Airplay 2 Support



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@jgatie - thanks for that info. I will check it out in the Sonos app later. It doesn't surprise me if I'm doing things in an overcomplicated manner. I don't think I've ever read any documentation or anything, I've only ever just prodded about until it worked.

Ironically, I'm not in the app right now because I'm listening to Apple Music over Airplay 1 to my pair of Gen 1 Play5's. I'd used AirConnect in the past but don't remember why I didn't stick with it. Most likely it was a stuttering mess? Not so this time however, I just put it on one of the VMs running in the background on my server and it's working like a charm. If it continues to then to be honest the hole AirPlay2 subject will become irrelevent to me since I don't really want it for the audio from video or anything, just music.


I use AirSonos which is a node.js package which bridges AirPlay and Sonos - it runs on my Raspberry Pi home automation server and works flawlessly - it's been running without issue for a couple of months now and offers exactly what Sonos should have offered years ago.

I remember using some variant of this when I first got my Sonos:1's (few years ago) and it didn't work properly, if at all, and from memory it was something to do with one of the audio CODECs which AirPlay uses not being supported.

It's disappointing to hear my three Play:1's and Connect:Amp won't get native AirPlay2 support but hey-ho, I've got a workaround which suits me fine.

I can't see it being too long until an AirPlay2 variant of something similar comes along - isn't AirPlay2 meant to be more "open" to aid wider adoption? Even if that's not the case, it won't take the geeks long to reverse-engineer the protocol and get it into a package.
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All Sonos devices cope perfectly well streaming from all manner of devices in mono and stereo and up to 32 devices too. Including streaming of higher bitrate flac files etc. and from all manner of devices including streaming from mobile devices.
Sonos have now said that they still sell old, outdated hardware that can't cope with the requirements of Airplay 2.
Does anybody have any actual information on what these requirements are that are so above the requirements they currently satisfy in allowing all of the above multi room functionality? Is there cpu intensive encryption and decryption going on? What is the reason?
All Sonos devices cope perfectly well streaming from all manner of devices in mono and stereo and up to 32 devices too. Including streaming of higher bitrate flac files etc. and from all manner of devices including streaming from mobile devices.
Sonos have now said that they still sell old, outdated hardware that can't cope with the requirements of Airplay 2.
Does anybody have any actual information on what these requirements are that are so above the requirements they currently satisfy in allowing all of the above multi room functionality? Is there cpu intensive encryption and decryption going on? What is the reason?


I'm certainly no hardware expert but I'm thinking it's the case that the latest Apple hardware is built around 64 bit processing. Sonos devices need to be able to cope with that faster movement of data, perhaps?