Earlier this month, Sonos released a new controller app, completely re-written from scratch. It’s been an unmitigated disaster—missing core functionality and plagued by bugs—especially for users with local library music; the Sonos forums and reddit are filled with posts from extremely frustrated users. There is no mechanism for reverting to the previous functional version on iOS.
Some weeks before the new Sonos app dropped, I switched my desktop setup (Genelec monitors + sub) from Sonos to Audirvana. I’ve been absolutely delighted and—as this is the vast majority of my listening—I’ve thanked my lucky stars to have mostly dodged the aforementioned trainwreck.
I have Sonos speakers in other rooms, and I plan to replace those with a mix of UPnP / DLNA / Chromecast speakers controlled by Audirvana remote. I am looking for everything from a small bedside speaker to something beefy enough to rock the kitchen, suggestions much appreciated!
Thank you for your kind words. I heard about Sonos’s decision to redo their app. However, like many others, I’m not a fan of how they handled the thing for their customers (I’m not one of them)
I am a SONOS user in Japan, and would love to use Aurdirvana for SONOS speakers. However, Aurdirvana cannot find SONOS speakers as UPnP. I think Aurdirvana should catch SONOS as streaming device and will be the solution for the poor new SONOS app.
I really wish Sonos would enable their speakers to be discoverable via AS. They don’t appear at all on the AS output list. In fact, none of my Sonos or Apple speakers show as a possible output in AS. I guess AS doesn’t use AirPlay as it’s not bit perfect.
To play to an Apple HomePod in AS over AirPlay on a Mac you just select the speaker as the output device from the speaker icon in the macOS Menu bar. It will then appear in AS as Apple AirPlay at the top of the Audirvana list. Just select it. I play from AS to HomePods over AirPlay in my home office all the time……
If you are streaming from an old Mac that does not support AirPlay 2 then the stream to the HomePod is continuous and the file sent will be a 16/44.1 lossless file. This also occurs even if your Mac supports AirPlay 2 but your endpoint only supports AirPlay 1 (due to backwards compatibility)
If your system and os supports AirPlay 2 and your apple speaker supports AirPlay 2 the stream is sent as short data bursts every 10 seconds. Under AirPlay 2 the file is downsampled by your Mac to a 256 kbps AAC file. They did this to enable dual streams to stereo pair HomePods and accommodate bandwidth requirements for Spatial Audio.
AirPlay 2 for those wanting to play lossless files was actually a downgrade over the original AirPlay in my opinion……
Oh, I didn’t realize that AirPlay 2 had such limitations.
Since I use a Windows PC, having UPnP connection options with SONOS would be definitely convenient.
