Airplay 2 is the biggest load of crap.

[scaramoosh]

I'm an Apple user, though I'm on the tail end of it now as Apple have been doing more and more to annoy me. The Mac I have now will be the last one I use if they are switching to ARM, though killing off 32bit ensures I won't be upgrading either. I do not understand the mentality of endlessly praising Apple for making anti consumer decisions. I mean the HomePod has to be their worst product ever, why would you make a speaker without Bluetooth or 3.5mm? It brings me onto Airplay....

Now everyone on the forum seems to defend it and says how great it is over Bluetooth 5. Now I have a new Naim Mu-so with Airplay 2, I used to have an Apple TV so I've tested it on there as well as my iPhone and Mac. I had two HomePods as well in the past, so I've even tested it on all Apple hardware. For first of all I cannot hear a difference between Airplay 2 and Bluetooth 5 with FLAC. People say Airplay 2 sounds superior.... I cannot hear it, so that argument goes out of the window for me.

However Airplay 2 has one MAJOR MAJOR problem, that is latency. Now I've tried it on about 5 different routers, one of them being the AirPort Extreme, and it's the same on all of them. You cannot play games using Airplay 2, there is too much latency... why? I dunno, Bluetooth has zero latency that you can perceive. If you click pause on a video the audio will continue to play for a second, if you click play it takes a second to kick in.


This makes Airplay 2 unusable, yet people still defend it :/ Next time you make a HomePod Apple, use standards everyone else uses, otherwise you have a speaker that won't sell.

 

[Juicy Box]

I don't use HomePod, nor do I use AirPlay 2 that often, so I won't comment on that.

I do not understand the mentality of endlessly praising Apple for making anti consumer decisions.

I have noticed this, and I don't get it.

I have been a very long time Apple user, starting with Macs in the 90's. Back then it was always Mac versus Windows, and I was in the tiny minority.

I always believed that Apple had a superior product and that the quality of the product and user experience was far better than what the competition offered.

But over the past 7-8 years, I think that the quality gap is closing. I still think overall that Apple products are generally better, but not by much, and not always by enough to justify the Apple Tax.

IMO, Apple used to make product decisions that were based on a better user experience. Now, it seems to be more about the bottom line and shareholders.

So, getting back to your statement:

I do not understand the mentality of endlessly praising Apple for making anti consumer decisions.

It would be one thing to praise Apple for the decisions that they make if one was looking from an investors' POV, but not from a user POV.

 

[Juicy Box]

I have been a very long time Apple user, starting with Macs in the 90's. Back then it was always Mac versus Windows, and I was in the tiny minority.

Another thing I forgot to add is that is seems like Apple is becoming like the new Microsoft, forgetting what made them great (at least from a consumer POV) in the first place.

 

[SuperMatt]

Airplay 2 increased the streaming buffer size to decrease the chance of the stream being interrupted. This, paired with the higher quality sound compared to Bluetooth (and therefore more data to be transferred) means latency is a trade off they decided to accept in favor of high-quality, uninterrupted streaming.

Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba has a feature to lower latency somewhat... here is a good page about what you can do with it:

Airfoil for Mac: Handling audio delays & speaker synchronization in Airfoil

Some audio delays are unavoidable in Airfoil, but adjusting audio offsets can help synchronize audio across multiple devices.

rogueamoeba.com