Last year, Sonos announced plans to add enhance for Apple ’s AirPlay 2 to its speakers. AirPlay 2 is a vital function in that it will permit iPhone and iPad customers to ship audio from principally any app to Sonos ’ great-sounding audio system. and also you ’ll have the ability to inform Siri to play tracks from Apple Song on Sonos programs; the Sonos One sensible speaker doesn ’t currently will let you release song from Apple ’s service with voice commands, however AirPlay 2 is a roundabout means of introducing that comfort. the variation is that you simply ’ll be doing the talking to your telephone instead of the Sonos.
Sonos isn ’t saying exactly while AirPlay 2 integration can be ready for release. Apple itself has yet to officially release AirPlay 2 for iOS yet; it ’s still in beta trying out. so that part clearly needs to occur first. But Sonos has made enough progress to have finalized an inventory of which of speakers gets it. The Sonos One, 2nd-gen Play:FIVE, and Playbase will be up to date with AirPlay 2 reinforce. Older Sonos merchandise — the Play:1, Play:THREE, and Playbar — received ’t be. to help ease the ache and frustration of that cutoff, Sonos says that see you later as you ’ve were given one speaker that may do AirPlay 2 for your Sonos setup, you can group it with older fashions to make that audio play all over. Mac Observer first stated the listing of supported units.
”identical to with laptops and mobile phones, sophisticated new features sometimes require new hardware,” Sonos said in its blog publish nowadays. “The computing systems and device architecture in some of the older Sonos players merely don ’t have the horsepower to reinforce AirPlay 2. But by means of taking good thing about more recent Sonos hardware, we ’re capable of make AirPlay 2 content to be had throughout the area on audio system old and new.”
You received ’t always have to staff them together in the course of the app, both. If a Sonos device is playing AirPlay 2 audio, you’ll be able to simply push and grasp the play button on an older Sonos speaker to have it robotically select up that very same source.
In My View, I ’m so much enthusiastic about this for YouTube, because there ’s by no means been a really perfect, seamless way to make Sonos play audio from the top video platform. Now you ’ll simply have to faucet the AirPlay icon. there will likely be a bit of of latency among sound and symbol with AirPlay 2, so it could now not be ideal in all instances. But no less than it ’ll be a comparatively simple choice. Same goes for Netflix, HBO Now, and other apps that Sonos hasn’t in the past supported on its finish.
Sonos also made some other large promise remaining October: Google Assistant. The Corporate has situated the Sonos One as a wise speaker that will probably be assistant-agnostic and give a boost to more than one shopper favorites. It shipped with Alexa, AirPlay 2 will quilt Siri (albeit out of your iOS software and not the speaker itself), but Sonos hasn ’t equipped much of a standing update on where the Google undertaking is.