I recently purchased two Apple HomePods and set them up in different rooms. One in the Living Room and one in the Bedroom. Each HomePod was paired to my iPhone, which is connected to the 2.4 ghz wifi network.
I am signed up for Apple Music, and I control the music on each HomePod using the "Hey Siri..." command. My problem is when I command Siri to play music on one HomePod, it will pause the HomePod in the other room. For example, if I am in the living room and I say "Hey Siri, play Jazz in the Living Room", music will begin to play in the living room... however if I then say "Hey Siri, play Rock in the Bedroom", music will pause in the living room and begin to play in the bedroom. Same thing vice versa.
I was not convinced that this was an issue with the router until I switched back to my previous router (ASUS RT-AC66U) and no longer had this issue. Once I again switched to the XR500, after multiple reboot attempts of both the router as well as the HomePods, the issue still existed. Perhaps the XR500 is assigning the HomePods a similar outbound address that tricks the Apple Music server into believing it is a single unit playing.
But one thing you might want to try which could work - enable the Guest Network on your XR500 and connect to your Home Pods instead. Worth giving it a shot!
