One of the best new features in the Sonos Ace headphones is TV Audio Swap, which enables you to listen to your home theater’s audio through your headphones, as long as you’ve set it up via the Sonos app. However, at the moment it’s only compatible with the Sonos Arc, and you can’t set it up if you have the app on an Android phone.
The good news – and with unhappy Sonos customers still complaining of the infuriating app problems they’re encountering, it makes a change to be sharing good Sonos news – is that support for more Sonos speakers is coming. TV Audio Swap will be coming to the Sonos Beam Gen 1, the Sonos Beam Gen 2 and the Sonos Ray in late summer or early fall. That’s also when Android owners will be able to set up the feature.
The news comes via Sonos itself, as part of yesterday’s live Ace Q&A (which you can stream here). However, there was no clarification of what “late summer” means. It looks like we’ll need to wait a bit longer to get an actual date – but we’re assuming August is the earliest to expect it, and September may be more realistic.
Why TV Audio Swap will be worth the wait
We’ve been testing the Sonos Ace for our full and in-depth review, and we’re very impressed by its spatial audio performance and by the TV Audio Swap feature; listening to movies is a thrilling experience that’s up there with the likes of AirPods Max, and is superior to the spatial audio in basically all the other best headphones – and TV Audio Swap has worked basically seamless for us.
The reason TV Audio Swap is so impressive – and why its absence from the Beam, Ray and Android is a real issue – is because it works with any audio source that’s connected to your TV: your Apple TV 4K, your PS5, one of the best Blu-ray players…. If your soundbar can play it, your Sonos Ace can receive it and apply their excellent, lag-free spatial audio processing and head tracking. We’re very impressed by the sound, the tracking, and by the ease of use here: all you need to to is press a single button on the headphones, and you’ve got private home theater sound.
It’s worth pointing out that the TV bit of TV Audio Swap is the crucial bit here: you can only swap audio that’s going to your soundbar from your TV. It can’t stream other audio sources that you might have connected to your Sonos system, such as a turntable. But for the moment, if your soundbar is a Beam or a Ray, or if your app is on Android, you can’t swap anything; your premium headphones are lacking one of their most essential features. Late summer can’t come soon enough.