Enlarge / At $200, the Sonos One is now the cheapest way to get AirPlay 2 onto a Sonos setup. (credit: Jeff Dunn)

Sonos on Wednesday announced that it has started to roll out support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 protocol on its wireless speakers.
As previously noted, AirPlay 2 is only fully supported on the company’s Sonos One and Play:5 speakers and its Beam and Playbase soundbars. Sonos users will need one of those speakers to directly activate AirPlay 2 control, but if they have one of those devices within a larger whole-home speaker setup, they’ll be able to control any other Sonos device they might have.
Apple rolled out AirPlay 2 as part of its iOS 11.4 update in late May, enabling its HomePod speaker to play the same audio across speakers in separate rooms, as well as the ability to play a pair of HomePods in stereo. (Sonos speakers already had the latter functionality.) Several third-party audio manufacturers have promised to include AirPlay 2 functionality in their speakers, including Bose, Bang & Olufsen, Marshall, Pioneer, and Bowers & Wilkins. With the update on Wednesday, Sonos is the first non-Apple speaker maker to support the protocol.

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