I have mine set up through ARC (not eARC so I can’t speak on that). With my setup I cannot use both the TV speakers and the HomePods at the same time. With the HomePods connected, changing the volume only affects the HomePods. Even if I use my TV remote it only affects the HomePods. So to change the volume on the TV itself I’d have to disable outputting audio through the HomePods.
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Apple TV 4K: How to Stream Audio From Your TV's Inputs to HomePod (eARC)
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I have mine set up through ARC (not eARC so I can’t speak on that). With my setup I cannot use both the TV speakers and the HomePods at the same time. With the HomePods connected, changing the volume only affects the HomePods. Even if I use my TV remote it only affects the HomePods. So to change the volume on the TV itself I’d have to disable outputting audio through the HomePods.
Thanks for the information. I have a LG C9 so I figure it will work the same. I want to be able to use the tv remote with my lg 4K blu ray player. Wife as and kids would not want to have 2 remote to control a device and sound.
To clarify: This should say "lossless" or "uncompressed" versions of Dolby Atmos, say, like you get from a Blu-Ray player.
No need to run out and buy an new TV with eARC, folks! You can stream the lossy Dolby Atmos (Dolby Digital +Atmos) served by all the streaming services just fine on ARC.
Using just homepods as a cinema audio setup doesnt really work for me - I think theres a chunk of mid range missing, but that can get filled out by the tv speakers quite well if you can get them working together. On the hd atv i was able to get homepods in sync whilst using atv, but with the new one, setting up thru earc will only use homepods or tv soeakers; i can use both by selecting homepods or tv speakers as a temp secondary speaker, but despite using the settings tool to time them, they echo and sound slightly out of sync. Maybe I havent understood the controls correctly, but there are some oddities with the way the three sets of devices talk to each other. Eg if you ask the homepods to play music, they now turn the tv on and play via the atv… Guess its still in beta tho…
You can't use HomePods with other speakers if you are using HomePods as default speakers. And if you don't, they won't sound as good.
I am watching ota tv and it does not appear to have any latency or lip sync issue. I have a lg C9 OLED tv.
Was not the case with the old atv - you can enable home theatre and have both, and the results were pretty good: the tv speakers filled the gaps in the homepod midrange. You can still do this with the new one ( w/o using earc) but I cant sync them as well
That is incorrect. You can either have Home Theatre (HomePods as default) or play everywhere through AirPlay, you can't have both. That was true for the old ATV 4K and is still true with the new one. Once you set the HomePods as default they become a "slave" to the Apple TV.
Maybe this is where my confusion arises… I must have used homepods by airplay, (and assumed they were the same thing) and did so for the last 5 years. They sounded completely in sync and in combination with the tv speakers provided a rich soundscape (by themselves they had muddy dialogue, and some gaps in the midrange). There were only a few cases where they lost sync but restarting the streaming app fixed it.
Can’t get accurate synchronisation on the new ATV, and tbh I find the settings for audio on the ATV vague and confusing… what is a temporary secondary speaker, why can’t I have autonomous control over the homepods separately to the tv if using earc, why can’t I have both tv speakers and homepods working in sync thru earc (my ideal solution). I find it hard to believe that only using hps as an av sound system is satisfactory to most people - it’s not bad, but has several drawbacks. The situation, for me, is only half resolved.
I would like to see quick access presets that could be quickly accessed; watching a movie (homepods and tv speakers); watching broadcast tv/streaming (tv speakers); listening to music (homepods only). As it is, it’s all menu surfing…
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I think you'll find that if you use two HomePods as default you'll have a much richer soundscape than trying to combine it with your TV using regular AirPlay.
appreciate your answer, but it actually sounds great combined. If theres a weakness in using homepods as home theatre, it’s dialogue - using tv speaker as a centre speaker covers that. But as I say: won’t synchronise any more…
There's no problems with dialogue using HomePods as defaults. The lack of a center channel is not an issue.
If you are experiencing issues with dialogue syncing, here are some tips that helped me with my stereo HomePods using ARC/eARC:
1. Use the audio sync feature in Apple TV settings.
2. Turn on “match frame rate” in Apple TV settings.
To improve HomePod sound, and if you are experiencing issues with dialogue not sounding like it’s coming from the center:
1. Make sure the HomePods are within 10 inches from a wall.
2. Make sure the HomePods have 6 inches of space around them.
3. Place the HomePods as close to the center of the TV as possible, and they should be about 4 feet away from each other.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208241
https://support.apple.com/guide/homepod/use-homepod-with-apple-tv-4k-apdd878f126c/homepod
1. Use the audio sync feature in Apple TV settings.
2. Turn on “match frame rate” in Apple TV settings.
To improve HomePod sound, and if you are experiencing issues with dialogue not sounding like it’s coming from the center:
1. Make sure the HomePods are within 10 inches from a wall.
2. Make sure the HomePods have 6 inches of space around them.
3. Place the HomePods as close to the center of the TV as possible, and they should be about 4 feet away from each other.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208241
https://support.apple.com/guide/homepod/use-homepod-with-apple-tv-4k-apdd878f126c/homepod
Thanks, have tried all of the above, though…. Including rebooting the tv and homepods, resyncing several times, trying different sound processing through the tv speakers etc etc pretty much covered all the usual options. It might just be something that gets addressed in a later update. It took a while with the earlier Apple TV to get ironed out, although I have a different better tv now. At the end of the day it’s trying to sync sound airplayed to the homepods with sound passed through to the tv speakers… no mean feat.
Well, in all fairness, I concur with Eric's opinion as well.
I've tried the HomePods in both modes — in fact, I went from an Apple TV HD straight to the newest Apple TV 4K, and while I set up my HomePods on the Apple TV HD (via AirPlay 2), that was only to try it out for a very brief time after I ordered the new Apple TV 4K and was waiting for it to arrive. For years prior that, I've had a 3.1 channel system (L/R/C+sub, but no rear surround speakers) running through a separate $1,200 AV Receiver (I used to have a full 7.1 setup, but when I moved into where I'm living now, I never got around to setting up the rear speakers).
The difference between using a pair of stereo HomePods in "AirPlay 2" mode and using them in "Home Theatre Audio" mode is night and day. It's the difference between a simple two-channel stereo speaker setup and full Dolby Atmos audio. There's something more that Apple is doing with a pair of HomePods when they're the default speakers, based on the spatial audio and beamforming features (which is also why only the full-sized HomePod can be used in this mode). I suspect that may even be part of the reason why Apple doesn't allow for a normal HDMI audio channel when you're in Home Theatre Mode. It expects the HomePods to be delivering the entire audio experience.
In short, I've had an actual centre channel through my AV receiver for the past five years. With Home Theatre Audio on the Apple TV 4K, I'm not missing it at all. Thanks to eARC, I've happily ripped out my receiver and all of my wired speakers to reduce clutter and simplify my configuration. The HomePod experience really is that good — at least to my ears. YMMV, of course.
Appreciate you taking the time to explain your point of view - maybe I’ll give it another chance.
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I’m wondering if default audio output vs airplay makes a difference for headphones? I just made a post about this (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...dio-output-any-difference-in-quality.2299254/) but basically I have a pair of wireless sennheisers with the base station connected to my TV via optical. To use it, I have to switch audio outputs on my TV, but I’m thinking of getting a belkin airplay adapter, mostly so that I can airplay music directly to my headphones but also so that I can switch ATV audio output to the headphones via airplay for movies at night (wouldn’t have to use my TV remote anymore as that’s the only thing I use it for), but I’m wondering if that would result in an inferior audio experience. It seems you’re saying it does make a difference for HomePods, so would that translate over to headphones as well? Maybe depends on the headphones?
Thanks for concurring and explaining. I'm not sure why so many people disbelieve me when I explain why HomePods as default and just using them as AirPlay speakers are completely different experiences.
It really would depend on the headphones — in this case whether the wireless link between the Sennheisers and their base station providers higher-fidelity audio than they would offer via AirPlay. While AirPlay 2 is technically capable of CD quality audio (24-bit/44.1kHz), it appears that right now Apple uses its lossless 256kbps AAC codec over AirPlay 2.
This is why the new Lossless Audio formats coming to Apple Music won't be compatible with HomePods — at least not until Apple releases some firmware upgrades to change the codecs involved.
In fact, I suspect this is the key difference between using the HomePods over standard AirPlay 2 versus setting them up as default audio outputs. In the latter mode they're not likely running over the typical AirPlay 2 AAC codec, as Apple would need to be using a much higher bitrate to fully support Dolby Atmos. It's likely using the Dolby Digital Plus codec, which typically streams between 384kbps and 768kbps.
Anyway, I would hope that the wireless base station for your Sennheisers offers a better wireless audio codec — it's supposed to be fully lossless, after all — but I really have no idea how that works out to in practical terms of sound quality as I haven't used the wireless Sennheisers.
The connection via the SoundForm Connect should be fine, as Belkin promises 16-bit 44.1kHz audio, which is basically CD quality, but the AirPlay 2 support from the Apple TV will depend entirely on what codec Apple is using. Right now there's a good chance that's still 256kbps AAC, although it could certainly change in the future.
On paper, the higher-end RF-based Sennheisers should definitely provide superior audio quality, but since that's entirely a subjective judgement, you'd have to try it yourself to decide if the audio quality delivered from the Apple TV is acceptable. You may not be able to hear a difference, especially when it comes to things like movies and TV shows.
Yeah, I think people make certain assumptions as the whole Home Theatre Audio thing is new, and folks just assume AirPlay is AirPlay, but it's really not in this case.
For Apple to truly deliver Dolby Atmos sound, it has to be using a much better codec than what normally passes over AirPlay 2. My guess is that setting the HomePods to be the Default Audio Output switches from the standard 256kbps AAC codec that's typically used over AirPlay into Dolby Digital Plus, which typically streams between 384kbps and 768kbps, and of course offers discrete 7.1 channel audio.
Since all of the audio intelligence is in the actual HomePods, it would be up to them to decode the Dolby Atmos audio and figure out how to deliver it in the best possible way, using the advanced DSP and other adaptive audio features.
None of this is happening when using the HomePod in straight AirPlay 2 mode. In that case, the Apple TV is simply sending standard two-channel stereo audio to the speakers. They'll still do the best they can with that, of course, but there's a world of difference between two channels and 7.1 channels. Basically, you're not getting a centre channel in AirPlay 2 mode because there isn't one.
Perhaps the saddest thing about the original HomePod is how underrated the audio technology is. Apple's engineers worked some serious magic in designing the HomePod, but it's clear that most people couldn't hear enough of a difference to truly appreciate the magic.
Lastly, there are also some key things to keep in mind for the best audio performance — Apple recommends the speakers be at least four feet apart, placed on either side of the TV as close to the centre of it as possible, and within 10 inches of a wall. Personally, I find I still get great audio performance just having them about four feet directly on either side of where I sit, as my current setup doesn't offer anywhere to put them beside the TV.