I’m relatively new to Roon at home and am enjoying how it works. I do have a problem with my 3 HomePods though, sometime they lose sync or stop altogether. These are not my main listening system, more for radio and playlists around the house whilst I’m working or in the garden. The main system is separate and works as a Roon endpoint so that is fine. I have a workaround to get the HomePods and other airplay speakers to work consistently and reliably in sync. I have my iPad set up as a zone and then use its airplay to send around the house. It works perfectly but of course the volume control is not the one in the Roon app but in the airplay control centre. It feeds the radio or playlist to all the HomePods and as I move about I either change the volume on the homepod itself or just as Siri to either increase or decrease volume, mute, or if it is a playlist I can skip to the next track. It is not an ideal situation but allows me to use the HomePods. There is an update to the Apple software soon but I’m not holding out much hope for official Roon end point, it is a small user base I suspect. They do sound excellent though, and you can buy them on a deal, there is also a smaller cheaper version expected so it may change then. In the meantime, the house is full of good sounding music most of the time, surely the main objective…
Hi Bill,
When Roon is playing music over my HomePods they sound great. Until they don’t.
It’s so easy to select the HomePod and send music to it. When it works - which is most of the time, it sounds great.
I’ve found that syncing issues or start/stops on the HomePods is due to congestion on my home WiFi network. When no one else is home, everything runs great. But as soon as others come in, with their handheld devices and peculiar “Alexa” needs, the Airplay and Airplay2 music streaming goes off the rails. Sometimes I wish the HomePods came with ethernet jacks.
I suggest you look at improving the wifi delivery to your HomePods. Add some mesh wifi units or create a bridge with another wifi unit. Perhaps run an ethernet backhaul from them to your main router. If you’ve already done that, look at moving the wifi units around - high, in the open, and central is a good general rule of thumb. I’ve tweaked the main wifi router location in my home with great results, for everybody, I’m afraid.
I’m not giving up on my HomePods and I hope you won’t either. Gonna get a few more, in fact. They sound great for what they are.
(No, I don’t work for Apple and unfortunately don’t own their stock. I’m just amazed at how a wireless speaker can sound so good AND be paired with another for stereo.)
Good luck.
T.
I have a 2-story house and had a very difficult time with streaming in extreme ends, until I got the EERO mesh networking system. Now, the entire family can stream high-res music, video, etc. at the same time without any issues throughout the house.
I also have a stereo-paired HomePods that work great. Though Roon doesn’t support AirPlay 2, someone found an interesting workaround that I am using and having great success with it.
You can check it out here:
The problem was the HomePod in the kitchen would drop out momentarily then be out of sync with the others. Turns out to be a very simple cause, the central heating timer was taking its power from the same point. Not plugged in but my suspicious are it is using the same feed. Today I’ve moved the kitchen HomePod to another socket and after a good few hours there have been no issues so hopefully this can a cure for my specific issue.