Hi HomePod Fans,
I read of an solution for roon, like this
-put every HP in an seperate Zone
-set an DSP, Speaker Setting, Mute channel Left on One
-set an DSP (same, but Mute channel Right) on the other.
-put both in a new Zone/Group !
Play your music on this „combined“ Zone!
How good the sound stage will be, you have to check…
stay safe wherever you are !
Bassmann - Ralph
Hi Ralph,
Can you elaborate on groups of HomePod pairs?
E.G. 6 HomePods, two per room/zone. How does one maintain stereo across all zones?
Hi Bill,
the Helpfiles said, Zones of equal Types like Airplay can be grouped together!
Have a try.
keep save
Bassmann Ralph
Ralph… looks like each speaker’s volume has to be adjusted individually. So, it works, but not to the level of AirPlay 2.
Hi Bill,
you can set every device on „Max Volume“ and manage the volume for the HP-Zone on the main
roon page for the hole zone.
I tried it once and could not live with a delay on some device, all Airplay, but my Mains are managed thru a Trinnov Room Prozessor (about 150ms delay) … This delay could be defined with the DSP distance settings for a HP Device. Thats twiddeling a lot, but could work.
regards
Bassmann Ralph
I haven’t tried it but I’d be surprised if the latency was consistent enough to still image with combining zones like that.
Sheldon
Interesting: Apple finally gets around to adding AirPlay to macOS at OS level:
I have dev preview installed, but it does not work atm (AirPod pairs show, but cannot be selected).
Working just fine here on Big Sur 11.3, been using it for the past hour or so.
Roon started working immediately on them with the computer set as the zone and not airplay etc.
John.
Nice. My install is a on a MBP15 i7 2015 – but still no dice.
What does your signal path look like? Does it play Redbook without resampling?
Airplay is capable of up to 16/48 lossless (transmitted as ALAC behind the scenes). It’s safe to assume resampling takes no place in your case.
Appreciate the portrait mode support for my iPad. Wake me up again when you natively support AirPlay2, even if just from a Mac core.
Dare I bump this one? Oops, too late 
Airplay2 is only available an iOs or MacOs devices it won’t run on Windows or Linux, Roon is mulitplatform and therefore a good chunk of its user base could not use the feature. Roon supports Airplay as there was open source code developed that reversed engineered the Airplay stack to allow non Apple devices to act as sender’s. Currently there isn’t one for Airplay 2. Some group has been attempting it for 3 years nearly and still not got it reliably working it’s also limited to being a receiver not a sender. For it to work in Roon it has to be an Airplay 2 sender. Roon wont be writing this code them selves as it leaves them open to legal action, hence why they use open source code for Airplay. So unless Apple develop an API that’s cross platform for Airplay2 forget it, they are a walled garden.
Having just got a stereo pair of HomePod mini’s, I suddenly understand what all the Airplay 2 fuss is about. The left/right grouping hack doesn’t work for me, Airplay 2 is a Roon requirement.
Roon Labs should just accept that this feature (AirPlay 2 sending) can only be provided when the Roon Core runs on a Mac: then they can use Apple’s official native Mac-only libraries to implement it. No hacks, no license violations, end of story. It will make Mac users happy, who with higher probability are those wanting to send to stereo pairs of HomePods.
That use case is covered already: set sound output on the Mac core to the paired HomePods and choose the core’s system output as zone. Works perfectly well (you can do the same with any macOS or iOS remote).
agreed, i do that now (AirPlay 2 Support in Roon for Paired HomePods - #55 by gerald) but it’s a hack because it requires the Mac’s sound output to be always sent to the HomePods, and it works only for one stereopair (one room).
And divides the user base. They don’t release platform specific features and I fully agree with that policy. Why should a user pay for a feature to be developed they can never use without buying into another eco system. It’s very different to having a feature you may not use because you have no interest in using it or it doesn’t appeal it’s still there as an option.
i’m sure Roon Labs approaches this much more pragmatically: as a decision to invest in a feature that a subset of their customers are asking for because it is quite important for their Roon usage (knowing that the feature will be useless to another subset of their customers).
