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Sonos Announces Lower-Priced Soundbar With AirPlay 2 Support, 'Hey Sonos' Voice Control for Apple Music
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They are adamant about the privacy of requests. Diagnostics are said to be disabled after the beta period ends, in fact.
Great, how about proper Apple Music implementation? I've resorted to using airplay on Sonos for Apple Music because their Apple Music integration is completely unusable.
I've actually only ever used Soundbars via HDMI-CEC/ARC, which means I don't really know the benefit of it.
When it comes to soundbars, what can't I do with optical which I can do with HDMI-CEC/ARC?
While that's how I access music today, I see some value in being able to tell Sonos to stop playing after 15 minutes or just start playing something when I'm in bed.
whilst this is possible, it is worth noting that you cannot use ANY Sonos devices until you configure it with their app. I just recently bought a Sonos Beam 2 as a TV speaker and I was stunned to discover that you cannot even use a wired input until you've done the app "setup". and the app will not launch until you give it Local Network access, Bluetooth access AND LOCATION ACCESS???
so if you want a Sonos speaker, then you have to also give Sonos your live location data. craaazy.
Apple should have the skills and they definitely have the money, yet Siri is an absolute disaster.
Spoiler: There is apparently only one product that does, the Ecobee SmartThermostat.
Listen to uncompressed Audio. And with eARC you'd be able to hear 7.1 or Atmos. Optical has the lowest bitrate of the three as it is the oldest Standard of the bunch.
| Connection | Optical | ARC | eARC |
| Bandwidth | 384 Kbps | 1 Mbps | 37 Mbps |
| 5.1 Surround Sound | Yes (compressed) | Yes (uncompressed) | Yes (uncompressed) |
| 7.1 Surround Sound | No | No | Yes |
| Dolby Atmos, TrueHD, DTS HD, and Dolby Digital Plus | No | No | Yes |
That being said, I still see a use case for the Ray. If you happen to have an older TV which doesn't have an ARC port or want to connect your PC to a Soundbar, you'd have to use an Adapter to get your optical signal to HDMI and pay for features you couldn't use by this connection method. The Beam gen2 comes with the aforementioned Adapter, but also with the capability to play Dolby Atmos, which you couldn't use and therefore wouldn't need.
Sometimes Siri knows who my wife is when I ask to call my wife, and sometimes she doesn’t. I don’t get it. When I ask to play music sometimes it “just works” then for the next week or two I get asked what app I would like to use to listen to music on. I only have one music app. I do have a podcast app because Apple’s sucks so bad I had to finally switch, but it doesnt play music, at least I don’t think it does. I know I never asked it to or tried to. ?
The big question for you, and for others with older TVs (possibly less of a problem with newer TVs), is what exactly does your optical output do? I've seen older TVs that will only output stereo (basically the 2-channel signal they'd feed to their internal speakers) out through the optical port, or that will only output to optical if the signal is coming from their built-in tuner or streaming, but not if the audio is coming from an HDMI port (e.g. from an Apple TV or game console). There are also some where the audio signal gets delayed on the way out to the optical port, resulting in lip-sync issues that may be noticeable (and can fall into the "once you've seen it you can't unsee it and it'll annoy you constantly" area).
The HDMI eARC audio used by the Beam (2nd gen) and Arc unfortunately only comes on the more speedy models, but makes the audio Just Work. It's annoying that they made the Ray be optical audio only.
Now that Apple is firmly planted in the TV+ world (best picture Oscar for CODA, widespread cult-like following of Ted Lasso, etc.), they need to release a proper home theater sound system - or at least something that can rival good 3.1.2 or 5.1.2 soundbars. A pair of original HomePods came close to serving this role (it's what I'm using in my living room now, fantastic for that application), but they were discontinued and lacked a subwoofer (no surround option either, though the center virtualization, beam forming, and atmos seem to work alright). eARC functionality coming after they were discontinued was welcomed, but the lack of a true replacement is so sad.
I'd strongly suspect that they are licensing a bunch of the speech processing tech from some third party, and I kinda want to know who and/or have a much better understanding of what's involved, before I enable it on my Arc.
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No, they acquired a company:
Sonos Announces Acquisition of Snips
Addition of talent and technology that will elevate the voice experience on Sonos Sonos, Inc. (Nasdaq: SONO) today announced the acquisition of Snips SAS (“Snips”), an AI voice platform for connected devices that provides private-by-design voice technology. The acquisition will bring a talented...
You can't directly control the volume without CEC, which means you'll have to teach your remotes to send IR codes to the Ray (or teach the Ray to respond to the IR codes from your remotes), and you'll need line-of-sight to the TV for the remote to work (which you have when sitting in front of it, most likely, but I've grown accustomed to carrying the remote into, say, the kitchen, when playing something that I'm mostly just listening to, to change the volume or pause as needed). This affects volume up/down and mute (and power on/off, but Sonos devices never shut all the way off, so that's less meaningful).
Also, HDMI-eARC (only eARC, not ARC) has features in the spec that keep audio and video properly in sync. Going through optical, it's possible that your TV will introduce a small delay in the audio coming out the optical port. Depends on the TV. Also, devices supporting ARC and eARC support certain minimum formats (lossless DD5.1 and lossy DD5.1+ for ARC, lossless DD5.1 and Atmos for eARC - this doesn't mean that the devices at either end of the connection will necessarily support those), while optical digital only supports lossy DD5.1, and the TV may not support even that (basically, check the TV specs very carefully for what it will support sending to the optical output and from what internal/external sources).
Maybe could have been priced slightly lower. $249 might have been better.
🤣 for me I’d rather get two new HomePod Minis for around 140€ on eBay Kleinanzeigen. Have only one, but since I got my Apple TV 4K last week I’m loving the integration and ease of use. One more Mini for stereo pair and I’m done!
Define proper? Presuming a better variation is coming with their assistant.
The way I got it working was enabling Alexa, and using the lowly rated Apple Music skill... At some inevitable point after a few months, the Alexa skill gets confused, starts playing a song twice. But, other than that, its worked fairly reliably.