Apple TV 4K using paired set of 2nd gen HomePod’s as audio output
Roon server is running on Windows 11 on dedicated Intel NUC with i3-7100U, 32GB RAM, NVMe OS drive, 1Gb wired Ethernet connection to home network
Wireless for everything else is enterprise grade Ubiquiti AP WiFI 6 Pro connected at 1Gb to same switch as the NUC
When using the Apple TV (via AirPlay2 of course) as the audio zone, music will queue and play for somewhere between a few seconds and a minute or so and then becomes garbled, pauses, and eventually freezes. There’s no option available to add just the HomePod’s, it only ever shows the Apple TV. I have validated that there are zero issues with the network from a bandwidth/latency/connectivity perspective (UniFi network manager also confirms no issues and excellent connectivity for all devices). There are also zero issues with any type of audio played directly on the Apple TV, such as from Apple Music, TIDAL, various video streaming apps, etc.
On this same network there are also 3 Apple HomePod Minis. Two of these are in a pair and one is independent. There are zero issues with Roon using any combination of these for audio output, including when grouping them. Also the minis are all much further from the access point, so again it’s definitely not the network.
From what I’ve found it seems that the full size HomePod’s (2nd gen) may not have been tested in paired mode as primary output from Apple TV?
Hi @Benjamin_Kendall,
Thanks for writing in to ask us about this issue. You should be able to play to your HomePods directly. Can you try adding the HomePods to the Apple Home app? Often that will make them show up to Roon.
Thank you for the reply. They are (and have been since installation) added in the Apple Home app. They do not show up directly in Roon regardless of what I do. Have tried rebooting the Roon server after removing the Apple TV audio device, rebooted HomePods themselves (and updated them just recently), nothing changes. The only thing that shows up in Roon is Apple TV with the HomePod pair as audio output, and that never works correctly.
An additional test that I tried is to unplug power from just the Apple TV itself. It no longer shows up as an audio output option in Roon at all at that point, nor do the HomePods. Tried unplugging-replugging the HomePods at that point and they still don’t show up. Plugged Apple TV back in and after a minute it shows back up in Roon.
I’m not quite sure on what you outlined though. The statement “a second Apple TV as the Roon endpoint with the Apple TV paired with HomePods connected to my TVs eARC HDMI port” isn’t very clear.
It may be worth pointing out that, as an example, I have zero issue streaming from TIDAL on my phone to these HomePods. Same goes for Audible and other apps. So there shouldn’t be anything about the Apple TV connecting to the HomePods that makes them exclusive in some way. It strikes me that Roon should be able to use AirPlay in the same way that TIDAL is using it from my phone and work without issue, so this does appear to be an issue specific to Roon.
Thank you @anon15113244 that does now make sense. It’s very unfortunate and not very practical to have to purchase a second Apple TV just to use for looping audio back to the primary one via eARC though.
Can someone from Roon support chime in with any potential roadmap to support this configuration natively? Perhaps it will require an enhancement to the implementation of AirPlay 2 in Roon?
This is an interesting issue you and @anon15113244 are facing - Menzies is quite knowledgeable on all things Roon (thank you for the help here!) but I’d like to take this case to our development team for a more in-depth investigation.
If possible, could you reproduce the attempt to play audio to your Hompods, and share the date, time, and name of track playing?
From there, we’ll request a diagnostic report from your Roon Server and share it with development.
Thank you for the reply. I just went back and repeated the exact same process to add the AppleTV as an audio device, started playing the same tracks from different sources (local flac and mp3 as well as TIDAL) that had not been working previously, and now magically it’s working just fine! I’m speechless.
Nothing has been updated since before I last tested this, which was before I posted my last update to that regard. HomePods had already been updated as part of my testing (on 18.1 at present), and I had poked at this issue over the course of a week before opening this thread. Reboots and power cycles and adding/removing in between, etc., and it never worked previously. Very strange.
If you still want to look at logs, take a look at today, November 8, 4:10pm to 4:16pm PST, Hotel California by The Eagles. Unfortunately I’m not able to provide a precise date/time for when it wasn’t working.
When paired to an Apple TV, Roon never shows the HomePods. This was previously confirmed to me as the expected behaviour? Is this suddenly different?
When HomePods are paired to an AppleTV, that can only mean they’ve already been added to the Apple Home app. In fact, even without pairing with an AppleTV, HomePods are automatically included in the Home app during the setup process.
Just like that it seems to have stopped working again. Take a look at today, November 12, around the 3:20-3:21 PST timeframe, song was When I’m Gone. It’s currently claiming to be playing, but at the 3:22 mark in the song it started stuttering then stopped altogether.
