2018 MBA battery drain with Airplay 2 and Sonos speakers

[marconiusrex]

Hey all - Got a new 256GB Gold 2018 MBA a few weeks ago. Really liking this machine with one exception. When it's operating on Battery and I play to my Apple HomePod and 2 or more Sonos Speakers my battery drains in just a bit over 4 hours. Is that normal for this kind of use? The only other thing I'm doing is surfing the web on Safari. I'm wondering if Airplay 2 is a huge battery hog or if the combo with the Sonos speakers is the culprit. Also sometimes the CPU gets hot (up in the 210 215 degrees F range) and the fans ramp way up. Sometimes if I just play to my HomePod and 1 Sonos Speaker it doesn't seem to trigger the heat/fan issue.

Thanks!

 

[auxbuss]

I have a Libretone Zipp (brilliant piece of kit that more folk should know about) that I use over Airplay without any excessive battery drain or heat issues with the MBA. So, Airplay alone doesn't seem to be the issue.

If you've not already looked, Activity Monitor's Energy tab should show the culprit.

 

[marconiusrex]

I checked Activity monitor when this happens and iTunes jumps to 53% under energy usage. This is if I play 2 Sonos speakers along with my HomePod. If I uncheck one of the Sonos speakers it almost immediately goes down to 1.8% energy usage so it's definitely related to playing to 2 or more Sonos speakers. Odd that it would let you play to one of the Sonos speakers and not effect energy consumption. I'll report it to Apple and Sonos and look into some other threads on the issue. Thanks!

 

[0014]

Out of curiosity have you tried using the Sonos Mac App? I use that and have no issue with battery drain on my MBA.

I can’t see why iTunes would suddenly ramp up with two Sonos speakers? That is very odd and suggests something is amiss within iTunes or the WiFi to the second speaker maybe.

Which version Sonos are you using? I have 2 x Play:5 Gen 2 and 3 x Play:1 (the ones without Alexa built in). I can group all 5 speakers in the Mac App and haven’t noticed any issue with excessive battery drain.

 

[VineRider]

That is curios as to why this would happen using Sonos speakers. I have a Sonos Soundbase and I have not experienced battery drain playing from my 2018 Air. However, I mostly use the Sonos app to stream music.