Apple Airplay speakers in stereo - explain this magic to me..

[slackerinabox]

So I have a HomePod that I like quite a bit. On a whim I hooked up some speakers to my desk's airport router line out (same room) and threw music to both speakers using AirPlay multi-room. I assumed it would be a mixed like a 2.1 (computer) + HomePod mono setup playing at the same time, but somehow there's outstanding stereo separation going on - they're working as a very wide stereo pair of speakers on opposite sides of the room with outstanding separation. How is this possible? I know amazon does it server side, sending two mono signals to each Echo. Since these are mismatched speakers and this is working on all media (not just streaming services), I'm quite curious. Is the HomePod listening to the environment in real time, identifying the location of my computer speakers and remixing the track in realtime?

 

[Scarpozzi]

After seeing how AppleTalk worked in the 80s and 90s, I wouldn't ever give them any credit for engineering anything.

I haven't played with many smart speakers, but I can set my google minis up like that too. I would guess they're working off wifi and not bluetooth, so the bandwidth/latency won't likely be an issue. I seriously would expect the quality of the speaker itself to be part of it (if it's 2 or 3 way) and then that's just multiplied because you've got 2 going at once. I've bought a lot of crappy outdoor speakers that were wired and when they're all going at once in the cabana, they sound amazing.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I'm going to play around with my minis and do some tests, btw....I have like 3-4 of them, but haven't actually set them up in party mode before.

 

[MrSquished]

I had some JBL flip 4 speakers that advertised stereo sound if you connected two with their connect + feature. It sounded good. BT transmission is in stereo, after all True Wireless buds do work in stereo, and they work on a master/slave system. So the JBL software probably just takes that BT transmission and translates that signal to both speakers as L/R stereo. This is my guess. Apple is just doing the same.