Airplay 2 - iOS 11.4

It is, I recommend you read about Apple's MFI program.Did you follow your own advice and read up on those non-existent Airplay 2 requirements in the MFI program?
smilja, you've gone quiet on those Sonos 64bit incompatibilities you asserted?

I have a Homepod at home (my wife wants Siri...) and I can tell you that it's a direct stream, I just played a video on youtube and put my iphone into flight mode, the stream dropped after 30 seconds.. same behavior with Spotify. Acutally I'm not even sure how it should work otherwise. The Homepod or any other Airplay 2 speaker would need millions of different implementations of App streaming, that's not really something you can achieve.

Interesting Outburst. I had read that Homepod was the exception to that rule. If you get a chance, can you do another test? Try stream some iTunes music to the homepod...something Homepod could play on it's on. It's possible that YouTube is streamed just because Homepod can't do youtube on it's on. Or perhaps I misunderstood the 'exceoption'. It may mean that if you intiate music by voice command to the Homepod, your phone isn't involved. If that's the case, well duh. Not really a notable feature, IMO.

smilja, you've gone quiet on those Sonos 64bit incompatibilities you asserted?
Trying to convince you is a fool's errand anyways. 😉

Convince me? Just answer the question instead of making baseless 'amswers' and that's fine.
Dead simple.

Convince me? Just answer the question instead of making baseless 'amswers' and that's fine.
Dead simple.
Here we go for an example. Have fun.

Interesting Outburst. I had read that Homepod was the exception to that rule. If you get a chance, can you do another test? Try stream some iTunes music to the homepod...something Homepod could play on it's on. It's possible that YouTube is streamed just because Homepod can't do youtube on it's on. Or perhaps I misunderstood the 'exceoption'. It may mean that if you intiate music by voice command to the Homepod, your phone isn't involved. If that's the case, well duh. Not really a notable feature, IMO.

I'll do that tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it will also be a direct stream. The exception you mention is only Apple Music. When you use Airplay and Apple Music on a Homepod, the Homepad is pulling the stream itself like Sonos does it with it's own app and the various direct control thing (e.g. Spotify Connect). All other sources played over Airplay are a stream.

Tested iTunes with Airplay from my Mac now. I turned off wifi and playback stopped after about 15 seconds. So it's also a direct stream.

Tested iTunes with Airplay from my Mac now. I turned off wifi and playback stopped after about 15 seconds. So it's also a direct stream.

So it’s basically AirPlay 1 with a 15-second buffer. Still an outdated protocol, still sucks 3X the bandwidth of a casting or direct pull protocol. Only real use case, then, is playing audio portion of YouTube videos on better speakers. But that’s almost always better done via a set top box, like FireTV. Yawn!

So it’s basically AirPlay 1 with a 15-second buffer. Still an outdated protocol, still sucks 3X the bandwidth of a casting or direct pull protocol. Only real use case, then, is playing audio portion of YouTube videos on better speakers. But that’s almost always better done via a set top box, like FireTV. Yawn!

The use case Apple airplay fans always bring up around here is the ability to have guests stream music from their own phones. And there is also the multi-room functionality.

I agree that it's not all that it could or should be. I would guess that if they made it a direct pull, the number of compatible speakers would shrink dramatically, and they would have security concerns when accessing guests apple accounts.

I have a Playbar in our setup, which includes an Apple TV, and other Sonos units around the house, but none are new enough for AirPlay 2. Easy solution though – I just switch to Apple TV, play what I want from that through the Playbar, and then group other rooms together in the Sonos app. It's a little clunky, but a lot cheaper than buying a new speaker I don't need.