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Auto is it Possible to use 3 Different Airplay Speakers at the same time ?

M

marcusalwayswins

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 23, 2021
442
83
Hey Guys,

I wanted to know is there any way that I can play three different Airplay Speakers all at the same time the same track or Movie. I have one JBL L8 Airplay enabled Speaker and I have 2 HomePods paired in stereo. I want to be able to play all the three speakers at the same time using Airplay. I see when I go in the Airplay icon on my device i can only select one Airplay speaker at the same time. So can I not play the same Track or Movie on two different Airplay speaker at the same time ?

Thanks in Advance !
 
You should be able to. Not sure why your only able to select one at a time unless your possibly on an older Airplay 1 device? I do it all the time with 8 homepods and an additional Sonos roam speaker. Music or Audio from TV/Video works great through all speakers simultaneously.
 
dsaponaro said:
You should be able to. Not sure why your only able to select one at a time unless your possibly on an older Airplay 1 device? I do it all the time with 8 homepods and an additional Sonos roam speaker. Music or Audio from TV/Video works great through all speakers simultaneously.
Click to expand...

Can I also do that in Apple TV ? While playing a Movie in Apple TV ?
 
dsaponaro said:
You should be able to. Not sure why your only able to select one at a time unless your possibly on an older Airplay 1 device? I do it all the time with 8 homepods and an additional Sonos roam speaker. Music or Audio from TV/Video works great through all speakers simultaneously.
Click to expand...
TonyC28 said:
I am able to do this with multiple HomePods. I assume it would work with other AirPlay speakers but I've never tried it.
Click to expand...

Hey didn't I tell you guys playing different brand Airplay speakers does not work for me. I again tried it, though all the Airplay speakers are clearly shown and visible in the Airplay icon and List in my device. But when I try to select all the Airplay speakers all at the same time, I can only select one Airplay speaker at a time. Please see this screen recording.


 
marcusalwayswins said:
Can I also do that in Apple TV ? While playing a Movie in Apple TV ?
Click to expand...
Yes. From Apple Tv to any or all speakers. Can also be done with iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
marcusalwayswins said:
Hey didn't I tell you guys playing different brand Airplay speakers does not work for me. I again tried it, though all the Airplay speakers are clearly shown and visible in the Airplay icon and List in my device. But when I try to select all the Airplay speakers all at the same time, I can only select one Airplay speaker at a time. Please see this screen recording.


View attachment 2027934
Click to expand...
Only thing I can think of is that your JBL speaker is an Airplay 1 compatable speaker, not Airplay 2? Maybe others can confirm?
 
dsaponaro said:
Yes. From Apple Tv to any or all speakers. Can also be done with iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

Only thing I can think of is that your JBL speaker is an Airplay 1 compatable speaker, not Airplay 2? Maybe others can confirm?
Click to expand...

The JBL Speaker is a 2014 released product and it never got any software update after that. So I am presuming it is Airplay-1. So you are guessing that could be the reason why it is not getting selected ?
 
Airplay 1 only did one speaker at a time. It takes the synching technology of Airplay 2 to play to multiple speakers. It was the same with the old airport express before they were able to update it.

So if you select an airplay 1 device, all the others will be deselected, and vice versa. If you had multiple Airplay 2 speakers you could play to them all no problem.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
So in any case with one Airplay-1 speaker and the other Airplay-2 I will not be able to play them altogether period !!
Click to expand...

Not true, I should have expressed myself more clearly.

If playing from a Mac you can use multiple AirPlay 1 and AirPlay 2 speakers for simultaneous playback.

Before I replaced all my AirPlay 1 speakers I had a Mac mini running iTunes sitting in a closet that could be controlled by the Remote app, just to get around the iOS limitation.
 
Arctic Moose said:
Not true, I should have expressed myself more clearly.

If playing from a Mac you can use multiple AirPlay 1 and AirPlay 2 speakers for simultaneous playback.

Before I replaced all my AirPlay 1 speakers I had a Mac mini running iTunes sitting in a closet that could be controlled by the Remote app, just to get around the iOS limitation.
Click to expand...

I only have an iPad but I use a Windows Computer.
 
Arctic Moose said:
I believe iTunes for Windows has the same support for both AirPlay and the iOS Remote app that iTunes for Mac has.
Click to expand...
When you say same support what do you mean ? So with iTunes on Windows will it play both the Airplay-1 and Airplay-2 Speakers at the same time or no ?
 
marcusalwayswins said:
So with iTunes on Windows will it play both the Airplay-1 and Airplay-2 Speakers at the same time or no ?
Click to expand...

I haven’t tried it myself, but I believe it will, yes.

Source:

Choose which speakers to use in iTunes on PC

In iTunes on PC, listen through your computer’s speakers, an Airplay-enabled device, or remote speakers connected to an Airport Express.
support.apple.com

(It doesn't specifically say you can mix and match, but I would be surprised if it worked differently compared to iTunes for macOS.)
 
Last edited:
Arctic Moose said:
I haven’t tried it myself, but I believe it will, yes.

Source:

Choose which speakers to use in iTunes on PC

In iTunes on PC, listen through your computer’s speakers, an Airplay-enabled device, or remote speakers connected to an Airport Express.
support.apple.com

(It doesn't specifically say you can mix and match, but I would be surprised if it worked differently compared to iTunes for macOS.)
Click to expand...

You were correct ! iTunes in Windows does play all the speaker at the same time. Whether Airpay-1 or Airplay-2 speaker doesn't matter !! But the problem for me it only plays anything playing in iTunes outside of iTunes it does not stream any audio :) So I am just wondering if and how can I play Movies from Apple Movie Library or iTunes which will play the Movie inside of iTunes and so I can have a truly enveloping sound coming out from my all speakers. That would be Surreal !

Would that be possible ?
 
Arctic Moose said:
Not in any practical way, as far as I know.

I got tired of all the workarounds, and bought a huge stack of second-hand AirPort Express units to use as an AirPlay 2 interface to my older speakers that cannot be upgraded from AirPlay 1. Problem solved.
Click to expand...

Ok so If I buy an Airport express I can play my Airplay-1 Speakers wit the Airplay-2 speakers ? Al at once.
 
marcusalwayswins said:
Ok so If I buy an Airport express I can play my Airplay-1 Speakers wit the Airplay-2 speakers ? Al at once.
Click to expand...

The AirPort Express (only the last revision, the one that isn’t a wall wart) can be updated to act as an AirPlay 2 receiver. It has analog and digital (optical) audio output through the 3.5 mm jack.

This means that any stereo system or speaker that has an analog or TOSLINK input can be upgraded to AirPlay 2, regardless of how dumb or smart it was previously, it could be 100% analog and still work fine.
 
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