I've had mostly good results with Airplay, streaming to HomePods, Apple TV devices, and other Airplay compatible devices. The sound quality is more than satisfactory to me. I listen fully aware of the sampling rate changes of the original material that take place between Airplay devices.
When the stream pauses, drops out, or otherwise hiccups, it has always been a wifi/network issue within my home. Fortunately, I live in a sparsely populated rural area with virtually zero wi-fi congestion. Rebooting - including unplugging from AC for a minute or two - the entire network, modems, routers, switches and then restarting them beginning with the cable modem has always brought things back to full reliability. For a few months, at least. So it's a maintenance chore on my home network that I try to do once per month or so. (Just "cleaning the pipes.")
If your home network is in a neighborhood with congested wifi, you could try to create multiple wifi zones using a wifi router in bridge mode or buying a mesh system.
Also, it's important to stay up-to-date with the software updates that Apple rolls out to their devices. Some updates change how the devices interact with each other. My paired HomePods recently updated and I had to unpair and reset them to fix a dropout glitch in one channel. Not a big deal for me once I discovered a new setting that seemed to cause the issue.
Good luck with your streaming. I think Apple's Airplay is a convenient way to watch and listen to content. Is it bit-perfect? My ears can't tell and I am grateful for that.
Tom
