AirPlay 2 : AVR Receivers
- Thread starter HEADRAT
- Start date
If I understand you correctly, you think that the AV receiver can be an Airplay 2 source, and that the speakers can be airplay 2 receivers getting their signal from the amp..... Which all points towards "can I get rid of the speaker wires and still do home cinema?" Is that about right?
If so, my understanding is that you're barking up the wrong tree.
According to Apple, their list of Airplay 2 sources is as follows:
AFAIK, Airplay 2 is a bit like the *later versions of Bluetooth that allow one source device to talk to two speakers. In this way a *BT enabled phone can deliver sound to two BT speakers to make a stereo pair.
AP2 goes a bit further and allows several receiver devices to get sound from a source such as an iPad and have it picked up by multiple receiver devices, be that speakers or an AP2-compatible AV receiver.
From what I can see without any further checking, the AV receiver isn't an AP2 source i.e. it doesn't send AP2 audio to anything else. It is an AP2 receiver i.e. it gets sound from an iPad etc. I think your plan then to have the AV receiver drive a stereo pair of speakers is going to crash and burn.
I'll hold my hands up though and say that Apple's ecosystem isn't something I particularly like, so I don't spend much time with their products if I can help it. If someone else can shed a different light on this and say that what you want to do is possible, and then list the right gear along with a How To then I'd be more than happy to learn something new.
If so, my understanding is that you're barking up the wrong tree.
According to Apple, their list of Airplay 2 sources is as follows:
AFAIK, Airplay 2 is a bit like the *later versions of Bluetooth that allow one source device to talk to two speakers. In this way a *BT enabled phone can deliver sound to two BT speakers to make a stereo pair.
AP2 goes a bit further and allows several receiver devices to get sound from a source such as an iPad and have it picked up by multiple receiver devices, be that speakers or an AP2-compatible AV receiver.
From what I can see without any further checking, the AV receiver isn't an AP2 source i.e. it doesn't send AP2 audio to anything else. It is an AP2 receiver i.e. it gets sound from an iPad etc. I think your plan then to have the AV receiver drive a stereo pair of speakers is going to crash and burn.
I'll hold my hands up though and say that Apple's ecosystem isn't something I particularly like, so I don't spend much time with their products if I can help it. If someone else can shed a different light on this and say that what you want to do is possible, and then list the right gear along with a How To then I'd be more than happy to learn something new.
If you drive the homepods from the Apple TV will it mix the centre channel and rears into those L&R though ? or can you disable that, if you have a HDMI connected AV
(A bit like lucid says), the apple airplay2 appears to lock you into using their proprietary codec ALC (apple lossless) to send the emusic to the speakers, not sure if it provides bitstreaming of normal codecs like AAC , which many music streaming services provide , so the sounds has to be transcoded (the humble chromecast supports AAC)
[https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-new-solution-needed.18850952/#post-32615388]
wisa should become the new wireless surround sound protocol
(A bit like lucid says), the apple airplay2 appears to lock you into using their proprietary codec ALC (apple lossless) to send the emusic to the speakers, not sure if it provides bitstreaming of normal codecs like AAC , which many music streaming services provide , so the sounds has to be transcoded (the humble chromecast supports AAC)
[https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/t...-new-solution-needed.18850952/#post-32615388]
wisa should become the new wireless surround sound protocol
I think I see what you mean.
so what I could do is pair to HomePods in stereo from Apple TV and then use optical/hdmi out to feed AV receiver and use that to power Center/Sub/rear etc, can’t see why that wouldn’t work
You'll run in to at least two problems. These are:
(1) controlling the volume levels of two devices because both Optical and HDMI have fixed output levels, so you'll end up trying to match the AV receiver volume and the Homepods volume every time you make a volume change
(2) latency. ATV4 to Homepods and any other AP2-capable speakers will all be in sync, but that doesn't mean that the Optical out or HDMI out will share the same sync. It's not designed as part of the AP2 ecosystem, so there's no reason for it to be in sync.
Added to that, the AV receiver is already coping with picture-to-sound sync to do with the time the TV takes for its picture processing. It's only my guess, but you may end up with the centre/rear/sub audio being in sync with the ATV4 picture, but the stereo pair of homepods being either in-front or behind and no way to bring that back in since the AV receiver's audio-video sync control is already busy compensating for the TV processing time.
Next, you'll probably also have an issue with duplication of the front channel (L,C,R) audio.
You see, the front stereo pair will carry the centre vocal along with stereo music plus effects; so now you have voice coming out of the left/right speakers as well as the centre channel via the AV receiver. It may also be out of sync. As jpaul pointed out, the stereo mix of a 5.1 audio source will carry everything except for the LFE channel's deep bass. I suspect that there's no way to tell the ATV to send just the 5.1 version of FL and FR to the homepods.
It's all very messy.
Do you already have the Homepods; is that why you're trying to make this work?
