Bose is adding support for Apple’s AirPlay 2 wireless streaming protocol to some of its high-end speakers and soundbars.
Bose’s Soundbar 500, Soundbar 700 and Home Speaker 500 are all gaining support for the service via a firmware update pushed out this week. The update means users will now be able to stream audio from Apple TV and music from iPhones and other Apple devices wirelessly to multiple speakers at the same time. It’s also possible to stream simultaneously to speakers from other brands.
"We're excited to announce that AirPlay 2 is now available on your Smart Speakers and Soundbars!,” Bose said in a statement. “As many of you know, AirPlay 2 lets you stream music, podcasts and audio for video from any Apple device to your Bose product (including Apple Music!).”
Bose is also planning to add support for AirPlay 2 to its line of SoundTouch speakers, but users of these devices will have to wait a little longer, the company said.
"We know many of our SoundTouch customers are also eager for AirPlay 2 functionality on their speakers, and while today's announcement only applies to our smart speakers and soundbars, rest assured we are still working on bringing the feature to SoundTouch as well,” Bose said in its announcement.
Apple has been pushing AirPlay 2 hard this year, with numerous TVs and speakers gaining support for the service in the last few months. Just this week, Yamaha announced it was supporting AirPlay 2 on 15 of its speakers and soundbars. Numerous top-end TVs from brands such as Samsung, Sony and Vizio have also added support for the protocol this year.
Also this week, another top speaker brand, Sonos, said it’s updating some of its devices with support Alexa voice controls for Apple’s Music service. The update means users can now control playback of Apple’s streaming service on their Sonos speakers simply by telling it what to do.
The feature is supported by the Sonos One wireless speaker and the Sonos Beam soundbar, and extends to non-Alexa enabled Sonos speakers on the same network, or those connected to an Amazon Echo device.
Sonos said voice control for Apple Music on its speakers can be accessed via the official Amazon Alexa app.
