HomePods being problematic since last update

I’m having daily tribulation with paired HomePods that’s making me want to throw them in the wood chipper.

I don’t know if this is my phone, my apps, or the HomePods. So I’m curious to see if others are experiencing the same or similar.

I am using airplay from an iPhone 7+ on the latest OS to a pair of paired HomePods also on the latest OS. These are the things I deal with daily right now since the last update. I have them configured to only allow connections on the same network. The phone and the HomePods are connected to the same SSID on my router. And the phone is, most of the time, about 4 feet from the speakers. I am having to restart them from within the Home app several times a week and unplug them a couple times a week. I am using a 3rd party podcast app.

I will also mention that I use them with my Apple TV. Now, I’m not starting a new podcast every 30 to 60 minutes and advancing over things I don’t want to listen to all day. But the only issue I have from the Apple TV is that speaker volume control somehow disassociates from the apple tv volume control after 2 or 3 hours of streaming video.

• The left or right audio stream drops out.
• The HomePods disconnect and when I try to reconnect it tells me they are unavailable.
• When I try to connect it tells me the HomePods are playing another source but I haven’t connected to them and there’s no audio playing.
• They become unresponsive in the Home app
• And probably the worst, it appears that the speakers are caching the entire song or podcast. When RW/FF, about half of the time, it stops playing. I have to pause, wait 5 seconds, and hit the play button to continue. I know it’s caching (or maybe the podcast app I use is giving the speakers the stream URL?) because there are times when I will hit pause, I see it’s paused in the player, but the audio continues to stream and the speakers become unresponsive to the point I have to unplug them both.