An AirPlay speaker and a Bluetooth speaker play the same song at the same moment only when something on the Mac feeds both of them. Neither side has a group the other can join. An AirPlay 2 group holds AirPlay speakers, and Bluetooth is a one-to-one radio link, so the joining has to happen on the Mac, in Apple’s Music app, in a Multi-Output Device, or in a mixer app. What decides it for any pair of speakers is the protocol, the language a speaker uses to take music over the air, rather than the badge on the box.
Can you play speakers from different brands together?
A wireless speaker takes music in one of a few ways. AirPlay 2 is Apple’s way of sending sound over Wi-Fi to several speakers at once. Chromecast built-in is Google’s. Bluetooth is a direct radio link from one thing to one speaker. Sonos has its own way of talking between Sonos speakers.
Grouping happens inside one of those, never across them. An AirPlay 2 group holds AirPlay 2 speakers, and the Google Home app groups Chromecast speakers. So the answer for any two speakers in your house is in the small print on the back of them. The other way through is one source that speaks all of these at once, which is where a Mac comes in.
Which AirPlay 2 speakers can play together across brands?
All of them, with each other, whoever built them. On an iPhone, open the AirPlay menu in Control Center and tick as many speakers as you like. The Home app does the same. On a Mac, Apple’s Music app has its own AirPlay button that takes several at once.
As of September 2026 the list of makers is long. Apple’s HomePod, HomePod mini and Apple TV are on it, and so are Sonos (the Beam, Arc, Era, Move, Five and One among them), Bose’s Home Speaker and Smart Soundbar ranges, Denon’s Home range, Bang & Olufsen, Bowers & Wilkins, Bluesound, KEF and Naim, plus a pile of receivers and televisions.
A stereo pair is the exception. That needs two of the same speaker, so a Sonos and a HomePod can share a group but not the left and right of one song. And on a Mac, the multi-speaker AirPlay button lives in Apple’s Music and TV apps and nowhere else (Apple’s note on AirPlay says you can’t do it from Control Center), so Spotify or a browser tab reaches one AirPlay speaker rather than the group. How to AirPlay to multiple speakers from a Mac covers what people do about that.
Can Sonos play with speakers that aren’t Sonos?
Inside the Sonos app, no. It groups Sonos speakers with Sonos speakers and keeps them in step, which is the job it was built for and does well.
Outside the Sonos app, often yes, through AirPlay 2. A Sonos speaker that supports AirPlay 2 shows up in the AirPlay menu like anything else, and Sonos’s own AirPlay page lists which models those are, and you can tick it alongside a HomePod or a Bose. Sonos says it doesn’t control the timing of non-Sonos speakers in a group like that, so how well the two line up is down to AirPlay.
Older Sonos speakers without AirPlay 2, the Play:1, Play:3 and Playbar among them, have a side door. Group one with an AirPlay 2 Sonos speaker in the Sonos app, and music sent to the newer speaker over AirPlay carries on to the older one.
Can Chromecast speakers from different brands play together?
Yes, on the same principle. Speakers with Chromecast built-in join a speaker group in the Google Home app whatever the brand: Google’s own Nest speakers, JBL, Sony, Bose’s smart speakers and soundbars since a 2022 update, and a long list besides. You build the group on a phone, and then any app with a Cast button, Spotify included, sends to it as one.
From a Mac, Chrome can cast a tab’s sound to that group, which covers a web player and not much else. No Sonos model has Chromecast built-in, as of September 2026.
Can Bluetooth speakers from different brands play together?
Not between themselves. Bluetooth is a one-to-one link, and each maker’s party mode (JBL Auracast, Ultimate Ears PartyUp, Bose Party Mode and SimpleSync, Sony Party Connect, as of September 2026) links that brand’s own speakers, which is exactly what it’s sold to do. The way around it is upstream: a Mac can hold a connection to two Bluetooth speakers at once and feed them both through a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup, with the three catches set out in how to connect multiple Bluetooth speakers to a Mac.
What about older wired or AirPlay 1 speakers?
They come along when something upstream drives them. An AirPort Express can’t join an AirPlay 2 group by itself, but anything sending to it and to your AirPlay 2 speakers at the same moment gets the same result. A wired pair on an amplifier fed from that same place is no different.
Why mixed speakers echo even when they are grouped
Grouping gets two speakers the same music. Getting them the same moment is a separate job. Every wireless speaker holds a little music in reserve before it plays, and how much it holds is up to whoever made it. A HomePod, a Bose and a Sonos are three different answers, and standing in the hall between two rooms you hear the difference as an echo.
AirPlay 2 was built with this in mind. The Mac sending the music and the speakers receiving it pass timing back and forth, so a healthy AirPlay group plays on one clock. When it slips anyway, the usual causes are a stale connection, patchy Wi-Fi, or two speakers that disagree about their own delay. Why AirPlay speakers fall out of sync lists the fixes in the order worth trying.
Bluetooth has no shared clock at all. A Bluetooth speaker plays behind by an amount of its own, macOS doesn’t correct for it, and so it trails the AirPlay group next door. Chromecast speakers sit several seconds back. Feeding everything at once is the easy half of the problem. Keeping it together needs something that knows each speaker’s delay: Airfoil, the other Mac app that mixes these three kinds of speaker, gives you a slider per speaker to set by ear, and the Google Home app does the same inside a Chromecast group. Audiout, the Mac mixer we make, measures the gap instead and corrects each speaker by what it measured.
Which route suits the speakers you own?
If everything in the house speaks AirPlay 2, you already have what you need and it costs nothing. Tick the speakers in Control Center and play from Apple’s Music app. The wall you may eventually hit is Spotify or a browser wanting more than one room, and multi-room audio from a Mac with the speakers you already own is about that. An all-Sonos house is the same story with the Sonos app.
The mixed shelf is the one with no free answer. A Sonos in the kitchen, a HomePod mini on the landing, a JBL that goes out to the garden, a television with Chromecast in it, and nothing built into any of them spans the set. A Mac can, because it holds all four conversations at once, which is what Audiout does from the menu bar for €24.99 once. The free 14-day trial of Audiout for Mac asks for no card and no email, so your own shelf answers the question.
Either way the first move is free. Walk round and write down what each speaker actually speaks. Plenty of houses that assume they own a mess turn out to own one protocol and nothing to fix.
Common questions
Can I play a Sonos and a HomePod at the same time?
Yes, if the Sonos model supports AirPlay 2. Tick both in the AirPlay menu on an iPhone, in the Home app, or in the Music app on a Mac, and they play as one group. The Sonos app on its own groups Sonos speakers only. Outside Apple's Music and TV apps, a Mac reaches one speaker at a time unless a mixer app feeds both.
Can I connect two Bluetooth speakers from different brands at once?
Not through the speakers. Each maker's party mode, from JBL, Ultimate Ears, Bose or Sony, links that brand's own speakers. A Mac can hold both connections and feed them together through a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup. Expect one to play a little behind the other until something measures the gap and corrects it.
Why do my grouped speakers echo?
Each speaker holds a different amount of audio in reserve before it plays, so two speakers from different makers rarely start at the same instant. AirPlay 2 groups correct for that between AirPlay speakers. A Bluetooth speaker sits outside the correction and trails, and from the hall that gap sounds like an echo.