Sonos Launches Two New Speakers With AirPlay 2 Support

[mtrm]

Thank you for sharing that, it includes the same frustrations that I have, plus one possible work around that I need to try.

The solutions are simple, using a finger, especially my apparently big fat finger, to adjust the volume slider is a royal pain, too high, too low, too many attempts at small slides to get it to where I want it to be. If the volume buttons are not an option (and they would be the best option) then either making the slider less granular or, even better, simply adding + and - buttons at each end of the slider to allow for adjustments of one slider unit at a time would entirely solve my problem. It really isn't that hard to fix this issue with a solution that would be acceptable.

I haven’t tried in a while (so I’m not sure if it’s still like that) but I believe that if you tap on the slider to the right of where the volume indicator is, it increases volume by 1, and if you tap to the left of it, it lowers it by 1. Not optimal, but useful if you are trying to get two or more speakers to play at the exact same volume.

 

[whitby]

Now is the perfect time to announce AirPlay 3

Now is also the time to get Airplay 2 to work properly. This is not a trivial technical task, but the fact that we can go from working systems and totally break it with an upgrade tells you something about software quality. Airplay urgently needs an enhancement to allow lossless playback, especially as Apple support lossless in Apple Music, but it would be useful if they could get the existing playback system to work correctly.

 

[acesX3]

I haven’t tried in a while (so I’m not sure if it’s still like that) but I believe that if you tap on the slider to the right of where the volume indicator is, it increases volume by 1, and if you tap to the left of it, it lowers it by 1. Not optimal, but useful if you are trying to get two or more speakers to play at the exact same volume.

Thank you, again.

Didn't know that, just tried it and viola, it works! You've made my life better and solved a frustrating problem. 🙏

It's not going to win Sonos any UI awards, but now that I know...

 

[mtrm]

Thank you, again.

Didn't know that, just tried it and viola, it works! You've made my life better and solved a frustrating problem. 🙏

It's not going to win Sonos any UI awards, but now that I know...

Glad to help!

 

[QuarterSwede]

I would agree that on the low quality speakers or headphones/EarPods that are often used to listen to music that the difference between lossless and AAC is difficult to detect when listening in an average environment. But, when listening on good equipment in a decent listening environment, there is a great deal of difference and I know I can tell the difference with ease, but not everyone has the same ears and listening environment. I would refrain from making such generalizations without checking on what people are using to listen to their music and the environment in which they are listening. You may not be able to tell the difference but that does not mean everyone cannot tell the difference.

Scientific testing doesn’t agree. It’s really simple as that.

 

[zarmanto]

So sure... the Sonos concept is "nice"... When. It. Works. The trouble is, it fails far more often than it should, and everybody's story about how it failed them is different.

Just as an addendum to my own commentary: This whole conversation bugged me enough that I did something yesterday that I hadn't taken the time to do previously... I actually contacted Sonos tech support. I generally prefer not to deal with tech support, because (having worked in that field myself) I usually know more than they do... but my own biases aside, I realized it was necessary if I was going to be at all intellectually honest about these issues.

After they required me to repeat the long laundry list of things that I'd already done (three times, for some reason) tech support finally landed on some things that I hadn't tried... first they suggested that I turn off my mesh extenders while setting up the speakers. That worked immediately for one speaker; the other one required an additional measure of disabling Device Isolation... which did indeed solve the problem for that second speaker, even though it wasn't explicitly in the list of devices being "isolated." (Da hek?)

After completing setup, I of course re-enabled the mesh extenders, and the speakers both appeared to function normally for a time... but as soon as one of them switched over to an extender with a stronger local signal, that speaker dropped from my Sonos System again. So unfortunately, there are still issues; now they just fall into the category of readily identifiable failures. Tech support of course assured me that their speakers work with some mesh networks. I can actually validate that this is true, as some of my family members have a different brand mesh, (which I had configured for them) and I'm reasonably certain that they've never had any of these kinds of problems with their Sonos System. I guess I chose my mesh... poorly.

Thus, if you're using any kind of a mesh network, there is a non-zero chance that it's adversely affecting your Sonos System. Who's fault that is may be up for debate.

 

[Ct applefan]

I don’t understand the appeal. Just seems like these are for people with a lot of $ that don’t know anything about technology.

Sounds like your average Apple user.