They should of made it airplay 2 system wide it’s not usable with lag, I really thought with 11.3 my wishes would be true and it would work I even brought another HomePod mini but nope let down
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HomePod HomePod mini Pair as Desktop Stereo Speakers
- Thread starter harrypraneeth
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Good news for us
Something we think it should had been at the beginning finally comes after 2 years
FINALLY a pair of HomePod will be recognized as stereo speaker on macOS
For HomePod users, macOS Big Sur 11.3 brings support for HomePod Stereo pairs, allowing a set of paired HomePods to be set as the default sound output option, with the two HomePods showing up as a single selectable speaker rather than separate as in prior versions of macOS.
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but it doesn't work right, the lag is insane and slow the delay is audio is bad, this is not full airplay 2 as you cant use MacBook speakers and HomePods at the same time and when moved to stereo HomePods video sync is way out so you cant watch it, this is not a full airplay 2 system output so its kinda useless
I wish it was airplay 2 so watching YouTube you could have stereo HomePods plus MacBook speakers like you can do on music app, then you have the treble from MacBook speakers and mid and lows from HomePods it sounds epic in the music app, if they made this airplay 2 native support then you could select multiple outputs at once as main system output but you cant its just stereo HomePods with airplay 1 support so not worth it
It seems kinda bogus that they would announce this as an official feature in this release and not have it actually work. They are either still working out the bugs, or it seems like it would just get pulled from being listed as feature on the actual release.
I have the same. It is frustrating. Really regretting this purchase and to me it's the worst Apple purchase from all my devices. Problems from Day 1. I should have return it right away but was hoping Apple will improve it. Will be selling it soon. It works better with the phone but ideally I would like to have support for Spotify as default app. Awful experience....
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Don't buy them for this reason. It's disappointing. Works really bad. Connection dropping. Disconnecting speakers, randomly dropping left or right out, delays, I've tried to use it with final cut for video editing - it is unusable, even watching YouTube is a problem. Not sure how Apple could bring such a failure
That's a bummer. The versatility of being able to use them like that seemed promising.
Anyone have any other recommendations for desktop speakers if we have to stick to the old school way?
This is a horrible take lol. They are able to be used as a stereo pair for music and for the Apple TV. The fact that Apple didn't realize people would want to use them for MacBook or iMac speakers is just unacceptable. It should of worked from the start and not something we have to wait on an update for.
I mean there's a reason why wireless desktop speakers aren't a thing. The latency is unacceptable for anything you need sound to be not behind, like UI sounds or gaming. Video where you can avoid the delay by syncing to the latency and music are basically fine - but for anything else this is an extremely hard problem to solve. They haven't even solved this on the Apple TV yet with their hacky dedicating 20% of the bandwidth on top of AP2 to try and have the HomePods keep up with the UI sounds - and they still crackle.
It's an almost impossible problem to solve.
I mean, I finally got on beta 8 of 11.3 tonight and I still never expected seamless sound? As someone that has used my mini stereo pair for nearly three months with an iPhone that will auto-compensate for its wireless lag and delay playback for audio to be transmitted to both minis...I never expected differently from my iMac? If anything, the latency was unsurprising. I'm not here for on-demand sound bc I feel that I've acclimated to the limitations of the tech at hand. I just like that my Mac(s) can now transmit sound to the pair from any app, and I don't need to source third-party paid alternatives. Life got better for me when I learned to reconcile what I received rather than damning it relentlessly.
Intersting and valid points. I'm sure it is very difficult and why it doesn't work yet.
What is interesting though is the Apple must have thought they could solve it since they announced it as an official feature of the release.
Perhaps they were wrong and it will be shelved like other OS features that get announced and eventually tabled or released years later.
Makes me wonder if this is temporary and they’re gonna make more of a thing when they make it Airplay 2, with the new MacOS at WWDC. ???
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Bad it’s unusable the lag and delay is crazy this is why apple didn’t mention it in the notes
So I've decided to sell my minis amd replaced them with amazing Genelec monitors. Cost 2.5 times more but wow the sound and no more annoying latency / disconnecting issues. First Apple product which I dropped with a pleasure.