Audio sync problem with multiple HomePod after update to IOS18

Got it. Thanks and that’s terrible it happens with this method also.

yes, playing from thye iphone apple music app will cause multiple HomePod out of sync every 2-3 songs. But when play from the Apple TV app….. the problem is gone!!! Have no explanation to this….

Did anyone come up with a solution besides waiting?

I have tried all of that and nothing seems to work to resolve this issue.

Having this exact issue with all my 7 or so HomePods.

Sorry but after a fews days of use I can say the change to High Quality from Lossless helped but does not resolve the "sync" issues. Sync failure still occurs within 1-2 hours of music play.

Sadly 18.5 has not cured the multiple unit sync issues for me. I do think the occasional “gaps/pauses” have stopped.

Still getting the pauses, but at least that seems to keep things in sync longer.

Brilliant! This was the clue that seems to have my heterogeneous HomePod system back in sync!

The fix for me, at least, was to go into the Settings for my gen1 HomePod and disable all its listening features - Siri, alarms, everything. I already have a pair of HomePods in the room, after all.

And I’m now three songs along in testing, gen 1 and gen 2 pods are in perfect synch, and I believe you are my favorite person today EmmetPratt 😄

… oops. Nope, spoke too soon. Just started doing it again ☹️

Well, back to the debugging board.

It seems like when I try to play music on my HomePods in more than one room it generates a massive level of network congestion that doesn’t exist at any other time on my network. This causes issues with all my devices not just my HomePods, but it does lead to issues controlling my HomePod music from my iPhone as well as random HomePods stopping playing the music.

18.2 fixed - at least for now - the issue where the song would end early, then the next one would start a few seconds in, stop, and then start at the beginning. But the sync issues are much worse. I tried assigning all the one on the same level to the same room, which has helped some, but they still go out of sync after about 10-15 minutes. Which is an improvement on the 1-2 minutes it took before I reassigned them.

My setup - one stereo pair of HP2, two unpaired HP2s, and three minis in different rooms. Small house, but a very sound-sensitive person so no one speaker can be loud enough to hear in a larger area. Playing my own music through Apple Music.

Still happening to me with 18.2. But the problem is just with Apple Music. I’m testing with Spotify and youtube and no problem at all. I have 2 HP 1st gen in stereo, 1 HP 1st, 2 mini in stereo and other 2 mini singles and all of them have the same problem when put together playing.

I’ve been doing several tests. I reset all the HomePods, but it didn’t solve the issue. I disabled Atmos and Lossless, but the same errors persisted. What I noticed is that it seems to be related to the iPhone. On the iPhone, the issue only affects Apple Music when trying to stream to multiple HomePods. When I stream via the Music app on my MacBook, this error doesn’t occur. I haven’t tried performing a factory reset on the iPhone yet.

I’ve done all the suggestions on here and the problem persists. Today I had them starting to play a song 15/20 seconds in, then stopping and starting the same song again from the beginning. Not had that for a while. Then a bit later I had them completely out of sync and even the lyrics on my phone weren’t in sync. I stopped everything and restarted but then only one speaker played. Everything is updated. I use Apple Music. Don’t know what else to do. I restart them, unpair, re pair, reset, play music directly using Siri, stream from my phone etc etc. Doesn’t matter what I do they won’t work as they should

Interesting. I've been using Apple Music directly, so that volume and speakers can be controlled by different devices in my home (three people, one of whom is very sound sensitive). I just set up different automations, disabled them, and use Test this automation to play that particular playlist. If I play from my desktop, that is the only device I can use to change volume, or add/remove speakers. Same with playing through Music on my iPhone.