Apple Allows Behind-the-Scenes Look Into Audio Lab Used to Test HomePod, AirPods, and More

[PPCmike]

The Internet Myth about Siri is just plain silly. They all have their strengths, but Siri is by far the most used personal assistant in the world--over half a billion people use Siri regularly every month. She knows more languages, again more by far, than the others. Independent testing shows Siri excels over Alexa and Google in many areas. Siri is also the only one that protects your privacy. If you choose to go with Google or Amazon, everything they hear is collected in the cloud on their servers for their use, as well as available to law enforcement, intel agencies, hackers, etc.

Google goes even farther and links everything you say to your universal identifier number. Amazing that people don't care that Google is trying to build a dossier on every person that links the contents of every Gmail sent or received, every photo taken or received, everywhere you drive, every document you upload, every website you visit, every post you make, everything you watch, everything you buy, etc. At some point, when people realize how those dossiers are being used and misused, they will have tremendous regret.
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If that's true, why do more people in the world use Siri (over a 500 million use it regularly each month), by far than any other assistant?

If that's the case why do I prefer the natural sounding voice of Google over Apple? For this reason alone I have only used Apple Maps for driving about twice

 

[macworksgreat]

I want this room, and the gear. I'd even keep the HomePod ffs.

You mean the room doesn't come with the HomePod??? I might have to send mine back...
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Yes, for only $350 + tax.

Heh. But isn't this site a sound-chamber so-to-speak? lol

 

[coleblk]

Wish they would have used this chamber to test the iPhone X and it's crackling speaker setup before it's release. #bitter Now they are scrambling to tweak the EQ after the fact as it has lessened according to some iOS 10.3 beta users.

 

[RogerWilco]

I use Ghostery, Little snitch and GasMask to prevent Google getting into my computer, I also use startpage, gets me the google search results without them collecting data on me.

Their surveillance algos look at links and patterns to ID you. All you can hope to accomplish with those apps is to slow them down a bit. Their cloud photo app is busy 24/7 compiling facial IDs of everyone and their pets -- Jesus this is depressing to ponder early in the AM -- going for a walk in the dark.

 

[Ubele]

This reminds me of the anechoic chamber at the NRC (National Research Council) in Canada where Dr. Floyd Toole basically redefined the audio industry with respect to how speakers are tested and compared.

Because of this facility and his research we now have several Canadian speaker manufacturers that are highly regarded among audiophiles.

In 2004, when I was putting together a home theater system with 7.1 surround sound, the sales guy at Best Buy recommended a brand called Athena, which was much less expensive than JBL or Bose. I'd never heard of Athena, so I did some research and learned that they were part of a Canadian speaker company called API, which was founded in 1948, if I recall correctly. All the reviews I read said that Athena speakers sounded as good as other brands that cost twice as much. I bought a top-of-the-line Athena system, and my wife and I have never regretted it. It's great for movies, but one of my special pleasures is sitting in the sweet spot and listening to music processed by our Yamaha RX-1010 receiver, which has a 7.1 processing program that doesn't add reverb but expands a stereo signal spatially in a remarkably naturalistic way. We were so impressed that, a few years later, we bought a $500 Athena 5.1 "speaker system in a box" for our bedroom TV. For the price, it sounds great. (We had teenagers living with us at the time, so it was nice to be able to retreat to our bedroom mini home theater when they were in the living room.) As long as these speakers remain functional, we'll never replace them. Anyway, I'm curious to hear the HomePod, but with our Athena systems, we don't need one.

 

[JM2]

Anechoic chambers don't reflect sound so you do hear what your speaker puts out.

Where did they test its real world abilities to adapt? I don't see this in the article. Room surfaces, shapes, fabrics, furniture, etc, change sound qualities, right.

Testing would be done using the same chamber but with different furniture and materials brought it to ensure the system (software + microphone + amplifer + speaker) is compensating as designed. Using the chamber allows for easy A/B comparisons in a controlled situation. Basically Apple knows how it should sound with no echos, spikes or drops in the frequency response so any change in the environment can quickly compared against this baseline.

Highlights from Apple's site tell you how they pulled this off (in a non-tech way):
HomePod combines Apple-engineered audio technology and advanced software to deliver the highest-fidelity sound throughout the room, anywhere it’s placed.
HomePod uses an advanced algorithm that continuously analyzes the music and dynamically tunes the low frequencies for smooth, immersive sound.
An Apple-designed A8 chip powers the most complex audio innovations in HomePod. Like real-time modeling of the woofer mechanics. Buffering that’s even faster than real time. Upmixing of both direct and ambient audio. Beamforming so the microphone can hear you over the music. And advanced echo cancellation. So you get amazing sound without even thinking about it.

It like noise cancelling headphones, its a feedback loop. The difference is instead of trying to cancel out noise Apple is using a microphone and processing to make the speaker's output sound like the acoustical chamber despite whatever reflections or reverberations are in your particular environment. You do this by modifying (and even delaying) the audio signal to compensate for the room's particular acoustical "fingerprint". This is pretty standard stuff in home theater and some car audio systems. All you need is well programmed DSP (digital signal processor) along with a microphone, speaker and amplifier. Its basically a real time EQ (equalizer) pre-programmed with the ideal audio results (calculated from the chamber). The advantage here is Apple made the speaker so they know how it should perform. Thus they can skip any calibration steps and just use the feedback loop to self-tune the entire system to optimal playback.