AirPlay 2 for Sonos speakers now available

A firmware update for your Sonos speakers is available. And it is not just an update! The new firmware, announced yesterday for various Sonos speakers includes support for Apple’s new AirPlay 2 standard. To get the update, you do need a fairly new Sonos. officially the Sonos Beam, One, Playbase and the second generation Play: 5 are supported. Older Sonos speakers such as the Play: 1 and Play: 3 have ‘just not enough power’ to handle AirPlay 2, the company said in advance .

Finally multiroom with Apple

AirPlay 2 supports multiroom audio that can be controlled directly from iOS 11.4 on an iPhone or iPad. You no longer need an extra app – open the Control Panel and activate the speakers. Then you listen to music or other audio content on multiple speakers at the same time. The only condition is that the speakers support AirPlay 2 and are registered on the same Wi-Fi network. In addition, a larger buffer provides fewer hitches during playback. Also received messages or phone calls no longer sound on the speakers. In the past this was experienced as very annoying by many people (including us). Finally, AirPlay 2 lets you combine the speakers through the Apartment app in different rooms.

Sonos supports Siri

Sonos also emphasizes that you can also use Siri via your iOS device. This makes it ‘child’s play to control all songs, albums and playlists from Apple Music via voice’. Unfortunately, Siri is not directly built into the speakers, you need a HomePod for that. Sonos however hopes that in the future Apple will also allow Siri to use speakers from third parties.

AirPlay 2 on more speakers

The new streaming protocol originally had to be released in the fall of 2017, together with the first version of iOS 11. In the end it was postponed to iOS 11.4 that only came out in May. Besides Sonos, other manufacturers also want to support AirPlay 2, for example Bang & Olufsen, Denon and Libratone. This happens through both software updates and new speakers.