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Question

AirPlay grouping/playing on Sonos: best practices

  • January 31, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 23 views
G

Hi everyone, 

I use both Apple Music and I listen a lot to podcasts via Apple Podcasts. For Apple Music I most of the time use the Sonos App (because of the streaming quality and direct streaming). For podcast I obviously  use AirPlay 2 from my iPhone (iPhone 16 - iOS 26). 

I’ve read a few articles on AirPlay, including on this forum, and I was wondering which are the best practices. 

In this support article they say: 

Select one or more Sonos products to stream the same audio across all of them using AirPlay.

 

But in some posts and articles I read it’s better to do grouping an ungrouping via the Sonos App (all my speakers are AirPlay 2-compatible). 

My question:

  1. Is it better to just initiate the AirPlay 2 stream and then switch back to Sonos App for other controls (grouping and ungrouping, volume) or does it make no difference anymore if using the controls from iOS). 
  2. What is the difference between grouping with iOS and with Sonos? 

1 reply

AjTrek1
  • AjTrek1
  • January 31, 2026

I don't use AirPlay much at all as the Sonos App fulfills my needs for music and I don’t listen to podcasts. Therefore, my thoughts maybe less than what you need.

As far as sound quality you shouldn’t notice a difference...at least I can’t with music. However, there are UI differences that may or may not matter to you.

I’ve used Apple Music via the native app and via Sonos for the following examples. Take a look at the pictures below and preceding comments:

 

#1_Apple Music app grouping via AirPlay. Nothing really remarkable as the basic information showing speakers, audio codec, play/pause, back/forward and volume control. 

 

#2_Apple Music grouping via Sonos App. Shows the same information as in picture #1 with a few minor differences. Only you can decide if those differences matter.

 

#3_Apple Music app speaker selection via AirPlay. You are able to select Sonos speakers as well as any other Airplay capable speaker. In this picture you also see my Apple HomePods labeled as Entrance. I’ll not show a picture of speaker selection within the Sonos app as I feel the differences mentioned here tell what you would or wouldn’t see.

 

#4_Volume Control within the Sonos app. Within the Sonos app you have the ability to control the individual volume of each speaker in the group using the Volume Slider. That feature is not available inside Airplay. In Airplay you must bring up the grouping as shown in #3 above.

 

So, all said it really comes down to personal choice. However, Airplay can be finicky as it piggy-backs on your home Wi-Fi. Meaning that Airplay can be slower to react to volume changes especially in speaker groupings.

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