I can’t speak for anyone else but for me it’s absolutely definitely HomePod specific.
With AirPods playback starts instantly.
Then to add it doesn’t happen with HomePods when using the old audio player.
Then finally (again with HomePods and the new audio player) when I do finally get playback to start after a few minutes audio dies after a minute or two and needs either a short backwards or forwards scrub to bring the audio back.
I recall @DaveBinM getting the go ahead to purchase a HomePod to troubleshoot one of the issues (I can’t recall if it was the initial paused state or the audio dying) then sadly he was immediately laid off so nothing became of it.
Since then @chrisallen apparently reproduced the issue with audio dying using speaker based airplay devices (via if I recall his soundbar that supports airplay) then stated he would be OOO for a while, which I took to mean Out of Office?
That was around early November after first being reported in September and there has been no news since. AirPlay issues with the new audio engine on Apple TV - #11 by Trust_The_Process
Then throw into the mix the often reported video stutter issues regardless of it being caused by thermal throttling or not (I barely see this myself lately but clearly plenty of others do) what we seem to have is a hot mess.
