Can't Sustain a Connection
I currently have 2 HomePods connected in my apartment which both experience a problem sustaining any kind of connection to anything, including each other. The biggest problem is that they lose their connection to the internet at least once a day but usually more often.
This doesn't appear to effect any other device in the apartment – my girlfriend will be streaming a movie on our Apple TV, I'll be listening music on my iPhone while I play games on my laptop over the network and none of them will experience a drop in quality or a jutter. The HomePod, however, can always be counted on to die.
The device is positioned 2 meters away from the router with direct line of sight on a 5GHz network in a building where there is only one other (quite weak) 5GHz network broadcasting on a different channel. Our network is 150Mbps down and 30 up.
We experience the same problem streaming content to the HomePods – podcasts especially struggle to make it past the 7 or 8 minute mark without stopping and having to be manually restarted. Likewise we originally had our HomePods setup as a pair but they fell out of sync so often that we gave up and simply boxed one.
Is this a known issue? Is there anything I can do other than making unplugging my HomePod a morning and evening ritual? Any answer would be appreciated as I'm getting quite a lot of heat from the significant other for buying what are currently a pair of bricks.
HomePod, iOS 12