headphones on, but my primary use case for headphones, besides use away from home, would be in my home office.  That room doubles as a game room, so it has a Beam+sub mini+ surrounds in it, which are primarily used for music.  Since my desk isn’t in the sweet spot for the setup (that’s where the couch is) it’s not ideal.  It would be nice if I can put on headphones for music, I don’t really care about TV audio in this scenario  Obviously, if Ace was their own Sonos room, that would work just fine.  I am also still ok if the bonding to Arc (in a different room) allowed playing streaming music to Ace as well as TV audio. Still waiting to hear about that.  I would also like to easily switch between the Sonos audio and bluetooth connections to phone and PC...but not sure how well that would work.

If I can’t stream music via Arc at all with the Ace, then it would just be a bluetooth speaker.  That still has a lot of value to me, but I would need to compare it to other BT only options.

I am also glad that Ace has the Aware tech, which makes it useful when working out in the garage.  However, I don’t think Ace has the dust protection I would want, and don’t want to risk damaging these at that high cost.

I'm really struggling to find use cases where the Sonos Ace would be a viable option and also worth the price. 

If you have any device next to your tv with Bluetooth capabilities then the use case of the Ace gets stretched thin already. 

Imagine that you can add an Aptx-HD- or LL USB dongle to that device. Then I would prefer the Aptx dongle to the Sonos setup.

Let's say you have an htpc. This will give you the option to play all your music from your NAS. Stream from your preferred music services. And watch movies. This all wireless with Aptx-HD....

That would be perfect! (the bold bit)

I’m not suggesting there would be any benefit in accessing these away from home. But I’d like to be able to access Sonos aux ports from wireless headphones whilst at home (and this could be a big point attraction for many). What I’m suggesting is that if there is no possibility of direct audio swap between non-soundbar Sonos speakers and the headphones (it sounds like there isn’t) perhaps Sonos could consider using the phone as a bridge between aux and headphones. If they don’t want to consider providing this functionality for their own app I wonder if they could consider providing an API for 3rd party developers to implement this.

If they did provide a way to use the phone to bridge access to aux ports it would also make sense to do it for local libraries for completeness. But local libraries aren’t really any issue on their own. There are lots of options including the one you mentioned which could be used to play local library on a phone. The main difficulty is access to Sonos aux inputs.

I have surrounds connected to my amp in the same way. Why is there no amp support? (or is it one of the upcoming features)

Please add grouping with existing speakers, would have been a day 1 order/pre-order with that - can’t even easily stream Sonos radio with this which is upsetting - thank you.

Like many i’m disappointed that these are not zone players. I had assumed that the long wait was because sonos was solving the challenges of bt/ WiFi/ TV link, sadly I was wrong.  Maybe some updates will get us there in a year or so but until then it seems to me that we have a me too product with the trick of connecting to your TV via a sonos arc.

Oh well, I will keep an eye open for a update  but if I have a need for a set of Anc headphones then sadly I may find that the competition gets my money

Thanks for the info.

That seems like an odd limitation, and pretty much kills using Ace for anything other than as bluetooth headphones for me.

This is included in a number of the replies but to add another voice to the feedback I’m disappointed by a couple facts shared by Sonos in the response here: 

1. That this product can’t be used as a separate zone - I appreciate that I could use it as a bluetooth device connected to my phone but this downplays my investment in the SONOS ecosystem of products and makes me now look at competitor bluetooth headphones. 
2. That you can’t have two headphones connected to the same sound source.  My use case may be more unique as stated above by market research, but my wife and I like watching something together after the kids go to bed and using headphones together so we don’t wake them with the noise of the home theater system.  This would have been very easily done if they could be setup as zones that we’d pair but since (a) it has to be paired with an Arc and (b) two headsets can’t be paired with the same Arc, then this product holds significantly less value to me. 

We currently have sennheiser headphones that pair to the same sennheiser base via optical from our TV.  Will continue to use that setup until something better comes along.  

Apple is able to do 2 airpod headphones connected to their Apple TV, I’ve used this feature on occasion. Probably not better than Sennheisers but if you are an apple user you may already have the headphones and can try it out. This seems like it would be a common use case so maybe it’s a feature for the future.

So, what you are saying @Corry P is that even if I have an Arc set up and want to listen to Apple Music or other music service through my tv (Apple TV) using the app(s) on that device I cannot do that? That seems odd.

Despite the trainwreck the app is, I want a centralized place to access my music services (as I have a half dozen I use). That was the benefit of having a universal location like the Sonos app instead of hopping around at home. I want that at home and I want that on a plane and I want that anywhere using my Ace.

I wonder if all of these Ace limitations are self created by Sonos to keep us purchasing other Sonos products or some ridiculousness. For example, I have an old Play 3 in my office. Our house is very open. If I had Ace headphones and access through wifi I would just use them in my office and ditch the Play 3 so no one else has to listen to what I listen to (very different musical tastes than the family).