For some Sonos fans, soundbars — even very capable Dolby Atmos soundbars like the Sonos Arc Ultra — just don’t cut it when it comes to home theater surround sound. They want a fully customizable experience that only an AV receiver (AVR)-based system can deliver. If that’s your point of view, and if you own one of Yamaha’s Aventage AVRs, you can now have your cake and eat it thanks to a software update that brings Works with Sonos compatibility to Yamaha’s RX-A8A, RX-A6A, RX-A4A, and RX-A2A.
Works with Sonos is a certification program that lets a variety of third-party devices interact with the Sonos ecosystem. In the case of Works with Sonos AVRs, you need to first connect them to a Sonos Port. Once configured in the AVR, triggering music playback on the Sonos Port from the Sonos app automatically powers on the AVR, flips the input setting to the one the Port uses, and lets you control volume level from the Sonos app as well.
To be clear, Works with Sonos isn’t new — I bought a Pioneer AVR that’s Works with Sonos compatible in 2018. However, this is the first time a Yamaha-built AVR has been given the feature.
“Aventage is our premium AV receiver line,” said Ikuo Tanaka, Group Manager, Home Audio Group at Yamaha Corporation, “the top choice for custom integration professionals and passionate home theater enthusiasts, making it ideal for Works with Sonos integration. This integration exemplifies how our customers consistently gain powerful new features and capabilities through our firmware updates.”
To enable Works with Sonos, you need to use the Yamaha MusicCast app. And just in case you were wondering, nothing is changing on that front: the Aventage AVRs will continue to support all MusicCast streaming and control capabilities. To get going, just make sure both your MusicCast app and your AVR firmware is up to date.
As handy as Works with Sonos is for seamlessly combining a Sonos Port and an AVR like Yamaha’s Aventage lineup, it misses out on a key strength of both Sonos and Yamaha: Dolby Atmos.
With some Sonos speakers, like the Sonos Era 300, Sonos Arc, Sonos Beam Gen 2, and Sonos Arc Ultra, you can stream Dolby Atmos Music natively from services like Apple Music. In theory, you should be able to get the same audio to your Yamaha receiver, except for two problems. First, the Sonos Port can’t receive Dolby Atmos Music streams. Second, even if it could, it has no way to pipe that audio into the Yamaha.
The Sonos port only has analog stereo, or digital coaxial outputs. Neither of those can deliver multichannel Dolby Atmos to an external device. To do that, the Port would need an HDMI output.
At the moment, that leaves Yamaha-owning Dolby Atmos Music fans with only non-Sonos options. An Apple TV 4K running either Apple Music or Tidal would do the trick, as would an Nvidia Shield TV or Shield TV Pro. If you want Atmos Music from Amazon Music, you’ll need one Amazon’s Atmos-capable Fire TV streamers.
