Be warned about all this talk of old speaker compatibility. It is very misleading. I was advised prior to Airplay 2 release about the functionality we were likely to get. It is very limited. Based on that advise I now have mixture of compatible (SONOS ONEs) and in compatible SONOS speakers (PLAY 3, PLAY:1s, PLAYBAR). Firstly if you have ONEs set as surrounds to a PLAYBAR they will not be compatible with Airplay2 as it is a closed group and the ONEs cannot be seen, this is because the PLAYBAR is the lead speaker in that set (not compatible). This negates Airplay 2 completely. (this is what I did in an attempt to provide access to my older speakers throughout the house). The only way I can bring that theatre set into play is by having an additional play ONE (thats 3 now) to drive the airplay2 commands. Also, 'accessing' older speakers by simply having a single SONOS ONE limits your entire network of speakers as it must be part of the group. For instance if room A has a compatible SONOS ONE and room B has an in compatible PLAY:1 you cannot play music in room B without playing in room A too (as it needs to be one group/room not two), which kind of ruins the notion of multi room. Essentially you have to set up your entire multi room house as one single room/group and toggle the mute/volume on each room depending on which you want to 'hear'. This will then further restrict the beauty of airplay 2 and Siri as you will not be able to send room commands to seperate spaces. You will not be able to say 'play music in the kitchen' as the kitchen will be grouped with the rest of the house. Its a complete hack.
The ONLY way around this is to have at least one compatible speaker in each room/group. ie, ditch everything you have and start again.
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Userlevel 7
+22
I have some really old Sonos gear, Zone Player 80s, Gen 1 Play 5s and Play 3s, that are very limited to somewhat limited if I recall correctly. Sonos removed our ability to see most internal data on these so I can't give you a solid answer to how bad the space and CPU power issues are.
All, I have a playbar and two Ones set up as surrounds. Airplay 2 doesn't work at all (the ones don't show up).
I was told that the Ones would support Airplay 2 but they can't in this configuration.
Is there a way that I can configure the system to use Airplay 2 with the Ones and also use them as surrounds with the TV? I mean a practical option (not having to press buttons and reconfigure, etc).
I'm really upset because I spent a lot of money in the last 6 months on a playbar and Ones with the belief that Airplay 2 would work as opposed to just going with HomePod. I can live with it if I can find a way to make the Ones work.
Let me know if there is a way. Thanks!
I was told that the Ones would support Airplay 2 but they can't in this configuration.
Is there a way that I can configure the system to use Airplay 2 with the Ones and also use them as surrounds with the TV? I mean a practical option (not having to press buttons and reconfigure, etc).
I'm really upset because I spent a lot of money in the last 6 months on a playbar and Ones with the belief that Airplay 2 would work as opposed to just going with HomePod. I can live with it if I can find a way to make the Ones work.
Let me know if there is a way. Thanks!
I was told that the Ones would support Airplay 2 but they can't in this configuration.
Is there a way that I can configure the system to use Airplay 2 with the Ones and also use them as surrounds with the TV? I mean a practical option (not having to press buttons and reconfigure, etc).
I'm really upset because I spent a lot of money in the last 6 months on a playbar and Ones with the belief that Airplay 2 would work as opposed to just going with HomePod. I can live with it if I can find a way to make the Ones work.
Let me know if there is a way. Thanks!
Add another Sonos One to your Sonos Household and 'group' the Playbar Room with it. That seems to me to be the easiest answer, although you may not like my idea.
It’s definitely what I would do, if I were in your position.
In my case, I have lots of the older Sonos speakers, Play -1's/Play-5's (gen1) etc. all around my home, so I have recently added a Sonos One to my Hallway. I just 'group' rooms to the new Sonos One, whenever I want to stream AirPlay Audio to any of my rooms. The extra speaker is effectively just acting as my Sonos AirPlay controller and I can quickly group/ungroup it with any room. It seems to work fine for me.
Ken,
Appreciate your suggestion, but that royally sucks. Why would they design it that way?
Is there no way to just create a group of the two surrounds and play to those?
Or create two whole room systems, one that includes the playbar and surrounds, and another just the surrounds?
Rob
Appreciate your suggestion, but that royally sucks. Why would they design it that way?
Is there no way to just create a group of the two surrounds and play to those?
Or create two whole room systems, one that includes the playbar and surrounds, and another just the surrounds?
Rob
rhill0123,
When your Sonos Ones are bonded to the Playbar over the 5ghz WiFi band, they are 'slaves' to the Playbar and contained within the Playbar Room... for example it might be called 'Living Room' on the network ... when anything talks to that room, it is really talking to the controlling PlayBar and it’s surrounds are not visible on the network. The speakers therefore cannot be seen as an AirPlay Master controller device, not whist they are bonded.
In this type of setup the Sonos Ones can only handle thd rear left and rear right audio channels via the Playbar itself.
To make them both visible and to work with AirPlay you would need to break them out of the bonded setup and either use them standalone, grouped or paired, but then you revert your Playbar to a 3.0 or 3.1 setup (depending on whether you have the Sonos sub).
The unbonding and bonding process is of course one way to go about it, but I think you may find it a bit of a nuisance over time, hence I would personally opt to buy another Sonos One and put that elsewhere in the home and use that as the AirPlay controller to 'group' with your bonded PlayBar room and/or any other Sonos Rooms you may have in your household.
I’ve got a friend in a similar situation to yourself and he’s decided to add a new Sonos Beam to a smaller TV in his main bedroom and is hoping to get around the issue in much the same way, by using that device as his 'AirPlay Master' for grouping purposes.
When your Sonos Ones are bonded to the Playbar over the 5ghz WiFi band, they are 'slaves' to the Playbar and contained within the Playbar Room... for example it might be called 'Living Room' on the network ... when anything talks to that room, it is really talking to the controlling PlayBar and it’s surrounds are not visible on the network. The speakers therefore cannot be seen as an AirPlay Master controller device, not whist they are bonded.
In this type of setup the Sonos Ones can only handle thd rear left and rear right audio channels via the Playbar itself.
To make them both visible and to work with AirPlay you would need to break them out of the bonded setup and either use them standalone, grouped or paired, but then you revert your Playbar to a 3.0 or 3.1 setup (depending on whether you have the Sonos sub).
The unbonding and bonding process is of course one way to go about it, but I think you may find it a bit of a nuisance over time, hence I would personally opt to buy another Sonos One and put that elsewhere in the home and use that as the AirPlay controller to 'group' with your bonded PlayBar room and/or any other Sonos Rooms you may have in your household.
I’ve got a friend in a similar situation to yourself and he’s decided to add a new Sonos Beam to a smaller TV in his main bedroom and is hoping to get around the issue in much the same way, by using that device as his 'AirPlay Master' for grouping purposes.
[quote=Ken_Griffiths]
In my case, I have lots of the older Sonos speakers, Play -1's/Play-5's (gen1) etc. all around my home, so I have recently added a Sonos One to my Hallway. I just 'group' rooms to the new Sonos One, whenever I want to stream AirPlay Audio to any of my rooms. The extra speaker is effectively just acting as my Sonos AirPlay controller and I can quickly group/ungroup it with any room. It seems to work fine for me.
This is driving me insane. From my experiments thus far I have determined that the only way to use a ONE as the access point/controller to older speakers is to 'room' it with them in the SONOS app. ie, if I have 2 x PLAY:1s in different locations around the house they need to be bound as a 'room' along with the ONE in the SONOS app room settings (creating 1 single room) not simply grouped in the playback UI as you would normally with individual rooms in multiroom playback. How can you group rooms with older speakers together with your ONE if you cannot see those rooms in the Airplay2 speaker list?
Essentially you can only group and ungroup old and new in the sonos app settings which is much more involved than tapping the group icon during playback.
Am i missing something really obvious here?
Please tell me exactly how you are grouping other rooms with your ONE. Adding all speakers into one room in Sonos app settings? sonos app mult-room grouping during playback? or airplay2 muti-room grouping during playback?
In my case, I have lots of the older Sonos speakers, Play -1's/Play-5's (gen1) etc. all around my home, so I have recently added a Sonos One to my Hallway. I just 'group' rooms to the new Sonos One, whenever I want to stream AirPlay Audio to any of my rooms. The extra speaker is effectively just acting as my Sonos AirPlay controller and I can quickly group/ungroup it with any room. It seems to work fine for me.
This is driving me insane. From my experiments thus far I have determined that the only way to use a ONE as the access point/controller to older speakers is to 'room' it with them in the SONOS app. ie, if I have 2 x PLAY:1s in different locations around the house they need to be bound as a 'room' along with the ONE in the SONOS app room settings (creating 1 single room) not simply grouped in the playback UI as you would normally with individual rooms in multiroom playback. How can you group rooms with older speakers together with your ONE if you cannot see those rooms in the Airplay2 speaker list?
Essentially you can only group and ungroup old and new in the sonos app settings which is much more involved than tapping the group icon during playback.
Am i missing something really obvious here?
Please tell me exactly how you are grouping other rooms with your ONE. Adding all speakers into one room in Sonos app settings? sonos app mult-room grouping during playback? or airplay2 muti-room grouping during playback?
Massive compromise? I don't see it as such. Switch groups around in Sonos is very easy to do. Again, your idea of setting up your home is one large group all the time, is a rather lousy one, not something Sonos would recommend, or pretty much anyone. Sending audio to whatever compatible speakers you have, then grouping that speaker with the rooom you want to listen to isn't some monumental task. Yes, it means you can't do the whole thing through Siri or Apple's screen.
Please describe how exactly you are grouping rooms together during playback.
If you have a ONE in room A and a PLAY:1 in room B and start playing music in room A via airplay2 how on earth can you see room B in the airplay2 room list when airplay 2 cannot see this room? It is not there.
In the Sonos controller, group room A with room B. In iOS, send the signal to Room A, and it plays in both rooms simultaneously.
I see. I was trying to avoid all use of the Sonos app but clearly you cant. So using the apple music app is now possible just means im grouping rooms in SONOS not in iOS. Thanks for spelling that out, you are the first to do that.
To do it only in iOS would require both "rooms" to be AirPlay 2 speakers. Apple can only see valid targets, so you'd need to "group" any others, the same way you would do with the Line-in feature that Sonos has on the PLAY:5 or CONNECT series.
That's fantastic Ken, appreciate the articulate and clear explanation. It absolutely makes sense and I was under the vauge impression that this was the way it needed to work. I think my confusion was compounded when listening to mixed terminology and unclear explanations such as grouping. No one had clearly articulated the need for mixed app use and that grouping occurred in SONOS and the controller only needed attention within iOS.
I will re set my network and see how I go. I have 4 rooms of speakers including surrounds (ONEs) /playbar that need reconfiguring with PLAY:1s from other rooms in order to have access to a ONE as my controller.
One thing I did notice (although unsure if this is because my initial set up was rubbish) was that if I started a track (Apple Music) on my iPad I could not pick that track up on my iPhone simultaneously. I often start music from the kitchen iPad and then roam the house changing that music on my phone. Have you had any issues here? and in general how have you found the stability? I was getting some rather worrying silences/buffering. And that is a deal breaker for me. I bought a Boost for this reason.
One other thing, I assume the Boost is unaffected by Airplay 2 and continues to provide the mesh network it does when using the SONOS app?
I will re set my network and see how I go. I have 4 rooms of speakers including surrounds (ONEs) /playbar that need reconfiguring with PLAY:1s from other rooms in order to have access to a ONE as my controller.
One thing I did notice (although unsure if this is because my initial set up was rubbish) was that if I started a track (Apple Music) on my iPad I could not pick that track up on my iPhone simultaneously. I often start music from the kitchen iPad and then roam the house changing that music on my phone. Have you had any issues here? and in general how have you found the stability? I was getting some rather worrying silences/buffering. And that is a deal breaker for me. I bought a Boost for this reason.
One other thing, I assume the Boost is unaffected by Airplay 2 and continues to provide the mesh network it does when using the SONOS app?
I see. I was trying to avoid all use of the Sonos app but clearly you cant. So using the apple music app is now possible just means im grouping rooms in SONOS not in iOS. Thanks for spelling that out, you are the first to do that.
You can't be serious with this statement. People have been giving you advice for two pages now, pointing out where your assumptions were incorrect. You were told a while back that the addition of airplay2 functionality did not mean you could do everything through airplay 2 and ignore the Sonos app completely. You clearly understood what groups in Sonos are since you already had several sonos rooms and were stating you're plan was to group them altogether in Sonos.
Finally, I don’t get any 'dropout' issues with my speakers, or my iPhone, or my iPad. That only usually happens if there is some kind of WiFi interruption or interference. Here are a couple of tips to hopefully help reduce wireless interference ...
Turn off 'WiFi assist' on iOS devices... this makes iPhones, for example, switch over to 3G/4G networks in weak WiFi areas.
Set the SonosNet WiFi channel at least 5 channels apart and completely different to your routers 2.4ghz WiFi channel. So if router is set to channel 6, for example, then use either channel 1 or 11 for SonosNet.
Position your Boost well away from your router, at least 4 feet away.
When running in Boost Mode always remember to reset/remove your stored WiFi credentials in the Sonos App in 'Advanced Settings/Wireless Setup'
Don’t use WiFi extenders/repeaters or powerline adapters, if possible, some of these adapters can often cause interference with Sonos devices, particularly if they are set to the same channel as SonosNet, or if the are given the same WiFi SSID and password as the main router.
I hope these few 'tips' go some way in helping to reduce any potential WiFi interference issues you may encounter in your home.
Thanks Ken, I am already on top most of these considerations but am guilty of my Boost being close to my router so will shift that. I hadn't had any issues with drop out until starting to play with the airplay 2 configuration to be honest. All helps though. Appreciate the tips.
Are you deadset serious? I wrote the below to you on the previous page.
Yes yes, calm down mate. At that time I was a tad confused and interpreted some statements as having to connect those 2 speakers together into a 'single room' (as apposed to grouping seperate rooms together during playback). In the myriad of responses and my frustration it threw me.
I get it. Appreciate the help but not the tone. Not everyone is quite the audiophile, hence why most people are on this forum.
Userlevel 4
It isn't, and no amount of online grumbling is going to change that.
Airplay 2 is a much more sophisticated protocol than Airplay, handling its own mesh/streaming/sync behaviours and buffering minutes of music at once. Therefore demanding more memory and CPU. But the older Sonos devices are really limited as computing devices. If memory serves, the original play:1 had 128MB in which to run everything from the kernel to the network mesh and the streaming music services, using a CPU from 2004.
I get it. Appreciate the help but not the tone. Not everyone is quite the audiophile, hence why most people are on this forum.
You set the tone of the thread with your initial post.
I get it. Appreciate the help but not the tone. Not everyone is quite the audiophile, hence why most people are on this forum.
You set the tone of the thread with your initial post.
what 'aggressive'? I think you managed that all on your own. Run along chap.
I am not complaining about the facts, I am bringing to light the reality of attempting to activate your entire 'old speaker' network on to Airplay2 because it is not viable in the way I believe most people will anticipate.
You’re not bringing anything to light that hasn’t been thoroughly documented by Sonos and the technical press. What you believe most people will anticipate only applies to the uninformed, who are not most Sonos customers.
"only applies to the uninformed, who are not most Sonos customers."
Hilarious.
The Playbar not having Airplay 2 is my only big disappointment, and that Sonos Ones as rears don't bring it to the system. Here's hoping Sonos work that situation out somehow. Bringing out some kind of connect like device compatible with Airplay 2 that can speak to the Playbar would probably be the most logical solution if the Playbar can't handle it natively. Buying a Sonos One just to group with the Playbar on mute is a very expensive way round.
So same goes for PlayBase? AirPlay2 is not compatible to PlayBase? Only to Beam?
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