HomePod connection issues

Question

Level 1

44 points

HomePod connection issues

Hi,

I have three HomePods in my house - living room, kitchen and office. For a year they have worked pretty flawlessly as I airplay from my iMac to all three of them.

Last week I upgraded to a gigabit internet connection and so had to upgrade the router from my old Apple Airport to a Netgear. This is where my HomePod problems begin. And there are a lot of them. For instance:

Most common one is that the iMac will connect to just one or two but not be able to connect to the others. Restarting iTunes will usually fix this. But when the album/podcast finishes and you go to play something else the connection will be lost again.

Or sometimes it'll be playing fine but then if I hit pause in iTunes one or more of the HomePods will keep playing. To fix that I have to tell Siri to pause and then restart iTunes.

Or sometimes it will tell me it is connected but there's no sound actually coming out.

Or sometimes it is connected but its telling me it can't connect!

It's infuriating. And I have similar issues connecting from my iPhone to the HomePods.

Here's what I'm using.

2017 iMac. macOS 10.14.6 Mojave

HomePods all up to date on 13.4

All devices are on the same network, the 2.4ghz

Any advice on what could be causing all the hiccups and how I can improve things?

Thank you.

-Clem

Posted on Mar 27, 2020 4:24 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

turingtest2

Level 10

274,934 points

Mar 28, 2020 3:01 AM in response to clemenchuchu

My understanding is that 5 GHz gives faster data transfer, but is less reliable over distance. My hunch is that when both services are available it is possible that HomePod tries swapping between them hunting for the best service, and in doing so drops its own level of service. Try disabling the 5GHz radio in your router's settings pages and see if it helps. Or you can turn off the 2.4 GHz only and test that.

tt2

Reply

Answer 2

clemenchuchu Author

Level 1

44 points

Mar 27, 2020 4:45 PM in response to turingtest2

Yes, I do have a 5 ghz band too. The phone and Mac are both trying to default to them but I keep forcing them back to the 2.4 ghz. It is interesting though that sometimes they do get themselves on the 5ghz but the homepods do still respond (albeit with the same problems and worse). On the other hand my old Apple router had the 5ghz too and I didn't have the same issues.

Could the channel of the 2.4 ghz band have anything to do with it?

Reply

Answer 3

clemenchuchu Author

Level 1

44 points

Mar 30, 2020 3:50 PM in response to clemenchuchu

Yes, so far I've had far fewer issues since removing the 5ghz bandwidth. Actually, I didn't really turn off the 5ghz. In the router settings I changed its name and password to force my devices to lose the connection and since then my Homepods have behaved better.

My Apple TV is now the only thing that is connected to the 5ghz to take advantage of the speed.

Reply

Answer 4

ChonWang

Level 1

8 points

Apr 29, 2020 12:56 PM in response to clemenchuchu

When I bought a pair of Homepods in March 2019 I was able to set them up somehow with my computer running Mojave to play them in stereo from both the computer and iTunes. They worked flawlessly with a dual band router capable of running over 100 mbps. After upgrading to Catalina only iTunes could play in stereo and all research pointed to not being able to use the stereo pair from the iMac OS. Due to application incompatibility problems and bugs with Catalina I was forced to reinstall Mojave. Recently I have experienced all the problems you mention and many more. I can play the HomePods perfectly from a computer running Catalina in another room but not from the computer they are sitting next to. My frustration level has reached the point of replacing them with other Bluetooth/direct connection speakers. I believe that recent changes in the HomePod OS is rendering them incompatible with Mojave and of course there will be no resolution from Apple as their policy is to want everybody running the current OS on the Macs even though older apps and hardware are no longer supported.

Today the HomePods will not connect at all to my Mojave computer. Yesterday they would play until iTunes reached the end of the list and after a hassle would reconnect and play the next batch (usually by restarting iTunes or by switching to play on the computer then back to the pods). Even rebooting everything has not helped. The Home app on the iPhone has to be the least intuitive piece of programming especially when the support documents refer to selections that are not even available.

Some of my problems experienced include those mentioned in your request plus centered sound swaying between the two pods and sometimes ending up on the left one only until iTunes restarted. Volume control no longer operable from the iTunes interface but switched to the computer volume. On occasions the only volume control was via the HomePod itself. After stopping playing in iTunes the music has continued on one or two HomePods with the only way to stop it by unplugging the power to the pods.

My daughter has also given up trying to use them as a stereo pair as they kept switching into some kind of echo mode, which was unlistenable. That was using Catalina to drive them. Using them individually works fine but no longer an immersive experience.

Reply

Answer 5

turingtest2

Level 10

274,934 points

Mar 27, 2020 4:42 PM in response to clemenchuchu

Perhaps your new router supports both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands. Anecdotally it seems HomePods are more reliable when they can only see the 2.4 GHz radio.

tt2

Reply