HomePods Paired and then Grouped

Audio Gear Talk Airplay
1

I have just noticed that Roon supports paired HomePods. If the HomePods are paired using mac system, they are still shown as individual HomePods within Roon. However if you group the HomePods, within Roon and play music, you now achieve stereo output, without messing about with DSP.

I played my XLO reference album and sounds recorded for left channel only appear in the left HomePod etc

I always thought this was not possible, because of lack of airplay 2 support.

Very happy bunny now

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2

Interesting observation, can anyone else confirm this? I use HomePods in paired mode, as described in this Apple support article: Set up home theater audio with HomePod mini or HomePod and Apple TV 4K - Apple Support

Would this mean I can only use them either paired via iOS or separate and then grouped via Roon? Or can I run both setups in parallel?

3

Mine are paired with OS and grouped in Roon.

4

I just got up early to test it because I was so intrigued as it didn’t work for me in the past. I can confirm! Thanks for the heads up. Could anyone from the Roon team chime in and confirm or deny if any changes have been made to specifically address this?

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6

I did some very rudimentary testing which means I have two pairs of grouped HomePods (two OGs, two minis), set them up as described above and then searched for a stereo testing track on Tidal and it properly separated left and right audio channels. So at least from that standpoint yes, channel separation seems to work now. Interesting how this was not explicitly mentioned in patch notes

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8

Any chance this would work stereo pairing Old and New HomePods. Of course this is not possible in airplay.

9

Hi, not sure as I only own a pair of 1st gen HomePods and a few of the minis. Would be interesting to know as you said Apple themselves do not support pairing the two generations.

10

Yes. I only have one OG HomePod. I will let you if I find a workaround. Here’s something from years ago using a different App:
https://9to5mac.com/2018/02/12/how-to-create-stereo-homepod-pair/

I reached out to the author and he is going to test.