Sonos Ace TV Audio Swap to Support Beam and Ray by ‘Late Summer” or “Early Fall”

The Sonos Ace ‘TV audio swap’ feature will soon be supported on the company’s Beam and Ray soundbars. In a live Q&A video, Adib Mehrabi and Cameron MacLeod from Sonos explained that the feature should land in “late summer” or “early fall.”

During the live Q&A, which can now be watched on demand via Sonos’ website, Mehrabi notes that new features are “being worked on right now.” Currently, Sonos’ TV audio swap feature is exclusively supported on the Arc soundbar and only available to iOS users. As first reported by The Verge, when discussing when Beam (Gen 1 and Gen 2) and Ray soundbars will receive support, Mehrabi says, “We’re actually targeting late summer/ early fall right now.”

Sonos’ TV audio swap feature enables users to seamlessly swap the audio coming from the Arc soundbar directly to the new Ace headphones using a peer-to-peer Wi-Fi connection. Users must sync the Arc soundbar to the headphones using the Sonos app to accomplish this.

The purpose of TV audio swap is to enable users to get a personal home theatre experience. This includes 5.1 channels, 7.1.4 audio, and even full Dolby Atmos when watching a movie. With TV audio swap available, users can continue watching a loud blockbuster movie when a family member goes to bed. Alternatively, the feature can be great if another member of the household is listening to music from another speaker system or is taking a call.

In addition, Sonos revealed that Android users will soon be able to set up TV audio swap. During the Q&A, a Sonos representative responded to the chat. While broaching the topic of when the feature will arrive on Android, the company said, “We are taking the time and effort to ensure this feature works seamlessly and meets our standard for high-quality products as well as the standard of our listeners. We’ll be rolling this out for Android devices soon.”