TL;DR: turning off Atmos in Apple Music fixes HomePod audio glitches
For perhaps 2-3 months, I've been having audio glitches on my HomePods with Apple Music, with skips or gaps ranging from extremely short (but noticeable) to around a second.
Previous to this, I had enabled lossless and enjoyed that quality level (not shockingly better, but better regardless). No skips, no issues.
Then the glitching started to occur. Not every song, but well over half. Usually in the first 10-15 seconds. Realizing this was after a software update, I figured Apple would fix it in the next release and I let it go - it was that obvious.
Then I started to notice some of the songs were really odd and different quality. I dived back into the settings to see what might be causing this, and either I had set Atmos on or Apple had defaulted it on (honestly can't remember). So I turned it off, and to be honest, while I think I was served less Atmos songs, I also didn't keep an eye on it.
The glitching continued, and a few days ago I decided to have another spin through the settings, as I had again started to notice weird quality music being played. This time I used my iPhone to see what was being sent to the HomePods, and it was indeed Atmos. So I went back to the settings and it was re-enabled. Which was odd as I had turned it off explicitly. But whatever...
What's good about all of this is that the glitching disappeared almost entirely after I disabled Atmos. I still run lossless, and have high-res selected, but I can't verify that it's being used on HomePods - but I can see it when I use my DAC and headphones.
For perhaps 2-3 months, I've been having audio glitches on my HomePods with Apple Music, with skips or gaps ranging from extremely short (but noticeable) to around a second.
Previous to this, I had enabled lossless and enjoyed that quality level (not shockingly better, but better regardless). No skips, no issues.
Then the glitching started to occur. Not every song, but well over half. Usually in the first 10-15 seconds. Realizing this was after a software update, I figured Apple would fix it in the next release and I let it go - it was that obvious.
Then I started to notice some of the songs were really odd and different quality. I dived back into the settings to see what might be causing this, and either I had set Atmos on or Apple had defaulted it on (honestly can't remember). So I turned it off, and to be honest, while I think I was served less Atmos songs, I also didn't keep an eye on it.
The glitching continued, and a few days ago I decided to have another spin through the settings, as I had again started to notice weird quality music being played. This time I used my iPhone to see what was being sent to the HomePods, and it was indeed Atmos. So I went back to the settings and it was re-enabled. Which was odd as I had turned it off explicitly. But whatever...
What's good about all of this is that the glitching disappeared almost entirely after I disabled Atmos. I still run lossless, and have high-res selected, but I can't verify that it's being used on HomePods - but I can see it when I use my DAC and headphones.
