HomePod Popping Noise

Same here, all good. No pops and panic logs so far.

Running smooth since release day.

But I realized that the Homepods running 15.3 might somehow be tweaked regarding sound.

To my feeling, the heights are more prominent now and a bit less bass (?).

But this can also be due to the different sources (TV shows etc.).

Anyone noticed similar?

How can this be explained? All who posted here that they updated to 15.3 said the "pops" are gone. I have not yet updated and am still on 15.2 and my "pops" are also gone. I updated my routers firmware, factory reset the two HomePods and Apple TV, deleted and reinstalled the Home app six days ago.

Anyone want to try and explain this?

It is one day shy of a week that I updated my HomePods to 15.3. (I have 6 OG HomePods and 6 Mini's). I had not experienced a popping noise on any of them prior to the initial 15 update.

I have to say, based on practically a week of playing the HomePods with the 15.3 update the overall system seems far more stable--more-so than it has ever been. I have not experienced any popping in any of the OG speakers (the Mini's never demonstrated this problem for me) since updating them on 1/25/22. I show no panic logs since then either. I have had several days in between where I have listened to them playing throughout the house for long periods of time without any glitches whatsoever. Indeed, surprisingly, they've worked as they are supposed to... I am absolutely shocked to be quite honest as over the year I've owned them I have been trained by the constant bugs to expect an exasperated moment several times a day or evening of having to fiddle with them to just simply work.

I have had several glitches, the worst which occurred today as illustrated below... but overall, this is the most stable update Apple has put out for these speakers, and best of all NO POPPING. HomeKit seems a little snappier as well, although still some issues...

1/27/22 - Dressing Room Mini didn’t resume playing with all the other HomePods and showed as “paused” in HomeKit. Resumed playing when I told Siri to also play in that room specifically. 

1/27/22 - Both paired OG HomePods in the Living Room were silent although showed as playing in HomeKit. When requested to play, Siri reported “there is a problem with Apple Music” although all other speakers were playing sound.

1/28/22 - The Right paired OG speaker in the living room was silent although HomeKit reported it playing. Manually touching the top turned everything off but when touched again it started playing.

1/31/22 - Although HomeKit reported all speakers as playing, only the OG HomePods in my office and the Mini in the Hallway were actually making sound (although the lights on the tops of all were lit). When I asked Siri to stop playing the response was delayed and wouldn’t turn off, instead saying, “this is going a little too slow.” I was unable to get the speakers in the office to stop playing until I touched the top of the unit. I then manually restarted all speakers using HomeKit.

1/31/22 - Telling my office speaker to “play something I like everywhere” resulted in speakers everywhere else except for the office playing. When I told Siri to play in the office as well, the speaker responded, “now also playing in the office” but no sound was coming out even though HomeKit said it was playing. I again restarted them using HomeKit. When asked to play after the second start they began playing; however, it was observed there was a noticeable lag in beginning to do so—I could hear the other speakers begin playing throughout the house and the left speaker began playing after the right one did, and the office speakers showed greyed out (not playing) in HomeKit for about a minute before being noticed as playing by that app.

Thanks for the detailed post Gene! These are the sort of issues I've also lived with for 10 months before a total factory reset of the Apple devices and router firmware updates. Since you have so many HomePod's placed about your house, some of your issue may be influenced by the inability of a strong and continuous WiFi signal, especially if you are telling them to connect to 802.11ac (5Hz band). Just guessing but also guessing that if you have that many, you have probably already conducted a WiFi dead/brown out zone analysis of your house and the HomePod placements. However if you did not, I would suggest it. I used Netspot to conduct my test and after seeing the dead or brown zones, I bought a second WiFi router and connected it as a slave, via Ethernet, to my main router and it worked like a charm to eliminate those dead/brown areas.

I wanted to blame all the flakey issues I was seeing on the HomePod's till I sat back and remembered that until I bought the HomePod's, I had never used the Home app and I do believe that app is buggy. It tells me my phone is on a different WiFi network than the HomePod's and when I check, they are on the same network. Sometimes I pick up my phone and the Apple TV show we are watching through the HomePod's automatically appears on the Lock Screen, showing navigation and sound level buttons. I can then set the phone down, pick it up 20 min later and nothing shows so I unlock it, still nothing shows so I press the Home app and find that its trying to connect to Apple Music, which I do not subscribe to.

Apple may have a good release with 15.3 for the HomePod's but I believe they need to spend time working on the Home app now, its very frustrating and I'm happy I don't have a house full of connected HomeKit devices, if I did, my alcohol bill would skyrocket!

Yes, if you have not yet updated your speakers to 15.3, I'd definitely suggest you do so now. I have been running it since 1/25/22 and have not experienced a single popping sound on any of my 6 OG HomePod speakers. I used to have them several times a day from random speakers. It seems that this update has certainly addressed that most worrisome and irritating bug.

HomeKit seems a little more snappy as well. Although I continue to experience the occasional drop out of speakers -- HomeKit saying they are playing when they are not, for example -- the speakers are more stable than they have ever been in the year I've owned them.

I remain suspicious of the router issue. I didn't see a huge difference in glitches experienced under use of my AirPort Extreme network and my eero Pro 6 mesh network (that I spent almost $800.00 to replace the AirPorts with). Indeed, I continue to be suspicious that the eero Pro may have actually made the problems a little worse. I saw all kinds of reports of the same problems regarding the popping noises, etc. from people with newer routers, including the eero's. The problem lay with Apple and its buggy software, I'm pretty much convinced. And, 15.3 seems to be doing a good job (so far... knock on wood) of dealing with most of the bugs that have plagued the speakers for as long as I've had them.

Go the cheaper option first. Update to 15.3. But there is no reason these speakers should require a completely new router and very fast internet connection to simply work from my own personal experience. There may be other problems/issues with your current network that I would troubleshoot first. My AirPort Extreme network which was over ten years old handled them just as well as my newer mesh network does, and in some ways, I wish I had just stuck with them and saved some money and time updating my entire network. I have a pretty fast connection speed as well, with absolutely no other devices showing any connectivity problems at all. Apple's buggy software should not cause its users to spend more money on perfectly acceptable hardware just to deal with their problems. As a customer, I feel that is a fair demand. Apple has corrected most of the issues with this latest, fairly stable, update. Hat's off to them.

That is helpful information Bgnmarty. I think if I have any wifi issues it is probably that I have too many routers (I have four) throughout the house. More is not always better where these things are concerned... However, what you describe is one of the reasons why I considered (and still am if Apple doesn't get the HomePod's sorted) a Sonos system. Sonos has wifi extenders that are specific for their speaker system in case of weak zones. I have conducted such tests myself regarding wifi strength throughout the house, and it's all pretty good. I can tell what routers the speakers are using in my eero app as well, and they all connect to the 5ghz band. I only saw one of them connecting to the 2ghz once and when I restarted it, the OG speaker went back on the 5ghz.

I think many of the problems though actually are arising from the HomeKit app itself. I've only had around 5 glitches since updating to 15.3 (detailed earlier), which is way, way, way, way less than what I had prior. I'm actually beginning to enjoy the speakers for quite literally the FIRST time since I've owned them.

15.3 has been nearly perfect (is anything 100%?) but a huge quality update. The popping is so far 100% gone.

I agree about the router issue. I “upgraded” to the euro’s and actually think they are a downgrade compared to my Airport (which I still use in my network but not as the main hub). The eeros have had a variety of dropout issues. Last year during the lockdowns and kids home from work/school we had tons of connectivity issues.

But I am so pleased with how my HP’s are working now and how well I can tell Siri to play music in multiple rooms. Now if we can only make Siri smarter….

Well after 10 full days of no popping noise from my HomePods on OS15.2, I decided to update them to 15.3. I'll never know why they stopped popping after I reset the entire system and updated the firmware in my two routers but I wanted to stop paying attention to it so decided to update. Before updating I checked the Analytics on both of them and there weren't any panic attacks during those 10 days.

My settings are rather bland, all Siri related settings are off, Reduce Bass is off, personal requests is off, all Accessibility settings are off and Audio Setting is set to Stereo. So for me, I have not realized any difference by going to 15.3 but did it just to keep them up to date.

I just bought another pair of them and will be installing them this Sunday, they have already been updated to 15.3 by their current owner at my request.

Thanks to all who took part in this thread, it was very helpful!

Unplug the affected HomePods for over 24 hrs, Plug back in & Reset them by Pressing the top method:

Reset HomePod - Apple Support

Then set them up again

I have the same issue on all of my HomePods. In the ‘Analytics Data’ section I can see a ‘panic-full’ report. Does anyone else have this?

Same popping problem, have had 2 HomePods since they came out and the same popping is more frequent now. It’s a software issue, hopefully apple can fix it in an update.

Same issue for one of my HomePods. I believe it's hardware because when you unplug it, it makes this popping click.

It's very disappointing that Apple doesn't want to replace the affected one.