I’m one of those people who don’t feel comfortable having (specifically) Alexa-powered speakers all over the house. I also had invested entirely in home-wide Play:1s (with a Playbar and Sub to round out the TV) before the Sonos One came out. I’d like Airplay 2 and (eventually) HomeKit support. But it seems like unless I swap out my speakers for Sonos Ones, which would be an expensive endeavor, I’m S.O.L. Swapping out just one won’t do the trick, because — if I understand correctly — each Sonos One can only control the speakers it’s grouped with at any given time. I have 10 zones/rooms that I often group and ungroup from one another. So, if I’ve got to open the app to adjust the grouping first, it kind of defeats the point.
Does it stand to reason that Sonos should be able to release a HomeKit Hub device (akin to Wemo or Hue) that would be able to interpret Siri commands on your phone as well as interface with HomeKit, and then relay that out to the appropriate legacy speakers (Play:1, Play:3, Playbar/Sub)?
Are there rumors of one? Doesn’t this seem like a logical solution for people who are happy with their Play:1s and Playbar, and don’t want to repurchase new gear?
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The only speakers that Siri works with, are the HomePod and the compatible AirPlay devices. So you need at least one Sonos compatible AirPlaying speaker 'dynamically' available in each Sonos Group. I can’t see any other way around it.
My suggestion .. buy one 'Sonos One' and put it out the way in a hallway etc. Switch off the mic, if that bothers you. Goto it’s Room Settings and set the volume limiter to its lowest setting ..and then play Airplay Audio to that device using Siri instructions.
If you need the audio on any of your legacy speakers, you will need to manually Group the Sonos One with those.
If you were not so bothered about having Alexa devices about the home and their mics turned on, then there are several methods to group the Sonos One with any of your others legacy Sonos speakers using Alexa voice commands, this can be easily done with a Harmony Hub, for example or (possibly) the yonomi alexa skill and I suspect in the not too distant future you will also be able to do this too with the new Alexa Grouping features.
But at the moment, manual grouping with a compatible Sonos AirPlay device is the only route I can see you being able to follow at the moment, particularly with the restrictions you have imposed on your current setup.
I can’t see any of the older Sonos legacy devices being able to control and play an AirPlay-2 source, which users may want to sync across multiple speakers and align with onscreen video sources etc; as Sonos have already stated their processors and memory capabilities are not upto the spec. required for such tasks.
You are probably going to need to buy some new hardware, at some point, to get these streaming features.
My suggestion .. buy one 'Sonos One' and put it out the way in a hallway etc. Switch off the mic, if that bothers you. Goto it’s Room Settings and set the volume limiter to its lowest setting ..and then play Airplay Audio to that device using Siri instructions.
If you need the audio on any of your legacy speakers, you will need to manually Group the Sonos One with those.
If you were not so bothered about having Alexa devices about the home and their mics turned on, then there are several methods to group the Sonos One with any of your others legacy Sonos speakers using Alexa voice commands, this can be easily done with a Harmony Hub, for example or (possibly) the yonomi alexa skill and I suspect in the not too distant future you will also be able to do this too with the new Alexa Grouping features.
But at the moment, manual grouping with a compatible Sonos AirPlay device is the only route I can see you being able to follow at the moment, particularly with the restrictions you have imposed on your current setup.
I can’t see any of the older Sonos legacy devices being able to control and play an AirPlay-2 source, which users may want to sync across multiple speakers and align with onscreen video sources etc; as Sonos have already stated their processors and memory capabilities are not upto the spec. required for such tasks.
You are probably going to need to buy some new hardware, at some point, to get these streaming features.
You can get a single Sonos One and think of it not as a speaker but an Airplay Hub (heck you could leave the volume muted on it for that matter). Then any speaker in the house that you want to play airplay to you just first group with the Sonos One.
You could create some special groups in app like Sonoseqencr to autogroup each room.
Shame you won't use Alexa as looks like a lot of options for grouping via voice coming down the pike. There is already speakerscenes.com to automate grouping.
I don't know if it still works but there used to be a MAC app that would work as a service to enable all the older legacy sonos speakers as Airplay speakers (AirSonos).
You could create some special groups in app like Sonoseqencr to autogroup each room.
Shame you won't use Alexa as looks like a lot of options for grouping via voice coming down the pike. There is already speakerscenes.com to automate grouping.
I don't know if it still works but there used to be a MAC app that would work as a service to enable all the older legacy sonos speakers as Airplay speakers (AirSonos).
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