Apple HomePod Stereo Pair Support

I’m with you Richard. When I added the 2nd HomePod and paired them to stereo mode, the sound quality and expansion improvements was remarkable.

I am looking very forward to the implementation of AirPlay 2 on Roon. :smiley:

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Airplay 2 plays at the same old sample rates it’s only added multiroom and a larger buffer to improve streaming dropouts. Yes I imagine having them as a stereo pair would improve them.

I’m looking at room but will not buy until AirPlay 2/ Paterson HomePods are supported. That’s the setup in my home office so is a requirement

Roon, pay the licensing and get on with it.

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I’d love this as well - for now one can enable iPhone playback and then Airplay from there to stereo pair but not as elegant of course.

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I’d like to add my vote to getting AirPlay 2 into Roon! I just got my 2nd HomePod and paired it for stereo with the one I already had. These are very capable speakers and I’d love to hear my high resolution library on them.

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For those of us using Roon with a Mac – I put the following in #tinkering :slight_smile:

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I tinkered and it works great! Thank you for posting this. Really appreciate it!

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@Marcus_Guerrero How do you know that you are getting true stereo output to the stereo-paired HomePods, as you would if AirPlay 2 was natively supported by Roon?

Great question. Honestly, just used my ears first and did back and forth comparisons. Nothing scientific. Also, in the comments section of the original Reddit post someone suggested this test on YouTube. I tried it and it was enough for me. It’s a workaround that sounded great to me and I didn’t want to spend my listening time trying to debunk it. It’s just Airplay to HomePods.

I would add that it’s very easy to distinguish. Just unpair the two HomePods, listen to a track, and then listen to the same track with the workaround in stereo pair. It was easy for me to tell the difference in soundstage and separation.

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Thanks, Marcus. I just tried it and had success with it as well.

There is a track that I played via Roon before to the HomePods as a test, because it does extreme panning from Right to Left, and it was easy to tell that Roon wasn’t really taking into account stereo separation the way it is when you natively stream to the speakers from a music app like Tida, Qobuz, etc.

However, with the work-around, after seeing your message, I played the same track and though nothing scientific either, it sounds very different from before and it (seemed) to be handling stereo separation like it should or at least good enough for my ears! :blush:

Thanks again for re-awaking this topic, which led me to setting it up. :pray:t4:

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You’re welcome! But I can’t take the credit for anything but my curiosity. It’s a community collaboration. That said, I hope that Roon implements Airplay 2. It’s an important addition to the feature set.

I have dedicated Roon listening in my living room/home theater and guest room/office areas, but I also own a pair of HomePods in my bedroom and a pair of Sonos Ones in my garage gym and they are set up as stereo pairs.

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That is not accurate at all.

Hi Dylan,

any news on this topic? Since HomePods became affordable as a smart speaker in every room with the HomePod mini the demand for this feature should be a lot stronger than it has been when this thread was started.
In rooms with one HomePod Roon works perfectly fine as a source. But there is the occasional room with HomePod or HomePod mini as a stereo pair.
In order to make that work via DSP functions one would have to unpair the speakers in iOS. So I can only make them work as a stereo pair in either Roon OR iOS.
I love Roon, but still: the software is not exactly cheap. IMHO, I dont think it would be a wise choice of Roonlabs to ignore Airplay2 on the longrun.
I know, you have aready responded to this in 2018 but again: HomePods have become a lot more popular and present in our homes since the HomePod mini.

I think I am not alone with this request. Any new developments here? Looking forward to your reply.

Hi @itzlbritzl
I too have a pair of HomePod Minis that I have configured in iOS as a stereo pair, but also, using instructions elsewhere on these forums configured, as best as possible, as a ‘stereo’ pair in Roon (you add one speaker as a zone & use DSP in zone to mute one channel, then add other speaker as another one, use DSP to mute other channel, then group those zones). It’s not a perfect stereo image, but it works well for me as just a zone for background music / non critical listening.

Why so aggravated? If an explanation like yours had been given previously in this debate/thread things would have been a lot clearer.
I am just a user, I got other things to do than delving into development history for hours before you bestow me with the honor of being allowed to ask a question.

Nobody is “framing” anything here. It is basic commination: If your reply would have been given in the first place, things would have been pretty clear, wouldnt they?

Would have been better to answer with details (like you did), maybe minus the misplaced aggresion, wouldnt it?

All I read from Roon here was “we dont have any plans considering this” leading to the false assumption that it might be Roon’s choice to “ignore” Airplay2. Again: communication 101.

I agree totally… I thought of this workaround, too. Any of course, nobody uses HomePods mini for critical listening. Somehow it failed for me.
I was under the impression that things either worked in iOS or Roon as a stereo pair. I might have to look into this one more time.

Apple themselves are just getting around to adding AirPlay 2 to macOS Big Sur, allowing for playback to a stereo pair of HomePods on system level. AFAIK, licensing AirPlay 2 is for hardware only.

I use a few old iPhones I had laying around as bridges to my HomePods: run Roon, activate local endpoint, set playback destination to HomePods. (I automated this with a few Shortcuts and mapped these to the buttons of a presentation remote, so I can turn the iPhone from Apple Music endpoint to Roon endpoint and vice versa with the click of a button).

The signal path does not look half bad (playing Roon > iPhone > stereo HomePods):

The old iPhones stand on little docks, so they also function as little Now playing screens. Selecting the HomePod playback zone on other iDevices enables Now playing (lock screen) controls for Roon. Volume control is done with bluetooth remotes. I wrote a little bit about it here:

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Ok so I’m sitting listening to Bill Evans Top do of the gate on two HomePod Mini on my deck. Much to my surprise I’m not listening to dual mono but stereo. My theory, the Big Sur update adding Airplay 2 stereo home pod support is some translating to Roon. And for the naysayers, I listen to a lot of 60’s Jazz where instrument placement is precise is recordings. I’m hearing stereo. In Big Sur this HomePod pair is paired for stereo.

Thinking it through it makes sense. The transport to the HomePods is Airplay. So from the Roon Core, Mac Mini Big Sur, it’s sending a stereo stream with Airplay. Now Roon has the Minis grouped but Airplay is in control. Anyone else try this and hearing this.

It seems when i stream to my 2 HomePods mini grouped using Roon they are playing in stereo , there’s different sounds coming from each HomePod and no echo effect.

I made a group on iOs Home app first then a group using Roon.

Is it due to last update ? or the fact that it’s HomePods Minis ? An update from Apple ?