airplaying from itunes (mac) to stereo homepods is simply a nightmare

I have two homepods in stereo pair and mostly (try to) listen to music through airplay from itunes on a macbook computer.

What is constantly happening is;

• one of the homepods intermittently loses connection and is not playing for 1-2 seconds in the middle of a song
• both of the homepods lose connection for a seconds and stop playing any music
• when I change the volume in itunes it changes the volume of the homepods but then revert back to the original volume, sometimes leading to automatic back-and-forth movements of the volume slider in itunes

For such expensive speakers and buying into the whole apple infrastructure with apple music, this is really disappointing.

I tried to completely reset the speakers and setting them up completely from scratch multiple times. This sometimes worked for a couple of days without issues until the problems reappeared.

This also makes me think that it is not an issue with wifi / signal interference (the speakers are also in the same room as the laptop just few inches apart).

Also, both speakers have newest firmware.

I am running out of ideas and probably just want to get some steam off. Seriously, I now spent so much time trying to get this work as it is advertised – it is simply frustrating.

Any tipps, still, highly appreciated!