AirPlay 2, Multi-Room Audio and Syncing with Other Speakers
What we are most excited about is AirPlay 2 functionality as this extends wireless use of your HomePod(s) to multiple rooms and enables connections to other speakers you may have such as Bower & Wilkins, Bang & Olufsen, Bluesound, Bose, Denon, Libratone, Marantz, Marshall, Naim, Pioneer and Sonos. You can listen to your existing music collection, stream new music and listen to podcasts anywhere in your home in sync with your speakers.
The Control Center offers a quick view of what’s playing in every room and simple controls to adjust volume and more. When you select a single HomePod, you can play music in that room. Adding another HomePod, enables multi-room audio. When you have chosen two HomePods, each one receives its own volume slider for granular volume control. In addition, there is a master volume slider to adjust both speakers simultaneously.
You can also play music via YouTube or other streaming method. You will be prompted to choose the HomePod speaker for playback.
AirPlay 2 controls are available across iOS within any app and in Control Center for quick access to what’s playing in every room, on every speaker. Apple Music subscribers can also ask Siri to play different songs in different rooms or the same song everywhere, without ever leaving the room.
In addition, this synchronization addresses prior connection issues and lag while streaming audio and helps to ensure a better acoustic experience. You can ask Siri to play music in any room right from an iOS device or by asking Siri on HomePod.
Siri integrates well with Apple Music and with growing playlists and users, Siri's knowledge of music has increased.