17.3, experimental driver and a pair of homepods: still broken, random glitches while tuning a new channel, it forces you to switch channels until it works.
Yeh me too, and I’ve tried all drivers. Testflight with Lab audio driver is no better. 
Updated to 5.8.0 but i'm still getting the same issues with a pair of homepods and experimental audio driver.
Lab audio driver makes the app crash every time i start a channel.
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Same issue. Everything I do and the app crashes.
I have the same issue where the Lab audio driver crashes Channels when playing content on tvOS 17.3 with HomePod stereo pair (original HomePod model). Although I have noticed that the default audio driver is performing a bit better with Channels 5.8. It’s no longer dropping audio after volume changes or after skipping around the content.
We will look into this.
That's good to hear, some long standing issues were resolved recently:
We've fixed this in the latest Testflight beta:
Any plans to continue to work on either the Lab or Experimental audio drivers, or is this on hold for the time being?
Understandably annoying for you guys to have the goal posts constantly shifted on you.
Every driver seems to have their advantages and disadvantages, but none seem to be able to be fully functional for HomePods.
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Yes we hope to make the Lab driver the default
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There continues to be audio/video syncing issues with the lab driver.
Yes as I said we plan to continue working on it.
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holy shit! you did it. did you do it, is this real life? it even works with pip!
the sadist in me even rebooted to make sure I wasn't making it up.
it works!
congrats!
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Hmm I wish I had your luck.
I tried today with the latest beta, both default and lab audio drivers.
Channel changes cause complete audio drops and require app restart to get audio back.
So I will patiently wait for devs to update us in their time.
Awesome, just did a quick test of live tv and pip which both struggled with the lab driver before for me and is working perfectly for the short time i tested!
Hopefully Apple leaves it alone now! Awesome work channels team:)
Sorry I didn’t realise there was a release today 2.21.300.
Tested again, and this lab driver looks the best I’ve seen it with my OG pair.
I used to have a lag in sound stopping after closing the app.. now it’s way shorter. No audio drops between channels changes.
Thanks!
Nice to hear that!
Let's hope to see a stable version soon! 
Indeed, things appear to be fixed! Thank you so much.
So I've been testing this for the last couple of days and it looks like most of my issues are fixed.
- Audio starts almost immediately when changing channels
- Frame drops while using Lab audio driver appear to be fixed
- Audio sync issues appear to be fixed
- When watching a virtual channel, audio is no longer missing when a new TV episode or movie starts
However, it looks like a new bug has been introduced: We have a stereo pair next to the TV set as the default output. We also have multiple HomePod minis scattered throughout the house that we often set as a "temporary output" on the ATV so that we can listen in other rooms. This used to work with Channels, but as of the last update, no sound comes out of the non-default speakers. I can switch to the YouTube TV app (with no changes to the ATV) and all the speakers play. It's only Channels that won't play through the non-default output.
Diagnostics submitted
Edit: To be clear, the ATV plays through the “temporary output” speakers IN ADDITION TO the default output so it should be playing through 3 or 4 HomePods at the same time.
Hmm, I was having issues yesterday and today (latest TestFlight client) with the AppleTV connected to one the Sonos in the Kitchen via AirPlay. I tried both Experimental audio as well as Lab. Which one is preferable these days for AirPlay 2 support?
Woah woah woah! Your first post was the first and only to mention Sonos issues. Every subsequent post you have made in the thread has been related to HomePods.
Have your sync issues with HomePods been resolved?
Also, if you are having issues with Sonos, have you opened a separate thread for that issue?
(Having dealt with family issues with a Sonos speaker and iOS, I understand the issues. But if we can close a support thread about HomePod audio, there is no reason to keep it open for tangential Sonos issues ...)