HomePod HomePod Minis in stereo and ethernet on Mac stopped working

[jck1634]

Ive been dealing with an issue for a few weeks now and was wondering if anyone else is experiencing this. I've been successfully using two HomePod minis in stereo with my Mac setup (2015 iMac and 2022 14" MacBook Pro from January) as the default output. Sounds always been great and haven't had any problems, until now.
This is what's been happening over the last few weeks. I'll set the Macs default output to my HomePod minis as normal. They'll even light up as they're supposed to when there's sound outputting. Only there's no sound. I did a bunch of troubleshooting and finally came to the conclusion its something to do with my ethernet. Nothing has changed in my setup. I have a Mesh network with the Mac connected directly to the router and everything else connected to an ethernet switch. the only change has been I now connect a thunderbolt 4 dock to the router to get an ethernet connection on my Mac because im using an external monitor. but as I've said, it was working fine as before. if I disconnect the ethernet though and have the Mac on wifi then the HomePod minis work just fine. has anyone else experienced this and can maybe suggest something that I could do? I called apple and they were great but ultimately couldn't figure out the problem.

 

[Alive76]

Don't use wired and wireless at the same time. Disabling wifi on my Mac fixed this.

 

[jck1634]

Just wanted to update this incase it helps anyone. I managed to fix the problem. all this time I thought it was some thing wrong on the ethernet end of my network. maybe the devices connected via wifi weren't recognising the devices connected through ethernet. I thought it might be the thunderbolt 4 dock I had gotten, but I recently "downgraded" it to a caldigit TS4 (I say downgraded because the TS4 is a pile of dung!)

Today I bought a second Apple TV to connect to my monitors HDMI input. I wired it via Ethernet and sure enough, no sound throughout the stereo HomePod minis. I don't know y I decided to just switch off everything in the security tab of my router to see if that would work. To my amazement it did! I then turned everything back on to see which one was the culprit and I narrowed it down the ipv6 spi firewall. leaving that unchecked makes my HomePod minis play sound from a device connected through ethernet again.

Hope this helps someone! its been a pain when they haven't been working and to my ears these are the best speakers I've had for my desk setup.