BETA: Audio improvements for Apple TV and iPhone/iPad

Beta Community Apple Beta
#136

We haven't made any changes to the audio subsystem since before tvOS 16 came out. Any fixes and subsequent new issues you're seeing are unrelated to anything we've done.

Also, please be nice in our community.

2 Likes
#137

Honestly I never noticed any improvements to default audio driver performance since tvOS 16. I’m guessing it was placebo effect of more people paying attention to performance during the beta. Just like in tvOS 15, I get the same occasional distortion I always got when I use it, and it tends to get worse over time until you restart the HomePods or hard reset your Apple TV. It’s almost like Channels overwhelms the HomePods’ memory and they just wear down over time.

The experimental audio driver works fine for me. I’d love if improvements came along in the future and the pausing to sync up audio is an annoyance, but after starting initial playback I don’t tend to skip around too much. I’m happy enough with the playback experience on my stereo pair of minis. I do really appreciate the work that was put into getting the experimental driver this far, the developers certainly used my feedback over the last year.

There have been improvements but for those who are new to using Channels with HomePods, I think this still applies.

#138

I’m sorry, Is that the official company stance and that’s it, or are you trying to ask for logs? Not sure by your response.

Since I am not the only one “seeing” the same issue, I am not clear by your response. Logs or are you washing your hands of this? Might as well close this thread and all others with this problem then.

Thanks.

#139

I don't understand what you're asking or what you're referring to in my response. I gave you some information so that you are better able to understand what or wasn't done that could have impacted what you saw.

At this moment, there's not much more we can do with the logs, and there's not much more we can do with Apple telling us there isn't anything more for us to do to improve the situation.

Will this get better some day? Maybe? Will Apple come out with Firmware improvements for the HomePod that make this better? We hope so. Will Apple come out with tvOS updates that improve the situation? We hope so. Will we make a change to the audio subsystem that happens to improve things here in the future? Maybe?

I'm not really sure what you're looking for from us. We've been transparent about what we've done, the problems we've run into, and the lack of guidance that Apple has provided us. It's a bummer. We're sad about it.

2 Likes
#140

thanks, @eric

ill be concise so we can get an understanding of this back and forth

  1. i was posting that it worked before when tvos 16 came out and it progressively worse.
  2. @tmm1 said your hands are tied
  3. i disagreed
  4. @Fofer came, made a stupid offtopic comment minimizing a serious issue that he doesnt experience because he explained in his comment
  5. i respond, you blame me
  6. someone else reports the same thing, you dismiss the issue and blame something else
  7. i sarcastically ask you if you saying that my issues are from something else is your final response to this issue, case closed that you're washing your hands of it because of the thumb pointing that "it has to be another one of my issues" which i sarcastically make the point that instead of washing your hands of it, maybe you should somehow put the people who are experiencing the issue at ease by gathering more info or straight up say what you said in your last post before this.

what do i want? i would like for support to try to support the multiple people that report the same issue. not be dismissed for it. not being told well it works for me because i got rid of them, so its your fault. not being told "i dont know" when multiple people are telling you that it worked once and not following up why it worked before. if this can't be done, why have support forums or support email?

this would of been nice as an answer first instead of "our hands are tied", "my issue is from something else"

no you haven't. now you have, in this topic anyway.

help. if thats not possible, dont point fingers, start a whole dance, and then finally explain why.

it looks like im in the minority here, i dont know, if i spend my time troubleshooting an issue that affects the core of your product, gathering data on the problem and report it in an official beta annoucement/support thread, i would like either a straight answer (like the third paragraph on your post above), not a long way to get there while dodging clown posts that you keep up. the clown posts should stay away from troubleshooting threads, move the stupid posts to general. we all can be clowns, stupid, funny and mad in offtopic threads.

im sure you wont like what i said, im sure i am wrong, bla bla bla, etc etc etc. i love your product, i just want to watch tv with it and try to make it better.

thanks for finally explaining where you stand with this issue. i won't waste anymore time trying to troubleshoot it and hope it magically gets better again and finally stick there now that i know it has nothing to do with your product.

or the easiest answer would be, just delete every post above and just say what you said in your last post. easy. it would of avoided all this time wasting nonsense.

#141

To provide more context, the last change to our experimental audio driver code was made on Feb 8 2022. So any changes in behavior you may have noticed since then, are entirely because of tvOS and homepodOS updates and bugs. As others here have said, sometimes rebooting the home pod will fix issues for a while.

When we started working on this last year, we isolated several issues in the audio APIs and reported them to apple. We provided diagnostics and sample projects that reproduce the issue. The bugs were confirmed by apple but we didn't hear anything back. Then we escalated and opened a technical support ticket. We spent months going back and forth with an engineer about workarounds, each of which was implemented into the experimental driver and released to everyone here for testing and refinement. We attended 1:1 meetings with audio api engineers at WWDC over the last two years to follow up on what's going on with this issue. So when I say our hands are tied, I mean that we have exhausted all technical possibilities and things are out of our control. We are engineers, not magicians.

Anyway, Apple's ears must be ringing because I heard some updates on one of the bug reports I have open today. The issue is still not fixed, but they suggested a workaround that improves things with tvOS 16.1. You can try it out in the latest TestFlight build.

In my testing it does help with the insane 4-5s delay their API usually shows, reducing it to around 1s. The effect is more dramatic on recordings where the homepod can buffer ahead more quickly.

(To be clear, the issue is literally that we call play() on their airplay audio api but it refuses to play and just randomly hangs for 1s-5s.)

5 Likes
#142

thank you @tmm1 , i'll check. i'm glad i didn't throw them out like the popular suggestion here. thanks again, i am not asking you to do magic, as an engineer, i'm simply trying to help you engineer and know that i am not wasting my time, just like i am sure you dont like to waste your own time.

thanks again!

2 Likes
#143

@tmm1 Holy crap, what an improvement. If you can do magic :wink: and shave more off that last second, I would say it’s would be perfect. It’s almost perfect. I don’t believe in coincidences, but I’m glad for this coincidence. Thanks again.!

2 Likes
#144

I appreciate this comprehensive response explaining the work going on behind the scenes. I share @AeroR1's frustration.

1 Like
#145

This is a HUGE improvement, I'd say the pause is more like a half-second for me. Thank you!

One bug I had with a particular OTA recording: if I skip around soon after initiating playback, the video starts instantly but the audio playback never starts. Submitted logs.

1 Like
#146

Did anything change in the last couple of days? In the past -- whenever I experienced a sync or delay issue -- I would restart the HomePods and it would be fixed for a while.

Now, I've reset the HomePods a few times and it's back to the old way: Experimental Audio has a long delay until the video and audio begin; Default begins quickly but then stutters and gets out of sync.

#147

Try removing them from default audio on the atv settings and then re add. That fixes it for me.

You might have to remove and delete channels and te add everything.

I don’t understand why this is the only app that it happens to but we’re told that they are using the same api’s as everyone else :man_shrugging:t2:

#148

I think that did it! Thank you.

#149

Some possible improvements in latest beta for the Default driver.

Pausing issues with latest update
#150

Thanks, Aman. which audio dirver should i be using for homepods? and airpdods? ive been using experimental since its better airplay2 support. should i be using default instead? thanks.

#151

So far so good! Responsiveness is much better than the experimental and in my first hour of use I haven’t heard any of the garbling that I used to hear from the Default driver.

I did experience a couple of micro-buffers (maybe 0.25 seconds each) while watching a virtual channel with DTS-HD 7.1 audio. Idk if it’s related to the new driver but I submitted diagnostics.

#152

Not as much luck today, I’m watching ESPN and there’s a very short video freeze every 10-15 seconds, followed by distorted audio as it syncs back up to the video. I submitted diagnostics.

After I force quit the app and re-opened, it happened once more at the beginning of the stream but seemed to stabilize.

#153

Here in the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed some big instability in my airplay audio to my homepod. If the audio starts, it works flawlessly. But if I change channels, the audio won’t always start up. I have to close the app and come back in before it will actually link up with my homepod.

2 Likes
#154

@tmm1

Any glitches with this likely to stay due to apples side of it? Or you guys hoping to iron it out at some stage?

I imagine would be difficult to allocate time to this anyway - and I’m just wondering whether to stick with my HomePods or change to a sound bar.

Audio works perfect for me most of the time but always goes mute when going into pip and can only get audio back once in full screen by skipping back and the forward again.

Thanks:)

#155

I recently went back to the Experimental Audio driver with my pair of HomePod minis because the default driver performance was way less reliable after tvOS 16.5. Experimental performance is definitely better than last year, the few annoyances I still have are:

  1. Resuming a paused recording after the Apple TV screensaver has been activated results in no audio. I have to exit the player to get audio back.
  2. Pressing fast forward within 1-2 seconds of starting playback results in video but no audio. Again, the only fix seems to be exiting the player and waiting for audio to play before scrubbing around.
  3. After rewinding/fast-forwarding and pressing play, occasionally the video is paused for 5 seconds while the audio plays, and then once the audio catches up to the frozen frame the video/audio resume, synced. This isn't the biggest issue but 5 seconds can feel like a long time!