Sonos has announced more specific details on which of its new speakers will be gaining AirPlay 2 support this year, according to The Mac Observer. While the company announced last fall that AirPlay 2 support was in the works, that announcement provided no specifics.
Now, Sonos has confirmed that AirPlay 2 support will be coming to “newer Sonos speakers,” specifically listing the Play:5, Playbase and Sonos One. Sonos notes that the older players simply don’t have the necessary processing power to support AirPlay 2.
Basically, as The Mac Observer points out, this means that any Sonos speakers with touch controls will natively support AirPlay 2, while older speakers that have buttons won’t have direct AirPlay 2 support.
However, it turns out that the older gear can still be used with AirPlay 2, provided it’s part of a group that contains at least one new AirPlay 2 compatible model — for example a pair of Play:1’s and a Sonos One could all receive an AirPlay stream together. Of course, since Sonos is still waiting on Apple to actually release AirPlay 2 support beyond beta versions, it’s unable to say when these speakers will gain support for the new protocol, and it’s unclear whether it will be alongside the launch of AirPlay 2 on iOS devices, or sometime later.