ios 17.5 and/or homepod os broke airplay
i have 13 homepods. 12 in stereo pairs for 6 pairs and one single. i use to be able to play them all in sync with apple music no issue through the whole house. now anything over 6 causes other homepods to crackle or stop producing noise. the ring says its playing. home says its playing and fully connected to wifi but nothing. you uncheck one to drop the number playing from 7 to 6 the other speaker that wasn’t playing just starts playing. you add back another speaker for 7 and crackle until it stops making sound. it appears it doesn’t stop playing the music just doesn’t make any sound period.
i use an apple tv 4k with homepods in a stereo pair as the apple tv speakers. trying to airplay live 4k video from my 14 pro max to the apple tv is a jumbled mess. it plays for a second, then stops and goes back to my phone. then will connect again then just won’t connect. phone says its connected but nothing on screen. if you force close safari then reconnect the live video feed back to the apple tv, it usually will ask if you want to replace whats currently playing. will connect but will randomly stop playing on the apple tv. if i stop using the homepods as the apple tv speakers and use the apple tv with the tv speakers everything works fine.
bogus
22 July 2024 Update:
I finally got this issue fixed by taking an older apple tv 4k and having it directly wired to my network to make it be the apple homekit hub. all my devices are wireless accept my mac mini. well
mac’s can’t be hubs (absolutely dumb) so i figured i try a wired apple tv 4k since a wired apple tv 4k will take priority over any of the wireless apple tv’s or homepods.
Anytime i would wireless play more than 6 homepod pairs, the music would drop out, some devices wouldn’t play and it was random. as soon as i wired in my apple tv 4k and it became the homekit hub, all issues went away. i am currently playing 15 homepods at once for hours with no dropouts. perfect.
i do use a unifi system just fyi.