Limitations Airplay 2 support: Resume after announcements, Controls via Apple Home App

[niteguide]

I am aware that this is the first stable release with Airplay 2 support, but as the following is not mentioned as limitation yet, I am bringing this up. It is more my conception of a full Airplay 2 support than a bug report:

• Audiostreams from MA to HomePod Mini now appear as „Playing“ within Apple Home App (iOS, iPadOS, MacOS) - however still all controls are greyed out, no albumart, no buttons …
• Changing Volume on HomePod is not displayed within MA
• Playback after an announcement does not resume when there was audio playing that did not come from MA

[OzGav]

Moved to a discussion. @bradkeifer FYI

[niteguide]

Thank you for your great work on this 👍👍
When switching back to Airplay 1 (RAOP) MA-streams are again not recognized by Apple Home App (as it was always the case). When it comes to announcements - no difference between Airplay 1 and AirPlay 2 - non MA-streams stop with the announcement and do not come back.

[bradkeifer]

Thanks @niteguide. So, if I understand it correctly, the behaviour is the same no matter whether you have configured MA to use RAOP or AirPlay2. Is that correct?
Also, can you please advise what is the source of the announcements? I am assuming from your description that the announcement source is not MA.

[niteguide]

I am not into technical details of AP1/AP2 - so i might have some wrong understanding of it. I am trying nevertheless, pls correct me: So far (before 2.7.0) audio streams coming from MA to HomePod where (at least in my setup) never shown in Apples Home App. My interpretation of this always was, that this is because MA only supports AP1. Now when I switch to AP2 finally the stream gets recognised by Apple Home - HomePod there now has the status Play. Not working however are all the controls (as described).
When it comes to announcements I am referring to this special use case:

1. There is audio playing from some other source than MA.
2. Then some announcement gets send via MA-entity.
3. HomePod interrupts playback, plays the announcement but does not resume playback.

So the underlying problem is in my understanding that still MA does have no knowledge that something else is playing on the HomePod. I was thinking that the whole purpose of AP2 is to get all this information synced between the device and MA - so that both systems know what is going on.
When compared to Google Cast, this all works that way.

[marcelveldt]

That is yet another protocol (Apple is confusing). AirPlay is only about sending media

[niteguide]

Thanks a lot for clarification!
Maybe this is something to look at in the future … would make the experience again much better.
Already great progress has been made! I appreciate that very much!

[MaZZly]

@niteguide, do the (physical) volume controls on your HomePod work to control volume?

On my homepod minis any button press (tested both AP1 & 2) stops the music from MA from playing.. I haven't tested announcements but I assume it is the same..

Similarly, the "Home app" shows the HomePod as "Controls not available" 🤷‍♂️