Apple’s AirPlay 2 with multiroom audio streaming and stereo HomePod pairing is here
iOS 11.4 is available today, and it comes with two
notable new features: Messages in the Cloud and AirPlay 2. We’ll dive
into the messaging update in another post, but AirPlay 2 is a big deal:
it adds multiroom support so multiple AirPlay 2 devices from a wide
variety of manufacturers can all play the same music around your house,
and it allows two HomePods to play as a stereo pair. Altogether, AirPlay
2 brings Apple’s wireless audio system to parity with competitors like
Google Cast and Amazon Alexa after years of stasis. Seriously, this is
the biggest update to the audio side of AirPlay since it was first
announced as “AirTunes” in 2004.
But AirPlay 2 is here now, and Apple tells me the two
most specific changes are a bigger buffer so network hiccups don’t
interrupt your music and tighter clock sync between devices to enable
multiroom support. (You’ve been able to stream to multiple AirPlay
devices from a Mac for years now, but AirPlay 2 brings multiroom
streaming to iOS devices and the HomePod.) AirPlay 2 also addresses some
long-standing annoyances with streaming music from iOS: you can now
take a phone call, play videos, and play games without interrupting the
music. And moving music around the house via Siri on the HomePod is
fairly simple. You just say “Siri, move the music to the living room” or
whichever room you prefer, and it’ll stream to that room.
There’s a bunch of third parties lining up to support
AirPlay 2 — Bang & Olufsen, Bluesound, Bose, Bowers & Wilkins,
Denon, Libratone, Marantz, Marshall, Naim, Pioneer, and Sonos — but
there’s a pretty significant catch, as far as I can tell. Other music
streaming systems like Google Cast and Spotify Connect treat smart
speakers like the little internet-connected computers they are. when you
pick a song to play, all you’re really doing is sending a command to
the speaker, which then connects to your music service and streams the
song directly from the internet.
That’s not how AirPlay 2 works. It’s still very dependent
on your phone. When you stream to a third-party speaker, your iPhone
sits in the middle, pulling the music down from the internet and then
restreaming it to the speaker. Current AirPlay users will be familiar
with the limitations this imposes: if your phone dies or blips on the
network or you just leave the house, the music stops.
The only exception is the HomePod, which can connect to
Apple Music and stream to other AirPlay 2 speakers independently of your
phone. Apple told me AirPlay 2 was only designed to let the HomePod
stream directly like this, which makes sense, as the HomePod is an
A8-powered iOS device in its own right. But it’s not clear why you’d
need the power of an A8 to stream music. It’s not like any competing
streaming music devices require such potent chips to work. It’s
puzzling, but it tracks with Apple’s general default of putting the
phone at the center of everything. We’ll also have to see how AirPlay
2’s multiroom streaming works with Sonos, which has been promising
support. I suspect there’s going to be some weirdness here.
Stereo pairing for the HomePod is relatively simple: if
you select the same room name as another HomePod during setup, it’ll ask
you if you want to pair the speakers. Each HomePod will continue using
its individual microphones to tune itself to the room, but you might
recall that there’s a special mic hidden inside the HomePod chassis that
measures bass response. Those mics will sync in a stereo pair so both
speakers apply the same low-end filter. Neat.
The HomePod is also getting calendar support for Siri, so
you can ask when and where your meetings are and add events to your
calendar. It’ll work with any calendar you add to your iOS calendar app
as part of the HomePod’s personal request feature; like other personal
information, it’s not available if your phone isn’t on the same network.
It would be better if the HomePod could recognize individual voices and
only allow your voice to access that sort of information, but honestly,
we’re still waiting on multiple timer support here, so don’t hold your
breath.
Lastly, I asked if there were any updates that might make
the HomePod work better as an Apple TV speaker, and the answer was
nothing right now.
AirPlay 2 requires iOS 11.4 on all your devices to work. iPhone owners can update now, while HomePod owners can start the update from the Home app or just wait for it to automatically roll out over the next few days.
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