I bought two big Homepods two years ago to replace an old hifi system that I'd used for years as the audio output from the Music app. Set them up as a stereo pair. Under Sequoia, if I paused playback on the macOS Music app using the play/pause key (F8), then put the Macbook to sleep, on waking I'd hit F8 and music would resume playback on the Homepods. Repeatably. This worked fine, until I upgraded to Tahoe. The Airplay pop-up menu would have the Homepods checked as the playback device, but the music would play back on the Macbook speakers. Un-checking and re-checking the Homepods would usually fix the problem. Usually. Sometimes it took unplugging the Homepods and plugging them back in to get playback to work.
I thought maybe Golden Gate would fix this problem. It does not. I had a case opened with Apple Support about this that ended up being closed after a few weeks with "this is expected behavior". Um, no, it's not. It's a bug. And it's stil there.
This isn't an edge case either. My setup isn't exotic or unusual. Bone-stock Apple gear. Strong wifi. And it used to "just work". Now it doesn't, and for no apparent reason.
Macbook Air M4, Golden Gate 27.0.1, Homepods 2nd gen with the latest firmware according to the Home app.