I just picked up a pair of Sonos ACE headphones as part of the sweet deal offered over the last few weeks. (Without thinking about it too much) I was excited to be able to use the ACE headphones directly as a Roon endpoint. After I got them today and played with them, I’m realizing they aren’t really connected to my WiFi in the same way a Sonos Move2 is and therefore cannot be used directly as an endpoint without a cell phone or computer in the middle streaming audio via bluetooth.
I’m listening right now through the headphones via Roon remote running on my Pixel9XL and it sounds great, but wondering if there is a different configuration I could use which would allow me to stream from my Nucleus directly to the Sonos Ace headphones. Any ideas?
Regrettably Sonos Ace has never been able to connect directly as a network client, despite containing WiFi hardware. The latter’s only used for point-to-point connection to a Sonos home theatre master player (Beam, Arc Ultra, etc) for ‘TV Audio Swap’, which itself only supports the soundbar’s HDMI-eARC TV input, not a network music source such as Roon Sonos Streaming.
Whether the above will ever change is anyone’s guess, but there would be various issues to overcome first not least battery usage and network roaming. Sonos actually attracted a fair bit of criticism when Ace debuted, as many assumed it would integrate fully into the Sonos system as a ‘room’. If it had, then logically it should have appeared as a Roon endpoint.
In the meantime your options for Ace are Bluetooth or USB from a suitable intermediary endpoint.
By the way I’d recommend you obtain an EQ profile for the Ace from AutoEQ. The RTINGS one improves the sound noticeably. It’s not yet available via Roon’s OPRA so you’d need to download the convolution filter from https://autoeq.app/ and upload to Roon. As far as I’m aware Ace only supports 48kHz sampling so that filter would suffice. In any case your Android phone will force 48kHz on Roon for compatibility reasons. Choose 32bit and minimum phase for the filter. Zip it and upload using Roon on Windows or Mac.
Giles -
Thanks for your detailed response. I wasn’t really aware that ACE had Wifi onboard but I will curb my enthusiasm regarding using that WiFi circuitry for anything other than Sonos network communications.
I really appreaciate the infor about the AutoEQ profiles. I haven’t yet dove deeply yet into that domain, but your links are a great start.
Cheers!