My dream is to have a remote speaker in my kitchen that mirrors my Apple TV setup in my living room. Do I have to get a Sonos playbar on my ATV and a Sonos One in the kitchen, or can I accomplish this by having my ATV4 output via optical to my present Samsung soundbar on ATV and simultaneously Airplay 2 to a HomePod in the kitchen? Thanks for any advice!
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Remote speaker for ATV 4
- Thread starter findbalnz
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the aTV4 has no optical out. (you might be able to HDMI to tv, then optical from TV to sound bar)
seeing as no-one has seen an airplay 2 device or homepod in the wild, you're not going to get a definite answer. everyone will just be guessing at this point, based on the same limited info we all saw at WWDC.
the sonos playbar / sonos one will work.
seeing as no-one has seen an airplay 2 device or homepod in the wild, you're not going to get a definite answer. everyone will just be guessing at this point, based on the same limited info we all saw at WWDC.
the sonos playbar / sonos one will work.
Simply using a nice bluetooth speaker via your iPhone/iPad would be the most cost-effective solution. What's the point of spending a lot on Sonos gear to make your TV into a jukebox, when the iDevice you likely already have will do the job better AND cheaper?
Any Airplay compatible speaker will work with an Apple TV. Sonos is just one brand of them that you can choose from. You can also use an Airport Express to make any speaker into an Airplay speaker through the 3.5mm jack.
I kind of assumed Airplay 2 would enable this, but it doesn't seem to be. Maybe when AirPod arrives they will support this? For now, ATV Audio Output seems to be an either\or proposition.
I have 2 ATV4 (connected to Home Theater and soundbar via optical from TV), and AP Express (connected by AUX to a portable speaker). When I want whole home audio, I fire up iTunes on my Mac (connected via Optical Audio to an old Home Theater system in the office). I then launch the old Remote App (the one with the blue icon, not the new black icon Remote app) which sees all of the airplay devices and can control music in iTunes. I select a playlist, enable output to Mac + ATVs + AP Express and the sound streams to all of my devices. The sound sync is flawless and volume can be controlled on all outputs using the Remote app.
The AP Express is setup in WiFi client mode, with Airplay enabled. The ATV are both hard wired to my network. The nice thing with this setup is the portable speaker can be placed anywhere in WiFi range to provide sound in that room (kitchen, patio, hot tub, etc).
I don't have an Apple Music subscription, but assume I could play that with this setup as well. For now, my 5,600+ songs provide enough variety to play for 18 days without repeating. I have a few playlists with nearly everything in it and set that to shuffle mode and it is a unique experience each time.
The nice thing with this setup is, no additional cost. AP Express was sitting around gathering dust until I set all of this up. This also works with iTunes on PC. AP Express can be picked up for $49 (Refurb) from the Apple online store (when available) or less on eBay. Older 802.11g Express can be found for under $20 on eBay. The 54Mbps of the older G model is more than enough for audio streams, that is the model I use.
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I use the airfoil app on my macbook with our ATV and iphones connected to speakers for similar whole house music. Now if I can find a way to watch NetFlix on my ATV and have the sound go to the kitchen so I can grab a snack or let out the dog and still hear what's happening...