Static and crackling sound on HomePod Mini

I can no longer reliably use any of my HomePods with OS18. I have two homes in two countries with more than 8 HomePods at each site. After upgrading to OS18, it's not possible to reliably listen to music:

• syncing issues within 10 minutes of play (resolve with a pause/reply
• sudden loss of connectivity for a moment in some situations.
• sudden loss of connectivity to a single HomePod pair, resolved on advance to next song
• honking on one ore more HomePods
• static on one or more HomePods

It goes without saying that these bugs destroy any listening pleasure using HomePods with OS18. Such a shame.

I’m also experiencing lots of intermittent static and crackling sounds on my HomePods and Minis that I’ve never encountered before. Sometimes lasting a lot longer than 5-10 seconds. Also, syncing issues with multiple units playing at the same time. This does seem like it started with the ios18 update for HomePod. This is really annoying since I am paying for Apple Music and using Airplay on my devices. Apple please look into this and issue a fix!!

I have also experienced this for the first time today since updating to HomePod OS 18 a couple of days ago. Crackling/interference sounds lasting 5-10 seconds with the music still playing in the background. At the time I was AirPlaying BBC Sounds. I have two HomePod Minis and this only occurred on one.

I've been experiencing the same problem after updating to OS 18. It happens whether I'm using the HomePod minis as tv speakers or while listening to music. I've also noticed an echo that comes and goes like the speakers aren't playing the audio at the same time.

I opened a support ticket with Apple yesterday and they told me that "engineering is aware of the issue" with HomePods during AirPlay. Whether they will have a fix or not remains to be seen. I'm gobsmacked.

My HomePod 1st Gen and HomePod Mini paired as stereo, all are getting cracking noises while playing Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix & Amazon Prime

I can confirm that the issue already started with iOS 17.x, as someone else already mentioned. I'm pretty sure that, for me, it started with iOS 17.6. I experienced delays with one of the HomePod pairs (HomePod 2gen) and had opened a case at my network manufacturer (Ubiquiti) for investigation. We optimised a couple of things but nothing improved the situation. I received a custom firmware for my U6 Pros and this solved the stereo pair delay, but with iOS 18 I had this static and crackling sound on exactly this pair. I also have it very rarely with a single HomePod 2gen.

What the Ubiquity support and I had discovered are:

1) Sometimes the HomePods showing an unexpected high latency for a couple of seconds. Like they are busy with something. This latency jumps happen independently from playing music, or not.

2) The 5GHz Wifi is offering a channel width of 40 MHz. But all the HomePods just using the 20MHz channel width. AppleTVs and all other devices using the 5GHz Wifi are using the 40MHz channel width. In case the HomePods are deciding by themselves to use 20MHz, then I have this static/crackling sound and audio delays. Sometimes, they are using the 40MHz channel width and from what I have experienced, then the issue is gone and the playback is rock solid. Unfortunately, I have found no way to force them to use the offered channel width and it happens rarely, that they are using it by themselves. So, no hard evidence on this.

I will try to set the channel width to 20MHz and check, how the HomePods are behaving.

I already have a case open at Apple and I can just encourage everyone to do the same. Probably you don't get a solution right at your hand, but just with cases we can bring up this topic to attention.

The first days the Apple support was very committed to the topic, but since the last days there is no response from them. If I don't receive any feedback, I will start an official escalation at Apple about this (living in Germany, so we have some options due to laws to support end-customers).

I had some time this weekend to verify if the sync issue was related to paired HomePods. It appears to not be related. After playing to an unpaired set of homePods (Gen 2 and Mini), the issue recurs. The only way to fix it is to stop/start/replay/skip.

This effectively means that Apple Music can no longer be used, which is pretty serious for one who's been a paid subscriber for years.

My paired HomePod 2's are always crackling, falling out of sync and dropping out. Sometimes they will get into a echoing loop. Hitting stop and play in the home app will fix it for a few minutes.

This is terrible. We have 8 HomePods throughout the house and ALL of them are doing this after updating to iOS18.

I also have HomePods in my business ... I can't use them because of this issue.

I am experiencing the same symptoms from my AppleTV 4k. It started right after I updated to v 18.

Crackling audio and the speakers are intermittently dropping from the stereo pair.

I updated (18.1), but after a few days the static is back.

My homepod 2's and my mini's have all been crackling several times a day, even before the 18 update. I've reset them all several times but it hasn't stopped. Some times the static/crackling comes on and the music starts stuttering, like it's stuck in a static loop. I use Apple Music.

Does anyone have a solution to this annoying issue? We have a Mac mini and a stereo pair of HomePods. After a few minutes they start to crackle, loose sync, drop out, echo - all the same stuff that others are reporting.

I was so annoyed that eventually I bought another Denon Home 150 speaker. When I connect it via Airplay, it has the same issues. Over bluetooth it is better but also occasionally drops out. It seems that the problems are more on the airplay side than the Homepods themselves.

In any case - I would appreciate learning how to solve this problem. The way it is renders the HomePods absolutely useless.

I was thinking about when this issue started and remembered why I quit using my AirPods. The crackling and distortion started there but I thought it was a hardware failure as one of the pods sounds like it has a blown speaker. In any event AirPods, HomePods, the linking component is airplay and Apple Music.

One of my home pod minis is having static periodically since updating to iOS 18. It also got into a funny state where the light was lit like it was playing, but I couldn’t hear anything. When I turned it up it was making a pulsing sound. I unplugged it and after it restarted it was fine for a while.