"Airplay 2": What and why?

[Macwick]

So here's for a very unpopular opinion: I sincerely hope that a lot of "AirPlay 1" speakers will not support "AirPlay 2". Let me explain why and also why I think Apple is going for this approach.

This is a great post and I agree with you 100%. As I mentioned, I have numerous AirPlay targets, and I suspect most of them will not be updated to v2.

I'm actually OK with buying new hardware. However I *do* think they may upgrade the Airport Express for the following reason - how else will you deliver AirPlay 2 to an *existing* powered amp? HomePod won't get you this, nor will AppleTV (with the exception of your home theater).

So if Apple doesn't upgrade the Airport Express, they need to give us an AirPlay 2 option for rooms with existing amps/speakers.
[doublepost=1496768984][/doublepost]Great article, discussing these very issues:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/17...-raising-questions-for-apples-airport-express

"As of the first beta of iOS 11, Apple's AirPort Express router running the latest firmware does not appear as a HomeKit device and does not allow multi-speaker streaming, suggesting AirPlay 2 support is not yet available. It is unclear whether Apple plans to update its AirPort products to add support for AirPlay 2.

But with multiple reports suggesting that Apple is exiting the Wi-Fi router business, it's possible that the legacy AirPort Express may not receive the necessary firmware update for AirPlay 2. Instead, Apple could use the opportunity to push users to adopt its new $349 HomePod speaker, set to launch this December.

Of course, the HomePod is designed as an all-in-one high-fidelity speaker solution, including beam forming microphones for Siri input. The advantage of the AirPort Express, priced at $99 new, is that it boasts its own digital-to-analog converter, along with a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, allowing users to plug in their own speakers and configure AirPlay to their liking."

 

[BigAppleNYC123]

So here's for a very unpopular opinion: I sincerely hope that a lot of "AirPlay 1" speakers will not support "AirPlay 2". Let me explain why and also why I think Apple is going for this approach.

Multi-room audio is very hard to do because of network latency. One commenter also mentioned things like EQ and delay between digital to analgue conversion. While true, the biggest challenge with multi-room audio is network. If you have a slow home network, the chances of off-sync audio between rooms increase significantly. To solve such a problem, the speakers need to work out together (read: computational power) which is the weakest link in the set-up and ultimately all play with that same delay. I'm pretty sure Sonos does this as well.

In addition, with Sonos, each speaker itself is able to play music without the need of a phone (the phone merely works as a remote, not as a stream-device which pushes the signal to a speaker like AirPlay 1 currently does). The speaker itself will maintain the current playlist (allowing for other users to modify it too, AirPlay 2 will support this) and pulls the streams from source (Apple Music, Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Network Share. Hoping AirPlay 2 does this) by itself. To be able to do this the speaker needs something of an OS or CPU/ARM (again: computational power).

A lot of AirPlay 1 speakers are just capable of receiving an AirPlay stream from either a device in the WiFi network or Bluetooth. These devices couldn't pull a stream by themselves nor maintain a playlist. This, together with the multi-room sync issue makes me think these speakers will not support AirPlay 2. These type of speakers aren't even capable of receiving a large software update, they only have an AirPlay 1 certified chip to be able to handle those streams.

There are some devices currently on the market that DO have computational power and are AirPlay 1 certified (Bluesound for example). I do think these speakers will be able to support AirPlay 2, because then it is merely a matter of software implementation.

Also, if you look at the information we have currently, and the devices that will support AirPlay 2 for sure - ATV4 and the HomePod - these both have computational power. One possibility still out in the open is the option to pair AirPlay 1 devices with an ATV4. This will solve the problem of maintaining a playlist (the ATV4 will do it), but im not really sure about takeling the sync issue then. That being said, I don't think Apple will choose to support such complicated set-ups, how would you explain something like that to consumers? Very un-Apple imo, I don't expect it. What I do expect is that the ATV4 can function the same way a Sonos Connect works: giving computational power to your existing set-up. I don't expect an AirPort Express will do the same thing for the simple reason of not having enough power to deal with all the issues.

So, in the end, to me it makes much more sense that each 'room' or 'zone' will need its own brain to be able to tap into the current playlist, deal with the sync issue, pull streams independently. This all will result in a much better quality of playback and synced experience. It will also open up the possibilities of stereo setups with 2 HomePods or other speakers.

My 2 cents, hoping for it so I can ditch Sonos!

I have been looking very closely at sonos, but haven't jumped in. I really like the playbase and playbar. Would it be wise to outfit myself with airplay 2 speakers at this point? I feel like it wouldn't be smart to jump into sonos now...

 

[B.A.T]

I've had a multi room set up for the past 8 years in two different houses. Both set ups involved using two or three airport expresses and it has been flawless for the most part. My biggest headache was when Apple killed the ability of my iMac to communicate with an older generation express unit with the newest Mac Os a few years back. It upset me but I just caved in and bought a new airport. If they do it again I will find another non-Apple solution.

 

[grinny11]

I think they haven't implemented any Airplay 2 in any of the betas yet since we don't see AppleTVs show up in HomeKit. I think we will know more when we start seeing that happen.

I imagine there isn't a huge rush for this yet, as they really don't need to have this working until they are closer to launching the HomePod.

 

[OneZweiThree]

Slightly off topic: does anyone know, if Sonos could implement AirPlay via a software update? Or does there need to be specific hardware for AirPlay? And couldn’t Sonos just update their app, so that it integrates with Siri? I’m thinking of something like „hey Siri, play music in the living room via sonos“. Might this even be possible already in iOS 10?

 

[vyruzreaper]

Slightly off topic: does anyone know, if Sonos could implement AirPlay via a software update? Or does there need to be specific hardware for AirPlay? And couldn’t Sonos just update their app, so that it integrates with Siri? I’m thinking of something like „hey Siri, play music in the living room via sonos“. Might this even be possible already in iOS 10?

Need specific hardware. They use their own chips that are far superior than anything apple has put out. Its tbd what this new airplay 2 will be like

 

[cazlar]

BTW there is a talk at WWDC about Airplay 2 - hopefully some of these questions will be cleared up then:

THURSDAY, 4:10 PM
Introducing AirPlay 2

• AirPlay allows you to wirelessly stream content from your iOS device or Mac. Now with AirPlay 2, you can fill the home with multi-room audio. Learn how AirPlay 2 synchronizes playback and provides an even more reliable audio experience, and how to incorporate support for AirPlay 2 into your app.
  

 

[akselsoft]

Seeing as Apple announced thy are getting OUT of the Airport Express business, my guess is that they WON'T support Airplay 2.

I would love to know how this works with 3rd party AirPlay Devices, older Apple TV's, AirPort Express etc.

I'm guessing though potentially we won't find out much as it would involve people breaking their NDA's.

 

[vipergts2207]

Seeing as Apple announced thy are getting OUT of the Airport Express business, my guess is that they WON'T support Airplay 2.

Apple didn't announce that. It's been in the rumor mill, but it's not exactly a statement from the horses mouth.

 

[darkarn]

Does Airplay 2 have any improvements for video playback?

 

[akselsoft]

vipergts2207 - thanks for the clarification - ... and we wonder why fake news becomes so pervasive ....I would have sworn that was an announcement....I guess like other devices, Apple won't announce it, they just won't update them....

Thanks again

 

[dantracht]

Apple didn't announce that. It's been in the rumor mill, but it's not exactly a statement from the horses mouth.

Agreed. I think the AE's will be updated to support Airplay 2. Just so I am getting this right: is Airplay 2's big deal the fact that you it allows you to add speakers to HomeKit? If I am right.....meh. If my AE music setup gets Airplay 2, cool, if not, no big deal for me.

 

[NoelHib]

AirPlay doesn't do multi-room. You can select multiple speakers within iTunes on desktop, but there is no fancy multi-room functionality going on to ensure you get synchronised playback between devices.

Actually AirPlay1 does do timecode sync. What it can't account for is latency added by surround receivers and stuff like that. I personally have a Linux server with a 7.1 sound card. In Linux you can bust up a single 7.1 channel card into 4 discreet streams. So I have 4 instances of shairport-sync (AirPlay emulator with sync support) running for each output. So this can handle my living room, master bathroom, garage and back porch. I have perfect sync with this. Shairport-sync also has some latency compensation options that can be played with if needed. To get around the iPhone's inability to output to multiple AirPlay devices at the same time I wrote a program that acts as an AirPlay proxy which shows up on my network as [Multiroom]. So when I want to stream to multiple rooms from my iPhone I simply select [Multiroom] as my airplay target and then I open up a simple webui to control where the proxy outputs to. It is simply a bunch of check boxes with volume sliders.

My project is on GitHub here:
https://github.com/noelhibbard/node-airplayhub

 

[Uofmtiger]

Of course, the HomePod is designed as an all-in-one high-fidelity speaker solution, including beam forming microphones for Siri input. The advantage of the AirPort Express, priced at $99 new, is that it boasts its own digital-to-analog converter, along with a 3.5-millimeter headphone jack, allowing users to plug in their own speakers and configure AirPlay to their liking."

The other upside to the Airport Express is that it can feed the digital signal into a separate DAC. This is important if you want to get Audyssey room correction from a receiver. No one I know would replace a multifunction home theater receiver with these speakers.

My receivers have Airplay built in, so I am hoping this is backward compatible even if it does not allow them to be added to Homekit. Not being able to Airplay directly to them would be a huge step backward.

 

[Mithat]

I have a large number of AirPlay 'targets' in my home:

Apple TV 4th gen * 3
Airport Express 1st gen * 1
Airport Express 2nd gen * 2
iHome W3 * 2

My *hope* is that Apple adds AirPlay support for the Apple TVs and the 2nd gen Airport Express (because it is still available from Apple). I highly doubt my iHome speakers or 1st gen Airport Express will receive AirPlay 2 support.

EDIT: The other reason I suspect they will add AirPlay 2 support to the Airport Express, is that it's currently the only Apple solution for distributing audio to an existing powered amplifier.

I would also like to better understand how AirPlay 2 works within the Home app, and how it relates to the Music app and the iTunes Remote app. The current ecosystem is a bit of a mess - I need to use the Remote app to stream to multiple speakers, but it doesn't support Apple Radio or Apple Music, or I use my iPhone to stream to a single target, although that's not ideal because then my phone has to be on and connected for the music to stream (and the audio stream is constantly dropping/freezing).

An *ideal* solution (unlikely) is that you use the Music app on your iPhone to select the destinations for streaming, and it then streams the music from the cloud to these devices, and doesn't rely on your iPhone pushing all this data out to your speakers.

Can't wait for someone to try this out on the iOS 11 beta.

Apple TV already does that. Whenever possible, Apple TV streams music directly from the cloud, bypassing the phone.

 

[danmart]

Apple TV already does that. Whenever possible, Apple TV streams music directly from the cloud, bypassing the phone.

I did not know that. Interesting.

 

[AngloApulian]

I wonder if the new AirPlay 2 protocol will also support streaming of 24-bit Hi-Res Audio. The current AirPlay protocol only supports up to 16-bit audio streaming.

 

[rhcpsteve]

I don't hold much hope for Airport Express compatibility. The buffering is now in the minutes, not seconds according to todays WWDC session. The Airport Express has 64MB of RAM. At ~5MB a minute for ALAC 44.1khz 16 bit, I don't imagine there'll be a great deal of memory available for the additional buffering required to achieve Apple's example experience of "being able to go outside to take the trash out, lose wifi connectivity, and have the music continue uninterrupted"
Apple TV 2 and 3 have 256 and 512MB respectively but then they may not have that much available to play with after the system overheads..

 

[flintythunder]

BTW there is a talk at WWDC about Airplay 2 - hopefully some of these questions will be cleared up then:

THURSDAY, 4:10 PM
Introducing AirPlay 2

• AirPlay allows you to wirelessly stream content from your iOS device or Mac. Now with AirPlay 2, you can fill the home with multi-room audio. Learn how AirPlay 2 synchronizes playback and provides an even more reliable audio experience, and how to incorporate support for AirPlay 2 into your app.

Hey guys, any news from the Airplay 2 workshop?

 

[Macwick]

required to achieve Apple's example experience of "being able to go outside to take the trash out, lose wifi connectivity, and have the music continue uninterrupted"

Damn, this is disappointing news. This implies that the iOS device is still being used to stream the music to AirPlay 2 devices. I was really hoping that they would have the AirPlay 2 devices stream directly from iCloud/Apple Music. It sounds like the improved buffering will resolve one of the issues w/ using an iOS device as your source, but I still don't like it.

What if you're hosting a large party and want a playlist running in multiple rooms? You kick it off via your iPhone, and then later you run out to buy some more beer. Music stops because you and your phone left. That's just silly.

Any other details from the WWDC session? Did you attend? The video isn't online yet.

 

[brilliantthings]

Looks like Airport Express won't be supported

 

[danmart]

So Airplay 2 won't support old devices; the killer question then is whether Airplay 1 will be deprecated? I hope not.

Anyone but Apple, I would say it was certain to be retained. But they have shown they are willing to take unpopular decisions. It's harder to justify with software than hardware, though, so I remain optimistic.

 

[vipergts2207]

Looks like Airport Express won't be supported

And of course it looks like ATV 3 isn't supported either. Hopefully I can pick up an ATV 4 for cheap for the bedroom in addition to an ATV 5 for the living room when it comes out.

 

[Sevenfeet]

I guess it was time for Airplay to be updated. We forget that Airplay began with the original Airport Express 802.11g version which was way back in 2004....an eternity for any technology. And it predates iOS.

Someone online tried to get to the roots of the protocol some years back since it seemed to be poorly documented on a low level unless you were a hardware manufacturer. After looking at the packet traffic from iTunes via a sniffer, he discovered that Airplay was pretty easy to decipher. It clearly specified the bit rate and depth of the stream, but curiously, it always ended up being 16bit/44.1 khz regardless of the target. That made a lot of sense considering Airplay's history. iTunes was the sole origin technology and the Airport Extreme was the target. It had a D/A converter for analog audio but it also had a Toslink connection as well and 16/44.1 provided wide compatibility with target digital compatible third party receivers. It was also useful that 16/44.1 is the depth/bitrate of any lossless ripped CD (Apple Lossless was introduced just before the first AE debuted in 2004.

Anyone who had one of those early gen-1 AEs remembered that drop outs could be a big problem if the AE was part of a larger wireless network and the wireless signal to the AE was less than robust. Considering how much data was being streamed (16/44.1) versus an MP3 or AAC files made using Airplay frustrating in some circumstances. Later 802.11n and ac versions made that problem largely moot. But in every case, Airplay as a protocol remained the same. iTunes was responsible for streaming the audio, converting it to 16/44.1 from whatever the original file was. This included downrezzing hi-res 24 bit lossless audio down to 16 bit in later years.

Apple then started making their own Airplay embedded chips for hardware manufacturers and we've seen a slew of these products across all price points for several years now. But the streaming to them has been the same....16/44.1, regardless if the source was iTunes or iOS.

The Apple TV was also streamed to at 16/44.1 even though intrinsically it was a 16/48 device. The Apple TV was responsible for converting the stream to 16/48, not iTunes which meant that if iTunes had done a conversion from the source originally, the Apple TV would convert again, which is lousy for sound quality.

Many of us, including myself have been using Airplay 1 streamed through AEs for years and many of us audiophiles have used the AEs to stream digitally to an external DAC. The current AE 802.11n is doing that for me now and it looks like it's the end of the line for it in terms of new Airplay features. But if we move to Airplay 2, I'd like to know a few things:

Is streaming still limited to 16/44.1? The original protocol supported other bitrates but it was never used.

Can Airplay 1 and 2 devices be used together (with obvious limitations)?

Will a third party fill the void of the AE with a Airplay 2 compatible analog/digital streamer?

How hard is it to upgrade existing embedded Airplay devices to Airplay 2? How far back can a flash upgrade be executed?

 

[Uofmtiger]

So Airplay 2 won't support old devices; the killer question then is whether Airplay 1 will be deprecated? I hope not.

Anyone but Apple, I would say it was certain to be retained. But they have shown they are willing to take unpopular decisions. It's harder to justify with software than hardware, though, so I remain optimistic.

I think this is the main question. I would like AirPlay 2 in all of my devices because it would allow multiroom audio without needing a computer, NAS, or Whaale involved. However, killing off AirPlay 1 would be a huge disappointment. The main reason I stuck with Apple back when they were only making 4 inch phones and everyone else was offering bigger screens was AirPlay.

Making at least hundreds (maybe thousands) of products that don't update to AirPlay 2 incompatible with IOS would be a mistake. There isn't an adapter you can buy to make this work, it has to be done with software.

I think iOS 11 will work with AirPlay 1 because I can't see Apple bricking so many products. It could also hurt the adoption of ios11 which they tout as an advantage of iOS vs Android.