I have a Roon nucleus that has a hardwire Ethernet connection. It’s feeding my Marantz SR8015 via an HDMI cable. This is hardwired to JBL speakers and also connected to three different Apple HomePod speakers via AirPlay. This has worked seamlessly for over a year. Now when I try to use the HomePod speakers it says “audio device unavailable” for all three of them. If I use another source instead of Roon through the SR8015, the HomePod speakers work fine. Any suggestions?
Describe your network setup
I have a Verizon Fios ONT feeding a TPlink AX11000
@Alexander_Witkowski there were many issues with AirPlay and Roon 6 months ago. Are the HomePods up to date on their firmware, and are they added to the Apple Home application?
Six months sounds about right. I’ve been having this problem for about six months or longer. All of my HomePods were up to date running iOS 18.3. I changed the settings in the Home app to “everyone” but I’m still getting “audio device unavailable” for all three of them. How would I go about deleting them and reinstalling them? Do you think this would help? I did reboot everything, iPad, router, & Nucleus after changing the Home settings. But this had no effect.
Thank you for your report. Diagnostics from the Nucleus indicate there are mDNS-related discrepancies between the HomePod Airplay receivers and RoonServer itself. We have some improvements in the pipeline for Airplay1/2 compatibility that may resolve this long-term, but we have a few workarounds to suggest in the meantime.
First off, make sure you’ve toggled on Compatibility Mode for these Airplay Zones by clicking “Device Setup” in Settings → Audio for each HomePod listed under the Airplay tab.
Second, there is a HomePod (or grouped pair of HomePods) named Garages that is repeatedly dropping off the network and reappearing. I recommend double-checking that multicast forwarding and IGMP snooping are enabled on this router, particularly if you have mesh nodes or access points.
There’s a TV Airplay Zone (Samsung) that appears to be running a different Airplay version than the other Zones. Is this part of any grouped Airplay setup in Roon, and if so, is it in the Apple Home app?
I apologize but I’m not following, is “Device Setup” in iOS or Roon?
Garages is a HomePod mini that I don’t use with Roon. It’s not enabled in Roon.
This is the same with the Samsung TV. It’s not enabled in Roon either.
In Roon I have the Marantz AVR grouped with three HomePod speakers. Living Room, Bedroom, & Basement.
Thanks for the clarification.
I went into “Device Settings” for all three devices. Living Room, Bedroom, & Basement, and changed them so that Compatibility is now set to “YES”.
After doing this I returned to the main Roon screen and tapped the speaker icon in the lower right hand corner and it still says “Device Unavailable” for each of these speakers.
There’s a ticket with development to investigate an ongoing compatibility issue between certain Airplay1 and Airplay2 devices. If you’ve already added the affected speakers to the Apple Home app, restarted your network devices, and rebooted RoonServer, then we’ll need to try a few more workarounds until the fix is prepared for release:
Ungroup the Airplay devices in Roon. Remove the HomePods from Apple Home and add them back in - what happens if you attempt to play via Airplay to just single HomePod?
The Samsung TV and HomePod Mini are still sending mDNS (device announcement) traffic to RoonServer, since their Airplay receivers are still online. This isn’t likely causing any network issues, but it’s causing a lot of log traffic and obscuring the source of the real issue. Try turning these two machines off when you perform test number 1) above.
We’ll watch for your response and keep you informed of the timeline to release for the associated fix. The tests above are simply to learn more about the specific blockage in this case and to try to restore playback in the meantime.
I ungrouped the HomePod speakers and then removed them from HomeKit. I then rebooted my router and Nucleus. After this I added back just the one HomePod (Living Room). In Roon it still lists all three of the full sized HomePod speakers, Living Room, Bedroom, & Basement. (Even though two haven’t been reinstalled) All three are still listed as “Audio Device is Unavailable” in Roon, and are still inoperable.
Thanks for the update. The Airplay2 receivers in the HomePods are sending a refusal to the pairing request from Roon - development is working on a fix for this, as mentioned above.
Try to restart RoonServer or refresh the Audio Settings page to prompt a network discovery process with only the single HomePod connected. We want to see how Roon responds to the device discovery announcement and pairing request over AirPlay when it’s only the single HomePod.
We recognize the frustrating position you’re in and we’ll do everything we can to expedite release of the aforementioned ticket. Thank you for your patience.
Sorry for not responding sooner. I removed all of the HomePod speakers from HomeKit. And I also powered them down. I then restarted the Roon Nucleus, still not playing on the one remaining HomePod. I forgot to mention earlier, If I go to the speaker icon in the lower right corner of the screen and view the speakers. As I said before it says “Audio Device Unavailable” if I scroll down further those three speakers are appearing, but they are unnamed and grayed out. Should these be deleted completely out of Roon and then added back in? If so how do I remove them from Roon?
It’s likely the symptoms youre experiencing are likely due to the known Airplay issue our development team is actively working on.
That said, you could test out refreshing your RAATServer settings to see if that helps:
You can generate a new RAATServer instance on your device by following these instructions, but please be aware that this will reset your Roon Settings → Audio Tab to factory settings and I would advise making a backup of any custom DSP settings you have:
