Using Port to bridge Airplay to paired Play:1 speakers

  • 3 December 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 296 views
D

Hi all…

I recently replaced a Connect with a Port in order to be able to play music via AirPlay to a pair of Play:1s in the same physical room (my old setup: I would AirPlay to an Airport Express that sent audio through an amplifier to a Connect that then talked to the Play:1s. Complicated but it did work).

Using the guidance here I did the following:

  • Created a Room for the Port and a Room for the pair of Play:1s
  • Enabled Group Non-AirPlay Products in settings.
  • Created a Group for the above two Rooms.

The good news is that I can get this setup to work in order to stream music from a browser over AirPlay, as desired (I sometimes use a web-based streaming service that Sonos doesn’t support). However, the experience is incredibly clunky: the grouping must be maintained from the macOS desktop Sonos client (S2 groups on iOS do not work), the Group gets unpaired all the time, and often the Port can’t be selected as an output option from macOS Sound settings. Basically I have to go into the Sonos desktop app, fiddle with the Rooms and Groups as well as my own macOS sound preferences and hope that AirPlay to the Port works eventually. The experience is not good.

I’m almost ready to return the Port and go back to the clunky-but-less-clunky way I was doing it before. For less than the price of the Port I could also just replace both Play:1 speakers with One SLs, which would support AirPlay 2 out of the box. The thing is, I believe the Port *should* work as an AirPlay 2 bridge and do so reliably.

What am I doing wrong? Is there a different setup that should work?

Thanks so much for any advice,

Dave

PS. Technical specs: I’m on macOS 10.15.7...haven’t yet tried this from Big Sur. Running Sonos Controller for Mac 12.2  (61182310)

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3 replies

Annazel S
Userlevel 5
Badge +16

Hi @daveplaysmusic.

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the community!

Let me see what I can do to help you.

You are right, Port should be compatible with Airplay. There are a lot of possible causes that we may need to explore.

Have you tried to use another iOS device rather than Mac and see if it’s the same?

Kindly reproduce the issue, then submit a diagnostic report through the Sonos app shortly after the issue occurs, and reply with the confirmation number. I'd start by reviewing your system as well as the status of the devices, it will help in identifying what's possibly causing the issue.

 

Let me know how that goes and if you have any questions feel free to reach out.

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D

I believe I’ve figured out the cause -- there’s no way to maintain a logical grouping between sessions, so it’s necessary to AirPlay to the Port and then manually (re-)group the device to the legacy speakers in the same physical room.

Should Autoplay work in this configuration? That is, if I AirPlay to the Port with Autoplay set to use the legacy speakers, should the Port automatically route the signal to them? Seems like that would be nice, if it worked the same way as the Line In connection.

Annazel S
Userlevel 5
Badge +16

Hi @daveplaysmusic.

Thanks for your response.

When an AirPlay-compatible Sonos product (Port) is playing AirPlay audio, you can group it with any other Sonos product in your system for multi-room playback. Your iOS device’s audio will stream directly to Port wherein the non-compatible product(s) will be connected or grouped, and I agree that the logic is the same when using Line-In, both ways needed a “source” to start a playback out of your Sonos system.

 

If you have any questions or concerns,  feel free to reach out.

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