AirPlay 2 has arrived on Sonos. Now any app on your iOS devices can be streamed directly to Sonos speakers including Sonos Beam, Sonos One, Playbase and the second generation Play:5. The roll out comes a week ahead of the new Beam living room smart speaker, which ships with AirPlay 2 support.
AirPlay 2 is designed to allow iOS users to select the speakers they want to play music through, thanks to its new multi-room audio support.
Siri is also more closely integrated into AirPlay 2 on an iPhone, so you can now ask Apple’s digital assistant to play music on specific speakers.
Since the newer Sonos speakers already support Alexa, you’ll also be able to control the playback of AirPlay 2 music on Sonos speakers. Once the music is playing via AirPlay 2, you can ask Alexa to pause, go to the next track, or ask what’s currently playing.
Even though Sonos has been supportive to blind and low vision users for many years, the company recently warned that a lack of software updates could become the norm for older devices. The company typically updates its older speakers with the latest software features in its multi-room audio ecosystem.
“We expect that in the near to intermediate term, this backward compatibility will no longer be practical or cost-effective, and we may decrease or discontinue service for our older products,” says Sonos in a recent SEC filing.
Source: Sonos
