Airplay 2 support for PLAY:1, PLAY:3, PLAYBAR - BEWARE


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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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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.
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[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?
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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.
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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.
Bails,

See the first screenshot attached of the Sonos App. This screenshot shows all my Sonos Rooms. .. most have two speakers in them, set in stereo pairs. The room called 'AirPlay Hallway' is a single Sonos One speaker and is used as my AirPlay Master controller.

So if I’m sat in my bedroom, for example, and decide I want to play YouTube on my bedroom speakers, either from my iPhone, iPad or Apple TV, then all I do first of all is hit the 'group' button on 'AirPlay Hallway' and add 'Bedroom' to it. This 'groups' the Sonos One with the two older Play-1 speakers that I have in my bedroom. The grouping will remain this way until I change it. I can of course add ANY other rooms to this group if I want to, but let’s just keep it simple for now.

Now at this point I could completely close the Sonos App if I wanted to, but I tend to 'minimise' it on my iPad and keep it running in the background in case I want to make changes later, to room volume, or EQ settings etc.

Right then, my AirPlay grouped room is now ready to play audio to it. So I can then open up YouTube/Netflix etc. on my chosen device and switch the audio-out AirPlay stream to play to my 'AirPlay Hallway' device, as shown in screenshot 2 attached. This means any YouTube/Netflix videos I then play, will output their audio to 'AirPlay Hallway' and that device passes the audio stream onto my bedroom speakers, to all play in sync. I could really end my explanation there, but let me mention a few additional things...

I may often 'mute' my 'AirPlay Hallway' device, so that I then just hear audio in the grouped room, the Bedroom, in my given example above. If I do that, I also tend to use the individual room volume slider bar in the Sonos App, rather than the main 'Group' volume slider bar, which presently unmutes the 'AirPlay Hallway' Master device. I have reported this matter to Sonos, but things do work absolutely fine with the individual room volume slider bars.

If I’m watching a YouTube video on my iPad and decide to leave my Bedroom and come downstairs to the 'Dining Room', I simply go into the Sonos App and press the group button on 'Dining Room' and then select 'AirPlay Hallway' from the list ... this switches the grouping of my 'AirPlay Hallway' Sonos One speaker over from the 'Bedroom' to the 'Dining Room' ... my YouTube App video I’m watching will then simply switch the audio-out over to my Dining Room speakers. Obviously I can switch the AirPlay Audio to any room in my home in this way.

I can even group my 'AirPlay Hallway' speaker with two, three or more rooms... or even group it with every room.

Whatever 'Room(s)' I choose to group with 'AirPlay Hallway' will output my chosen AirPlay Audio... so all I ever have to choose from the iOS AirPlay list of devices as shown in screenshot 2 attached is the 'AirPlay Hallway' device... all the output changes are mainly done within the Sonos App itself.

I hope that provides the answers you were looking for?
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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?
Bails,

'Grouping' is a term that is usually used when a user goes into the Rooms Tab in the Sonos App and the user groups/ungroups two or more rooms with each other. These groupings are sometimes 'temporary' and people can switch speakers around and into different groups so that music plays in different combined areas of the home. Some users though like to leave some areas permanently grouped together.

'Pairing' is a term that is usually used when a user makes a 'stereo pair' from two identical speakers in the same room. This is usually done on a permanent basis.

'Bonding' Is a term that is usually used when speakers and/or sub are put together with a PlayBar or Beam and used for TV surround sound in a 5.0 or 5.1 setup. Again this is usually done on a permanent basis.

Note: if a Sonos One or Play-5 (gen 2) are 'bonded' with a PlayBar or Beam, they cannot also be used as an AirPlay controller device... officially, these two speakers can only handle AirPlay control, when they are set as 'standalone' speakers, or they are 'grouped' together, or they are set as a 'stereo pair' with another identical device.

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.
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.


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.
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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.

Are you deadset serious? I wrote the below to you on the previous page.

You will not see the Play:1 in airplay at all. You need to group the Sonos One with the Play:1 in the Sonos App first and then when you airplay to the Sonos One it will automatically also play on the Play:1 which was grouped. When using Airplay you will not see the Play:1 at all. As far as Airplay is concerned, it is simply playing the audio to the Sonos One.

If you cannot group the Sonos One and Play:1's in the Sonos app then there is a problem you need to work on with Sonos Support.
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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.
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Are you deadset serious? I wrote the below to you on the previous page.


You can't be serious with this statement.

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.
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I'm sorry. I'm a big fan of Sonos products but that sounds like marketing ******.
It isn't, and no amount of online grumbling is going to change that.

How much CPU power does the Play:5 has that the Play:3 doesn't? and how much processing power does AirPlay2 requires at the first place?
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.
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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.
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I'm actually really impressed with the way Sonos have implemented Airplay 2. It mostly just works. You only have to look at Bose who have promising Airplay 2 for over a year and they aren't even giving their customer's an update on when they should see it. Between Airplay 2 and Sonos supporting Apple Music I've never been so reassured I chose Sonos over Bose. For what it's worth I flogged most of my Play:1's on eBay (They do fetch a good price used) and then paid the remainder to upgrade them to Sonos Ones, which meant it wasn't too expensive. Personally I think Sonos should ditch selling the Play:1 altogether, just like they did the Play:5 Gen 1.

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?
So same goes for PlayBase? AirPlay2 is not compatible to PlayBase? Only to Beam?
I've got a Playbase, it is Airplay2-enabled.