we use our own player stack, which is not the iOS default one.
it’s super weird that some of us see this and some of us don’t (i literally cast every night to my stereo pair and don’t notice any issues besides the delay starting).
to be clear, mpv is used by video; we use another player stack for audio which doesn’t support (yet?) AirPlay 2
it’s not 
Plexamp 3.2.0 added Casting, including an AirPlay picker, but apparently failed to implement AirPlay 2. I still see the 2 second command delay and near instant interruption when network connectivity is severed to my phone when playing on any of my Sonos AirPlay 2 capable devices.
It’s fascinating that external, third-party casting implementations were baked in, tested and deployed before the three year old built-in OS native one.
It’s a shame, but indeed I’m still having issues with the airplay feature… to be honest I think I’m going to give on Plexamp, it’s every I would have ever wanted in an audio player and it simply looks amazing! But it’s no good looking pretty if I can’t use it with my HomePods…
tidal, Apple Music, and prism all seem to work really well with no problems at all…
However Plexamp and Qobuz have nothing but problems with airplay…
I’m not a developer, so I don’t know how hard a problem ot is to sort. Or even implement the airplay 2 system… I guess it’s about a choice weather tomorrow not, or indeed if it at all possible too or not in the React Native (which I believe is what Plexamp is written in)
Such a shame though…
My experience:
After reading these posts I gave a try with my setup (5 AP2 speakers).
Hard/soft: Ipad Mini 2 + IOS 12.4.8
Test case:
I’ll repeat the same sequence another day, as well as starting a Deezer music experience from scratch to see what happens and I’ll come back here.
Edit #1: Starting from scratch with Deezer and adding 5 AP2 speakers gives the same results than starting from scratch with Plexamp. Keeping Deezer running, removing 4 speakers and adding them back solves the out of sync issue and there is no subsequent drops, nor unsync.
Well I know “Prism” app uses Apple API’s for audio playback. I never have an issue using prism… but I do prefers Plexamp. I guess if the software design is being made by React, then maybe you can’t implement Apples API’s?
I am not sure if anyone can answer that or not?
unrelated. we may look into low-latency AirPlay support at some point. i use it daily over here with a stereo pair and it works fine and stays in sync, so it doesn’t seem totally broken at the moment.
i don’t see what’s fascinating about it, just related to difficulty/reward ratio.
This works for me 
take from the apparent head of technical development, in response to numerous contradicting reports of it clearly not working, is nothing short of baffling. At a minimum it should prompt an internal investigation at least rule out the suggested fix as a factor. It’s further compounded by the fact the basic requirement to implement it (AirPlay picker within the app) was just added, but was done so in a form which is at least three years out of date.
I’m sorry it’s baffling. What I’m saying is “this doesn’t appear to be a problem for the majority of our users, myself included”. It doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement (we’d like to add AirPlay 2 Enhanced Buffering at some point), but it’s not completely broken, and as far as I know Apple doesn’t say “you must use Enhanced Buffering to get things to work at all”. We work on Plexamp in our spare time, have a long list of things we’d like to do, so we have to balance and prioritize what we spent time on, as I’m sure you understand.
I’m sorry, I don’t follow this bit, maybe you can explain further?
I wish you guys would implement low-latency (sorry but that 3 second delay when it does work is a bit annoying). But attempted AirPlay with single stereo pair with the latest Plexamp version and only one HomePod would play, had to mess with turning AirPlay on and off several times before both would play.
Unrelated to Plexamp but the Plex client on Apple tv (with HomePod stereo pair) exhibits oddities as well, the only way AirPlay works is when a video starts, pause, swipe down and select auto convert. Got so annoying I just ended up purchasing Infuse, and that works every time.
So something seems broke with AirPlay and Plex clients.
Prior to 3.2.0, Plexamp provided no mechanism to choose the AirPlay sink from within the app. 3.2.0 added what appears to be an AirPlay picker hidden behind the Chromecast icon in the lower right. Whatever code path is being used to present this is clearly not using the AirPlay 2 system calls explicitly outlined in the WWDC 2017 AirPlay 2 introduction session I’ve brought to your attention a number of times already.
So just to be explicit, you’re annoyed that it’s not just showing the AirPlay icon itself, and instead putting it behind the cast icon?
If so, this is pretty standard fare, compare with Spotify/TIDAL/etc. If you want the app to be able to cast to a variety of different players, it doesn’t make sense to have multiple top-level buttons for each type.
The contortions required to arrive at the stated conclusion are truly Olympic class. The location of the AirPlay icon is immaterial and has no bearing on the functionality we’re requesting. By code path I’m referring to the code added in 3.2.0 which provides the AirPlay picker, but stops short of incorporating the AirPlay 2 functionality made available in 2017 by Apple themselves. Have the steps outlined in the WWDC session even been tested to identify what further work, if any, needs to be done?
Sorry, I’m bowing out of this conversation as I’m not really enjoying your hostility 
Know that we plan to look into Enhanced Buffering in the future, I just can’t tell you how long that will take.
Just to satisfy my own curiosity, I played with Apple Music, Spotify, and TIDAL to see how they performed with my paired HomePods, and I came away somewhat shocked:
Spotify: Doesn’t seem to have implemented Enhanced Buffering for AirPlay 2. All commands lag. Seems to have been requested a while ago.
TIDAL: Appears to have implemented Enhanced Buffering (pause/play are instant, seeking/skipping still lag more than I would have thought, on the order of seconds). Additionally, after seeking, almost every time I’d get lingering sound through a single speaker for a few seconds. Very strange.
Apply Music: The crown jewel, presumably. Appears to have implemented Enhanced Buffering because pause/play are instant. Seeking/skipping are laggy, and almost every time I would get lingering sound on a speaker for 2-4 seconds.
Conclusion: I don’t think Enhanced Buffering is the panacea some on this thread feel it is. If anything, based upon what I experienced (latest iOS 14, no beta anything) I’m less eager to look into it than I was before, not least given I’ve never seen those out-of-sync weird lingering audio issues with Plexamp’s “old-style” AirPlay.
There are a few things that I think work much better with AirPlay 2.
Reduced startup time and play/pause and seek/skip are “nice” but not critical. They improve the “DJ” experience but not the “Listening” experience.
The biggest improvement is multiple speakers. AirPlay 1 works great with one device, or two if the devices are HomePods.
But trying to play to more than two devices is an absolute crap-shoot with AirPlay 1. Will it start at all? Will individual speakers drop out? It’s basically too frustrating to use.
With a bunch of Sonos and HomePods or a mix of ATV + Sonos + HomePod, AirPlay 2 works really surprisingly well.
The other super awesome feature is control from other devices. It’s pretty amazing how seamlessly Apple Music can be controlled from multiple devices, Computer/Phone/TV. I believe this is AirPlay 2 stuff, not Apple Music-only proprietary magic. And it became significantly more intuitive and accessible in iOS 14.
But if anybody else has noticed, macOS itself doesn’t use AirPlay 2 … so …
Ah, interesting, I’ve only tried with 2 paired (stereo) HomePods, not more than that.
Yeah, IIRC even Big Sur doesn’t (totally?) fix this.
I’m with you on that, I am not so sure it’s a buffering issue… I have briefly messaged the dev that has produced the “Prism” app (it is continuously flawless with playing music through any number of homepods! (Or at least 8 all playing together) how ever it quiet simply is not Plexamp as far as styles, look and feel. It’s more like the Apple Music kinda look…
he uses a dedicated music player (from the Apple API’s he has stated) which is wonderful if your playing back any format supported by Apple, ie; ALAC, FLAC, M4A, AIFF, WAV and MP3 but not if your looking at any other format…
This would also obviously mean if this, or even if this could be implemented it would be surely just exclusive to iOS… which means if I am correct a lot more coding I guess?
I don’t know about these things, I am no way near as clever as the people that make these apps! (And I am forever great full to them)
I don’t know if it is possible to implement two player in once system ( I know the Prism dev has on his) a switch for Apple Music player, and his own music player… so I guess what I am asking if for Plexamp to have its normal player engine, but a switch for anyone using iOS for the other music player… if that makes sense??
On kinda an unrelated questions, when your playing music from Plexamp to your speakers… I take it that it’s playing from your phone to the speaker?
Plexamp library to phone, from phone to speaker?
The reason why I was asking is that I also have a Bluesound Node 2i with a couple of Hi-res speaker attached (through optical) and using the BlueOS app it plays for the source- directly to the speaker (the phone just being the controller)
Th blueOS app has a lot to be desired… it’s not great at all (I wish it where more like Plexamp) which bring me to my next question!
Fans of Bluesound have been asking for years for them to implement Plex (like Sonos already have) into the Music services… especially as Bluesound indexing is horrendous, one thing goes wrong and you have to index all again taking hours and hours… if you have a big library even days!
Could there be a version of Plexamp (maybe) that could control and and use plex media library to control the Bluesound device? Maybe a “PlexBlue” ??? 
Many thanks and sorry to drag on!!
Airplay or playing from PlexAmp on iOS 14.0.1 to an Apple TV running tvOS 14.0.1.
