Loud static when playing to sync group via AirPlay Receiver plugin

[jherby2k]

Before you begin

• I have searched the open and closed issues and this hasn't been reported yet.
• I have read the troubleshooting guide and it did not solve my problem.
• I am running a supported installation (Home Assistant add-on or Docker container).

What happened?

Context: I have 2 picoreplayer devices (squeezelite) for the Kitchen and Living Room ceiling speakers. As my family and friends prefer to use Apple music, they stream to these devices via the AirPlay Receiver plugin. Works great, except they can't select both players at the same time (I assume this is because the receiver is AirPlay 1, but that's a separate converation).

So, I created a sync group containing both the Kitchen and Living Room speakers. It works fine being played directly from Music Assistant, but if i stream to this group via Apple music (so the AirPlay receiver), i'm greeted with extremely loud static instead of music.

How to reproduce

1. Create sync group containing 2 speakers (mine are squeezelite)
2. Enable AirPlay streaming to the new group
3. Stream to the group over AirPlay (I used Apple Music on my iPhone)

Music Assistant version

2.10.2

How do you run Music Assistant?

Home Assistant add-on

Diagnostics report or log file

music-assistant-diagnostics-2026-09-06-051926.json

Anything else?

No response

[musicassistant-bot]

Hi, and thanks for taking the time to report this! 🙏

Version: 2.10.2 · Install: HA add-on · Python: 3.14.7 · Platform: Linux-6.18.39-haos-x86_64-with-glibc2.41 · Players: 23

Here's what I found in the attached diagnostics:

🟠 Captured exceptions

The diagnostics captured these recurring errors, most frequent first:

• MediaNotFoundError ×1 — music_assistant/providers/apple_music/api_client.py:113 in get_data: Error fetching similar artists for Asobi Seksu from a provider
• SetupFailedError ×1 — music_assistant/providers/hass/__init__.py:273 in handle_async_init: Error loading provider(instance) hass: 502, message='Invalid response status', url='ws://supervisor/core/api/websocket' (will be retried later)

🤖 AI assessment — possible root cause (for maintainers; may be wrong)

User streams from Apple Music via the AirPlay Receiver plugin into a Music Assistant sync group of two Squeezelite players; direct MA playback to the group works, but AirPlay-Receiver-sourced audio produces loud static on the grouped output.

Likely cause: Likely an audio pipeline bug when the AirPlay Receiver plugin's incoming PCM stream is re-encoded/re-chunked and fanned out to a synced multi-player group (e.g., sample-rate/format mismatch or buffer/header handling specific to the receiver-to-group path), rather than the outbound AirPlay player provider covered in the retrieved docs/code. The supplied evidence (airplay/README.md, control_player.py, streams/controller.py) concerns MA acting as an AirPlay output target, not the AirPlay Receiver input plugin feeding a sync group, so no code excerpt directly confirms the defect.

Evidence considered:

• Diagnostics show no exception logged at the moment of the static burst; only unrelated errors (Apple Music similar-artists MediaNotFoundError, HA supervisor websocket 502) are present, so the crash/error trail does not explain the audio glitch
• player-support/airplay doc describes MA as an AirPlay output provider (sync group of AirPlay speakers), not the AirPlay Receiver input plugin used here, so the retrieved doc/code excerpts (control_player.py, streams/controller.py) are not confirmed relevant to this bug
• RELATED #​4036 shows a prior, still-recent history of sync-group + AirPlay interactions misbehaving (players staying logically joined after UI ungroup), suggesting the sync-group audio/session state machine has had multiple edge-case bugs
• No server code excerpt was retrieved for the AirPlay Receiver plugin's ingestion-to-group-streamserver path, so the exact static-causing code cannot be cited

Maintainer next step: Reproduce with 2 Squeezelite players in a sync group, enable the AirPlay Receiver plugin, and stream from an iPhone; capture debug logs from the streams controller and AirPlay Receiver provider during the static burst to check for sample-rate/format negotiation mismatches or buffer underrun/overrun when fanning the receiver's PCM stream out to multiple synced players, then compare against the working direct-MA-playback code path to isolate the divergent logic.

category: bug · confidence: 35%

📖 Provider documentation

• AirPlay

🔁 Possibly related past reports

These reports have some overlap, but the automated match was not strong enough to call them likely duplicates:

• #4036: Issues when ungrouping players - AirPlay (closed)

Heads-up @bradkeifer — this looks like it may be your area. 🙇

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🤖 I'm an AI-powered triage assistant. I can make mistakes, and a human maintainer will still review this issue. This automation helps the small Music Assistant team keep up with the high volume of reports on this open-source project — thanks for your patience and for helping us help you!