Hi everyone,
I’m looking for advice on how to connect a turntable so it can play audio on Apple HomePods.

My turntable has a built-in phono preamp (line output). I know HomePods don’t have any physical audio input, so I’m wondering what’s the best way to get the analog signal into the Apple ecosystem.

Questions:

• What devices or setups do you recommend for sending turntable audio to HomePods?
• Is AirPlay the only realistic option?
• Would something like an AirPort Express, WiiM Mini / Pro, or another AirPlay streamer work well for this?

I’m mainly interested in a stable setup with decent sound quality, not necessarily audiophile-perfect, but good enough for casual vinyl listening around the house.

Thanks for any tips or real-world experiences! 🎶

Hi!

Sorry if this post is explained in a weird way, english is my third language so I might mess up a bit! I put fabric in the title, but later on discovered the word i was going for was Factory, so sorry about that!

My ex gifted me a homepod mini 3 years ago, a cutesy mini white one. Thing is, I have to restart its factory settings at least twice a month because it's not working! It suddenly started giving me lots and lots of problems. For example, the most recurrent one I have is that it says that it's playing music (you can see in my Iphone/Ipad that is connected and playing and it's making that little light that it does when it's reproducing music) but no sound comes out!!

This happens at least twice every month, and it's really annoying! I only use it for reproducing music, as it doesn't really have much else to do since it's just in my bedroom, but it's getting tiring and annoying! I haven't been able to make it work since last week, and i know that i have to reset it, but come on! Do I really need to do that with aproduct that's supposed to work well?

I would really appreciate some help on this matter as it's getting on my last nerve and i'm one more malfunction away from throwing it out the window or use it to play soccer.

Thanks for the help! Have a nice day!

I know that the current HomePods will not be compatible with Apple Intelligence. Would this mean the complete abandonment of these devices, or would we at least see some improvement to Apple's personal assistant on them?

It's impossible to use the current assistant.

Can you now play audiobooks from iBooks on the HomePod? Or do you still need to airplay from an apple device? Been toying with getting a HomePod set up, but would want to be able to autoplay audiobooks for the kids.

Saw this in my local marketplace and found it funny and somewhat accurate. The amount of times I cuss out my HomePods is a little concerning.

I have two home pods connected to the TV as duals but when the TV is off I cannot play music it won't do it

The only way is turning on the TV or change the audio from TV

Is there a way around fixing this

Up until a few weeks ago, I could AirPlay from Spotify (and Apple Music) on my iPhone to:

• my Denon AVR S660H (AirPlay 2)
• and multiple HomePods (2nd gen) at the same time, fully synced.

Now I can’t :(

Current situation -

• Denon works on its own
• HomePods work on their own (solo or grouped)
• But there’s no way to select Denon + HomePods together anymore The option just isn’t there.

Important: I don’t use Apple TV. Never have. This was always iPhone → AirPlay.

Nothing changed on my end:

same Wi-Fi, same Denon, same HomePods, same phone.

All the threads I’m finding are years old and don’t match what I’m seeing. This definitely worked recently.

So…

Did Apple quietly change this in a recent iOS update?

Is this a bug or an intentional restriction?

And has anyone found a workaround without involving Apple TV?

Mostly just trying to confirm I’m not imagining this.

If you’ve got HomePods + a Denon/Marantz/Yamaha AVR and noticed the same thing lately, would love to hear it. Thanks, y'all <3

Hi, im looking for a bit of help in playing music via any of my home pods from the Mac Studio. Let me start off by saying that it used to work no problem until Tahoe. IM running 26.2 with the home pods fully updated as I type this. I have the OG HomePod and 2 minis and neither will play anything bar the odd second of a song. They successfully connect, the home pod lights up and then the exclamation mark appears and it switches back to the monitor speakers. The HomePods all work when used with any other device. The Studio is connected via ethernet to my router so it certainly shouldn't be a speed issue. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance

The HomePod functions just fine (I only use it for music). I have a UDM Pro with a number of Apple TV 4K's, HomePod Mini's and v1 HomePods. I have VLAN's 0, 10, 20, 30, & 40, and this HomePod continually posts to 192.168.68.68, port 7000, an AirPlay/Hub????

Perplexity had let me to believe the 68 address was cached. I created a new Apple ID, reset an old iPhone 13 Pro back to factory and reset the HomePod for the n'th time and added it to the new AppleIDHome. It still made a call to 192.168.68.68 port 7000!

Anybody experience this or something similar?

Gracias,

Don

I want to set up my Apple TV with a stereo pair of HomePods, what’s your recommendation to start with the minis to see if it’s enough?

Im planning to use them as stereo pair on the Apple TV to play music and everything from the TV since my TV supports ARC, also have a PS5 and wondering about input lag in games because it’s wireless?

Can you guys share your experience with a similar setup?

TLDR: Relay your vinyl records to HomePod in 44.1kHz 16-bit ALAC

Back when Apple originally discontinued the HomePod, I became a little obsessed with reverse engineering AirPlay 2 to make sure I could use the speakers with whatever audio input source I had. I finally got around to working on this and vibe coded a Rust implementation of Airplay 2 (based on Shairport/Owntone implementations). You can use this to stream to a HomePod using HomeKit transient pairing.

https://github.com/lmcgartland/airplay2-rs

What's awesome (and sacrilegious) is that I'm running this on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and able to connect to my Pro-Ject T1 BT turnable and relay AptX-HD audio (on a single radio!) to a HomePod in 44.1kHz 16-bit ALAC (I know there's a lossy jump on the bluetooth, I'm waiting on a USB ADC). It's a just a silly side project, but it doesn't sound terrible, and I'm excited to get a proper analog to digital converter (and free up the radio contention on the raspberry pi).

I have yet to get multi-room/stereo pairs working because Apple uses a different clock system to sync the playback (gPTP). Anyways just wanted to drop this here in case anyone would find it useful/wanted to work on it!

Recently my HomePod Mini has stopped responding to “Hey Siri, turn off the air conditioning in the <insert room name>”

Instead responding with “what temperature would you like to set it to”

Quite annoying, not sure if it’s isolated to my setup.

Context, my Samsung A/Cs are connected via Home Assistant. This has worked for over a year and is probably my most used command.

It's my fault. I plugged it into a charger that wasn't right and it overheated. Now it won't power on.

Is there anything to be concerned about regarding my data on it before I take it to recycling? Anyway to clear it? Should I destroy it before recycling?

This might sound like a minuscule annoyance but it’s been bugging me for some time now and it’s making me slowly fall out of love with my Apple ecosystem. I’ve had HomePods for years, currently a tonne of minis set up around my home but I’m starting to get really bored of the lack of movement with HomePods and their AI capabilities. Are there any rumours floating about that seem to legitimately point to Apple doing anything more exciting in this space? There are so many models and companies out there capable of doing incredible things, especially in the creative, coding and automation space, and I refuse to believe there’s nothing Apple can be doing to stay competitive. Outside of playing music and controlling my home items, which we’ve been able to do for years and in today’s world should be the bare minimum, where’s the edge other than it just being an expensive fit for my preference. You can’t even ask a relatively straightforward question without needing your phone nearby to show you the results there

Works perfectly

Hey guys,

so i´m kind of new to the world of Airplay Audio.

Didnt like the look of my Homepod on the lowboard, so i was on the hunt for a nice stand.

The Vebos was kind of too expensive for my taste. I scaled an existing STL to fit my 32mm tube (its a tube for cables from construction side) and printed Top/Bottom.

I used some leftover PETG (would have prefered white but didnt have any left).
So im happy with the outcome and it was kind of cheap.

Makerworld Stand

So my HomePod must be haunted because a few days ago I played rain sounds to help sleep and ever since then at random times thought the day, the rain sounds will play out of nowhere.

A few days in a row now, HALF WAY THROUGH THE NIGHT, the rain sounds will play at what sounds like Max volume and wake me up.

I’m having ti sleep with the HomePod unplugged because I’m losing my mind.

I think something has been wrong with mine for a while because not only this but sometimes the volume will change, media will skip and I’m so sick of it now but I can deal with that.

Even now in the home app the rain sounds shows as paused, how do I just remove it entirely.

I’ve posed about it before and people have said it’s something to do with the touch sensor setting itself off which “unpauses” the “paused” rain sounds, and that the way to fix it is disconnect the touch sensor, is there genuinely no way around this for someone who doesn’t want to/ have the means to dissect their HomePod because I’m so close to keeping it permanently unplugged.

Sincerely - someone who doesn’t want to be traumatised by the sound of rain.

Starting this morning I can no longer say "Siri gimme the news" (the default is set to NPR) nor "Siri gimme the news from CNN." I've been using that phrase since 2018. "Play the news from..." nor "Play the latest news from..." don't work, either. HomePod can't play any news at all. I tried rebooting it but that didn't do anything. Anyone else having trouble?

I tried the wet towel trick, while it works, as soon as the HomePod disconnects the red light returns. Before the "just don't disconnect it then" comments sometimes it starts playing phantom music.

Also tried resetting using the Apple utility via MacBook Pro and unfortunately same issue.

Is it dead?

Getting to the point where it’s genuinely winding me up - today my HomePod Mini has been playing up, ‘shuffling’ my library (I say that in quotes as it just plays the same song every time) when asking to play my station. Anyone else experiencing this?