Sonos is bringing AirPlay 2 support to its modern speakers today through a new software update. AirPlay 2 will work on the new Sonos Beam, Sonos One, Playbase, and second-generation Play:5 speakers, but if you have older speakers then you can group them with one of the compatible speakers to make AirPlay 2 work with them.
AirPlay 2 was quietly released into the wild as a part of their iOS 11.4.1 update on Tuesday a while ago, but there haven’t been a lot of speakers to make use of it.
Sonos (somewhat strangely) have been a proponent of the tech, which simulates their own product offering allowing compatible speakers to have music streamed to them – either individually or as a group via your iOS device.
Today, through a software update, Sonos’ newer speakers are now fully compatible with AirPlay 2, which also makes them one of the few that do!
One advantage of the matching means the ability to push audio from any app (with AirPlay support) from your iOS device to your Sonos system without the reliance of Sonos supporting the service.
It also brings Siri support in a round about way. You can now ask Siri to stream songs from Apple Music directly to your AirPlay 2 Sonos speakers, which somewhat cannibalises Apple’s HomePod in a way.
What it doesn’t do is add Siri to your microphone enabled Sonos One or the new Beam soundbar, but I don’t think anyone is too bothered by that.
Source: Sonos launches AirPlay 2 support for latest speakers – The Verge