Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible

[iPhonefan200]

I feel like this is going to have to be in an open area next to a flat wall to be effective. For example, how effective can the spatial awareness be if HomePod is sitting in a bookcase with side walls?

I believe that’s the whole point of the spatial awareness? If it is in a bookshelf the speaker will know and adapt the tweeters to accommodate. For example it won’t beam any sound out the side where it will hit the shelf side , it will beam audio out of the bookshelf in all directions and then bounce the back vocals off the back like demonstrated

But your right on, speakers ideally should be placed like that in general for best audio but Apple want something that can blend in to where it will fit and that’s probably part of why spatial awareness is In the device , we don’t all have ideal places to put speakers

 

[_Refurbished_]

People have been buying new speakers/audio components for years and years. It is why we have a ton of companies in the audio space...not just Apple. Have you heard of Marantz, Yamaha, McIntosh, Denon, Onkyo, Sony, Pioneer, Bose, Sonos, NHT, B&W, Monitor Audio, Wilson, Magnepan, Bang & Olufsen, KEF, Magico, MartinLogan, Oppo, etc.?

You know why these companies are in the audio business? Because there is a huge market for audio products. A lot of companies have decades of success in the audio market. If Apple is successful, it is because there product is unique compared to others on the market (voice control of Apple Music using the mics built into the speaker and for Airplay 2).

I don't disagree that people buy consumer products whether they have a "need" or not. "Need" has little to do with most personal tech, audio, video, etc.

I said it would be successful. Not challenging the market. It’s as exciting as AirPods. Apple’s entrance into a saturated market.

I can play my Apple Music wirelessly in my house, without any effort and I’ve been doing it for years. Apple is marketing this as a revolution to music, yet I don’t see anything revolutionary about it. It’s a speaker. Made by Apple. It will sell out. The end.

 

[ErikGrim]

a mono system of speakers

This is going to be in the dictionary right next to Oxymoron from now on.
[doublepost=1517484688][/doublepost]

Hop back to the first post in this thread. The image grab that talks about buying 2 Has for stereo is from Apple's own website, in Apple's own words. Apple says we need to buy 2 AND take advantage of a future software upgrade to get stereo from HP. We keep spinning this and spinning this while seemingly ignoring Apple's own words on this topic. Or, in this case, selecting taking something Apple says while ignoring they very tangible convey we need 2 Hrs + future software for stereo.

That's not hater opinions. That's not making up something that isn't true. That's APPLES OWN WORDS IN WRITING ON THEIR WEBSITE RIGHT NOW. Go see for yourself: HP overview page, about halfway down.

I agree that it is dumb as **** that Apple worded it this way. Because clearly it is confusing for people who doesn’t know what stereo means, and the layman will write posts like this.
[doublepost=1517484718][/doublepost]

I responded to someone claiming it IS a stereo speaker.

It is a stereo speaker.
[doublepost=1517484795][/doublepost]

"Stereo" has a fixed meaning. The meaning of "Stereo" is two speakers, both transmitting different sound.

Absolutely not. That’s what the layperson think it is, and it is certainly A WAY of achieving stereo. But that’s definitely not THE meaning of Stereo.
[doublepost=1517485129][/doublepost]

So you're saying Apple themselves are wrong about that because Apple says "it takes two" HPs for stereo in writing right in the HP overview section on Apple's site (see a clip of that in the very first post of this thread).

That is correct. Apple is wording it wrong. Two HomePods will simply make a wider and deeper stereo soundstage. They are using the word stereo because people mistakenly thinks it means two channels / speakers.
[doublepost=1517486334][/doublepost]Here’s the thing people don’t get about the word stereo. It is NOT the opposite of mono, that would be duo. Sound reproduction is never going to be perfect. A live orchestra or band will project sound in all directions and will be louder or softer depending on the distance between you and whatever emits the sound.

Stereo is trying to replicate that three dimensionality of sound, and using two channels and two speakers is so far the most common and easy way of achieving that. We have two ears, spaced apart. Let’s take advantage of that and simulate space. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the least sophisticated way of doing so. We tried making stereo more immersive by introducing quadraphonic sound at first. This is four channels, four speakers. Also called stereo.

Now tangentially, the first “stereo” records were in fact not. They were dual-mono. A channel could either be hard panned right or hard panned left. If you’ve ever listened to early Beatles or Stones “stereo” releases you know what this sounds like: vocals in one ear, guitars in the right. To achieve true stereo, each channel would have to be panned somewhere in between. The time difference it takes for each channel to hit each of your ears is what creates the illusion of a multi-dimensional sound stage.

Now the problem with two channel, two source stereo becomes immediately apparent: You need to be in the perfect spot between the sources of sound for the illusion to become complete. This is what is known as the sweet spot. It’s also why listening to headphones is the optimal way of listening to two channel audio – your sweet spot is right in the middle of your head. Move out of that sweet spot and the illusion of stereo fades away. Move way out, say stand next to the speakers projecting sound in cones in front of them and the perceived quality of the entire output degrades.

This is what Apple is trying to solve with the HomePod: A consistent, multi-dimensional soundstage, with both depth and width (think surround) regardless of your relative position to the speaker. It will use a combination of beam-forming, echo-cancellation, a speaker array, microphones and lots and lots of real time processing to solve this. And it is an insanely difficult problem to solve. Which is why the nascent version of this technology was only available in $20K+ audio systems only a few years back.

One of this units will apparently project an amazing multi-dimensional soundstage rivalling most 2.1 systems. Two will probably rival many 5.1 systems. The problem Apple is creating in using specific wording, is that “stereo equals two” in most people’s minds. The truth is that they could probably described the soundstage two HomePods create as “surround” and got away with it.

There are Dolby ATMOS soundbar that are single units projecting a fully immersive depth, width, height sound out there and apparently doing a great job of it. The wording Apple is using here is underselling the capabilities of a single HomePod unit and vastly underselling what two can do.

 

[Kermit262]

Edgy take there edgelord.
[doublepost=1517484491][/doublepost]This is going to be in the dictionary right next to Oxymoron from now on.
[doublepost=1517484688][/doublepost]
I agree that it is dumb as **** that Apple worded it this way. Because clearly it is confusing for people who doesn’t know what stereo means, and the layman will write posts like this.
[doublepost=1517484718][/doublepost]It is a stereo speaker.
[doublepost=1517484795][/doublepost]Absolutely not. That’s what the layperson think it is, and it is certainly A WAY of achieving stereo. But that’s definitely not THE meaning of Stereo.
[doublepost=1517485129][/doublepost]That is correct. Apple is wording it wrong. Two HomePods will simply make a wider and deeper stereo soundstage. They are using the word stereo because people mistakenly thinks it means two channels / speakers.
[doublepost=1517486334][/doublepost]Here’s the thing people don’t get about the word stereo. It is NOT the opposite of mono, that would be duo. Sound reproduction is never going to be perfect. A live orchestra or band will project sound in all directions and will be louder or softer depending on the distance between you and whatever emits the sound.

Stereo is trying to replicate that three dimensionality of sound, and using two channels and two speakers is so far the most common and easy way of achieving that. We have two ears, spaced apart. Let’s take advantage of that and simulate space. Unsurprisingly, it’s also the least sophisticated way of doing so. We tried making stereo more immersive by introducing quadraphonic sound at first. This is four channels, four speakers. Also called stereo.

Now tangentially, the first “stereo” records were in fact not. They were dual-mono. A channel could either be hard panned right or hard panned left. If you’ve ever listened to early Beatles or Stones “stereo” releases you know what this sounds like: vocals in one ear, guitars in the right. To achieve true stereo, each channel would have to be panned somewhere in between. The time difference it takes for each channel to hit each of your ears is what creates the illusion of a multi-dimensional sound stage.

Now the problem with two channel, two source stereo becomes immediately apparent: You need to be in the perfect spot between the sources of sound for the illusion to become complete. This is what is known as the sweet spot. It’s also why listening to headphones is the optimal way of listening to two channel audio – your sweet spot is right in the middle of your head. Move out of that sweet spot and the illusion of stereo fades away. Move way out, say stand next to the speakers projecting sound in cones in front of them and the perceived quality of the entire output degrades.

This is what Apple is trying to solve with the HomePod: A consistent, multi-dimensional soundstage, with both depth and width (think surround) regardless of your relative position to the speaker. It will use a combination of beam-forming, echo-cancellation, a speaker array, microphones and lots and lots of real time processing to solve this. And it is an insanely difficult problem to solve. Which is why the nascent version of this technology was only available in $20K+ audio systems only a few years back.

One of this units will apparently project an amazing multi-dimensional soundstage rivalling most 2.1 systems. Two will probably rival many 5.1 systems. The problem Apple has in the wording, is that “stereo equals two” in so many people’s minds. The truth is that they could probably have said “surround” instead of stereo and got away with it. There are Dolby ATMOS soundbar that are single units projecting a fully immersive depth, width, height sound out there and apparently doing a great job of it. The wording Apple is using here is underselling the capabilities of a single HomePod unit and vastly underselling what two can do.

Excellent post. I'm learning a lot in this thread. Can't wait to hear the HomePod.

 

[ck2875]

I believe that’s the whole point of the spatial awareness? If it is in a bookshelf the speaker will know and adapt the tweeters to accommodate. For example it won’t beam any sound out the side where it will hit the shelf side , it will beam audio out of the bookshelf in all directions and then bounce the back vocals off the back like demonstrated

But your right on, speakers ideally should be placed like that in general for best audio but Apple want something that can blend in to where it will fit and that’s probably part of why spatial awareness is In the device , we don’t all have ideal places to put speakers

Yeah I agree with everything you say. My point was more about how effective will it be at the spatial recognition in regards to separating the audio. If it's walled in at the sides, I feel like it is going to be beaming all audio out the front and at that point will it simply sound like any speaker without the spatial recognition, or will it use other tricks to separate out background vocals and reverb. Regardless, I ordered two for the eventual Airplay 2 pairing, and I'm pretty excited to play around with them when they get here in a week. I just need to figure out where I want place them that is discrete but still sounds best.

 

[Supermacguy]

Does the HomePod have an ethernet jack? b/c that's what I'd want to use if my wifi was poor. I believe in hardwired devices.

 

[buststyles]

So you're saying Apple themselves are wrong about that because Apple says "it takes two" HPs for stereo in writing right in the HP overview section on Apple's site (see a clip of that in the very first post of this thread).

I keep asking all these people who are spinning it as already being stereo or more to call Apple wrong for that but that hasn't happened yet. So will you be the first?

From Dictionary.com

stereo-
1.
a combining form borrowed from Greek, where it meant “solid”, usedwith reference to hardness, solidity, three-dimensionality in theformation of compound words:

From Iffipedia
Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of multi-directional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.

As poster ApfelKuchen stated this device contains 8 speaker each with their own amplifier so it is technically an 8 channel system.

We have been trained that those two or more audio channels need to be in a separate enclosures but that is no longer the case.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Again and again and again: Apple themselves say the following about HPs and stereo (right off of Apple's own site)...

I appreciate that armchair audio engineers want to count the tweeters and then puff this thing up into being equivalent to an 8-speaker surround sound system, but Apple themselves are not marketing it that way. And it seems like they would if they could see it anywhere like that.

I don't know how to read the word "second" above in Apple's own bolded copy, and then claim that 1 HP is stereo or more. Anyone want to call Apple a liar about their own product?

 

[spacemnspiff]

I agree, whatever is lost in lossy "compression" is lost forever. However, until the cost of storage and data transmission bandwidth drops much farther than it has, what I call "data destruction" will be a necessary compromise for streaming services. By all means, load your devices, iTunes library, and local media server with all the lossless tracks you want. Just don't expect any of the streaming media companies to drop lossy streaming anytime soon.

Whether you listen to those lossy streams on a $100,000 audiophile system or a HomePod, the results will likely be similar. Those who have learned to detect data-reduction artifacts will likely be able to hear them on either system, but ultimately, the better your system, the easier it is to detect defects. Lower-quality equipment has a way of masking defects in the source media, and sometimes ignorance is bliss.

HOWEVER, the only way this affects HomePod is if HomePod lacks the wireless bandwidth to handle lossless streams.
AirPlay uses wifi, and 802.11ac is more than capable of handling lossless audio. (If you haven't upgraded your router to 802.11ac, that might be a good thing to buy along with your HomePod.)

And as to the ability to decode various audio formats? HomePod comes with ). That seems a fair number of codecs for a first generation product, and four of them are lossless.

For now, Apple Music may be the only Siri-aware music source, but any music service that chooses to become Siri-aware will be able to do so. Meantime, anyone who connects their device to HomePod via AirPlay can choose any music service they want - they just have to control it from the app.

I just had to chime and say, thank you for your posts, even though long, are well articulated and concise. Keep them coming, and hopefully you are getting a HP and a review of it will be highly appreciated.

 

[andresandiego]

I get that Apple likes music....but I cannot stream my home library to the Homepod unless I have iTunes Match. I get that Apple likes TV but Siri cannot locate anything on my NAS let alone play it. I get that Apple wants to make money via iTunes but allow us to at least play our music on your device without having to pay Apple money. There is no way Siri cannot read the metadata on my NAS to catalog and play my movies. It used to be "it just works" with Apple, now it is "it just works with your credit card only."

rant over.

You will be able to play your home library via AirPlay

[doublepost=1517503580][/doublepost]

THIS! I still don’t have an answer on if I can stream my iTunes library over HomePod or just the songs I purchased from Apple. I know I can stream my entire iTunes library on my Amazon Echo using the My Media skill.

AirPlay

 

[helvetica237]

the one speaker is as stereo as my 7.1 headphones are surround sound.

Technically yes, but no need to lie to ourselves about the quality this achieves in comparison to 2 speaker stereo or a real room filling 7.1 surround sound.

Also this- my am/fm clock radio from 1984 had a mono/stereo button despite having one speaker.

 

[sracer]

I said it would be successful. Not challenging the market. It’s as exciting as AirPods. Apple’s entrance into a saturated market.

I can play my Apple Music wirelessly in my house, without any effort and I’ve been doing it for years. Apple is marketing this as a revolution to music, yet I don’t see anything revolutionary about it. It’s a speaker. Made by Apple. It will sell out. The end.

In my opinion, Apple's hyperbole has become a caricature of itself. As for "challenging the market", I think it will. But not in the way that many might think. Apple is masterful at convincing people that they need Apple products they don't currently own, and convincing them that they don't need the things that their products don't offer.

As you correctly point out, it will sell out. There is a ripple effect to that... the competition will follow suit and mimic what Apple did with the HomePod. THAT is not a good thing in my opinion.

Apple is the DAK of a new generation. (for the youngsters reading this, think of J. Peterman from Seinfeld but for technology during the 60's thru the 80's)

Here's a sample from their catalog... this could be the source of Apple's inspiration when describing their products.

 

[ChrisCW11]

OMG, nobody has ever make a speaker that sounds good according to Phil Shiller. Apple invented sound didn't you know. Apple figured out what 100+ years of innovation in speaker technology could never figure out, how to make music actually sound good.

Look, I can accept that HomePod might be one of the better sounding "assisted" speakers out right now, but **** off with the rhetoric that Apple somehow has disrupted the speaker market and there are no decent sounding wireless or even wired speakers on the market to compare with HomePod.

It is one thing to be proud of your company and promote a product, but what Phil is saying know is like when that Navy doctor said Trump could live to 200 if he ate better and weights 239lbs, at some point the ******** becomes too overpowering to be an effective marketing tool.

 

[MacGekko]

Am I the only one who's not fond of speaking to objects? I mean I feel a bit crazy when I have a "conversation" with my Macbook...Feel like being in a clunk ward, you know... Jus sayin...

I agree with you, would rather use the trackpad, quicker actually to use the trackpad and I would much rather choose the songs on a screen than ask SIRI/ALEXA to play them, it would be great if they integrated a screen.

Now if you made the Apple Watch fully independent and SIRI worked like something out of Star Trek, I would have no problem quietly speaking into the Watch, one day I believe this will be a reality, screens disappear if you don't want to be glued to them 24/7, technology works while almost disappearing, but then again how would they show us any ads, we all know that is the primary profit driver of these devices.

 

[Ronald Reagan]

All that dough and it still requires to be plugged in—not to mention, as others have, no hi-fi audio on Apple Music. Not interested. Will wait to see what v.2.0 brings.

 

[iPhonefan200]

I believe that’s the whole point of the spatial awareness? If it is in a bookshelf the speaker will know and adapt the tweeters to accommodate. For example it won’t beam any sound out the side where it will hit the shelf side , it will beam audio out of the bookshelf in all directions and then bounce the back vocals off the back like demonstrated

Yeah I agree with everything you say. My point was more about how effective will it be at the spatial recognition in regards to separating the audio. If it's walled in at the sides, I feel like it is going to be beaming all audio out the front and at that point will it simply sound like any speaker without the spatial recognition, or will it use other tricks to separate out background vocals and reverb. Regardless, I ordered two for the eventual Airplay 2 pairing, and I'm pretty excited to play around with them when they get here in a week. I just need to figure out where I want place them that is discrete but still sounds best.

Ah I completely see your point ! Yeah that will be interesting to see ! Hopefully Apple have carried out rigerous testing on various placements to make sure that doesn’t happen. I will be placeing my HP on my bedroom bookshelf after Iv had a play with it downstairs so I will be keeping an ear out for any changes. Hopefully all is well and Apple have advanced this feature so it won’t beam audio down the centre, possibly it bounces them of the sides in an advanced way to displace the shelf! It’s going to be exciting to test out

 

[ErikGrim]

Again and again and again: Apple themselves say the following about HPs and stereo (right off of Apple's own site)...

I appreciate that armchair audio engineers want to count the tweeters and then puff this thing up into being equivalent to an 8-speaker surround sound system, but Apple themselves are not marketing it that way. And it seems like they would if they could see it anywhere like that.

I don't know how to read the word "second" above in Apple's own bolded copy, and then claim that 1 HP is stereo or more. Anyone want to call Apple a liar about their own product?

For the record (heh), I’m an actual audio engineer and producer. Apple is not a liar about their own product, but their marketing is clumsy.

Now, if you read that again, despite the headline misleading you, the copy supports everything I’ve said:

It does not say that a single HomePod is not stereo, but it does says that “a HomePod pair is able to create a wider, more immersive soundstage than a traditional stereo pair.”

Also one more time for the people in the back:

Stereo does not mean two. Stereo means multi-dimensional.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

With all due respect, I read your entire post. So tell me this: how does the speaker know where I'm sitting so it can beam the Left channel to my left and the Right channel to my right? And if there are two people in the room, how is it doing the same for both of them?

I am not an audio engineer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night (you are in Australia so that joke may not resonate for you, but a youtube search might convey it). But Apple says "it takes 2" and it seems pretty precarious to call Apple Marketing "clumsy" to dance around the written conflict. If they are clumsy about this, maybe they accidentally dropped in the soundstage information by mistake too? I don't actually believe that- just showing how easy it is to selectively take something to back a point and softly reject something else. Maybe the "takes 2" portion is the valid portion and the "soundstage" copy is the mistake? The "takes 2" part is the bolded headline copy... and it comes with the image of 2 HPs to support that headline.

I believe this thing is going to sound GREAT! It's Apple. They know how to make great products. They have consistently pushed "best sounding speaker" this entire time. I have zero expectations it will sound bad or even just good.

But I believe it's going to send sound around the room more like it's competitors than how we're trying to spin (one of) this thing into being a viable replacement for 2+ speakers. It won't know where it's audience is sitting. It can't direct Left left and Right right if it doesn't know where the ears are located. The room will probably fill with great audio. But if I'm over by any wall that I want to consider the left wall, I doubt I'm going to be beamed a dominant dose of left audio sound.

Does this thing even have a "front" for IT to have some fundamental sense of left & right?

 

[AppleScruff1]

With all due respect, I read your entire post. So tell me this: how does the speaker know where I'm sitting so it can beam the Left channel to my left and the Right channel to my right? And if there are two people in the room, how is it doing the same for both of them?

I am not an audio engineer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night (you are in Australia so that joke may not resonate for you, but a youtube search might convey it). But Apple says "it takes 2" and it seems pretty precarious to call Apple Marketing "clumsy" to dance around the written conflict. If they are clumsy about this, maybe they accidentally dropped in the soundstage information by mistake too? I don't actually believe that- just showing how easy it is to selectively take something to back a point and softly reject something else. Maybe the "takes 2" portion is the valid portion and the "soundstage" copy is the mistake? The "takes 2" part is the bolded headline copy... and it comes with the image of 2 HPs to support that headline.

I believe this thing is going to sound GREAT! It's Apple. They know how to make great products. They have consistently pushed "best sounding speaker" this entire time. I have zero expectations it will sound bad or even just good.

But I believe it's going to send sound around the room more like it's competitors than how we're trying to spin (one of) this thing into being a viable replacement for 2+ speakers. It won't know where it's audience is sitting. It can't direct Left left and Right right if it doesn't know where the ears are located. The room will probably fill with great audio. But if I'm over by any wall that I want to consider the left wall, I doubt I'm going to be beamed a dominant dose of left audio sound.

Does this thing even have a "front" for IT to have some fundamental sense of left & right?

Magic?

 

[OllyW]

With all due respect, I read your entire post. So tell me this: how does the speaker know where I'm sitting so it can beam the Left channel to my left and the Right channel to my right? And if there are two people in the room, how is it doing the same for both of them?

That's an interesting question. If someone is sitting to the left of you wouldn't their right channel bleed into your left ear and your left channel into their right ear?

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Presumably, everybody has to sit in each other’s lap.

Or maybe the beam forming is so precise, it will shoot left & right into each set of ear holes... kind of an Airpods without the AirPods. Apple is amazing!

 

[ErikGrim]

With all due respect, I read your entire post. So tell me this: how does the speaker know where I'm sitting so it can beam the Left channel to my left and the Right channel to my right? And if there are two people in the room, how is it doing the same for both of them?

Left and right channel is a bit meaningless here. From what we know from the listening tests it certainly use that information in creating the soundstage, but place more importance in using frequencies in where to place the sound. I.e. it puts vocals and bass front and center and pushes incidental sounds (think crowd noise in live recordings) out towards the edges. Physics being physics there are still spots where it will sound better than others, but the goal here is to make the soundstage as consistent as possible regardless of position of the listener.

Now my educated guess here how this will work with two speakers is that it will use the L/R channels to be split more between the two speakers, which would make sense if you are trying to widen the stage. I’m aiming to find out just how they are doing this by testing hard-panned L/R once pairing becomes available.

An interesting off hand comment in one of the tests suggests that pairing between more than two speakers will also be possible and the stage will simply adjust.

In any case, people need to shed the notion of stereo being simply two separate channels for each of your ears.

 

[PLondon]

But Sonos sucks, you have to use a controller app, another unnecessary app that is another music player. Also you can’t stream your own stuff, only services. You’ll have to work with workarounds and third party services which you will have to hope will last reliably.

We got AirPlay, soon to be upgraded soon too. While we can still individually stream stuff independently as of right now.

That's not correct, you can play any of your ripped CDs etc not just streaming services from both the Sonos or Spotify app.

Also I'd be very surprised if the HP can get anywhere near a similarly priced Sonos speaker in terms of sound quality.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

With all due respect, I read your entire post. So tell me this: how does the speaker know where I'm sitting so it can beam the Left channel to my left and the Right channel to my right? And if there are two people in the room, how is it doing the same for both of them?

I am not an audio engineer, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn last night (you are in Australia so that joke may not resonate for you, but a youtube search might convey it). But Apple says "it takes 2" and it seems pretty precarious to call Apple Marketing "clumsy" to dance around the written conflict. If they are clumsy about this, maybe they accidentally dropped in the soundstage information by mistake too? I don't actually believe that- just showing how easy it is to selectively take something to back a point and softly reject something else. Maybe the "takes 2" portion is the valid portion and the "soundstage" copy is the mistake? The "takes 2" part is the bolded headline copy... and it comes with the image of 2 HPs to support that headline.

I believe this thing is going to sound GREAT! It's Apple. They know how to make great products. They have consistently pushed "best sounding speaker" this entire time. I have zero expectations it will sound bad or even just good.

But I believe it's going to send sound around the room more like it's competitors than how we're trying to spin (one of) this thing into being a viable replacement for 2+ speakers. It won't know where it's audience is sitting. It can't direct Left left and Right right if it doesn't know where the ears are located. The room will probably fill with great audio. But if I'm over by any wall that I want to consider the left wall, I doubt I'm going to be beamed a dominant dose of left audio sound.

Does this thing even have a "front" for IT to have some fundamental sense of left & right?

As a former audio engineer, I'd simply start by saying, "Don't get too hung up over left and right." Stereo recording was not intended to determine left from right, it was intended to spread the sound field across the room, rather than have the entire orchestra emerge from a single point in the room. Recording technique allows us to artificially and arbitrarily position every sound component in a discrete location. Adherence to right/left orientation is a matter of being true to the recording, rather than being true to the music. Does it really matter whether the first and second fiddles are on the right or the left? If you were listening from the perspective of the violin sections, left and right would be very different indeed.

The Holy Grail of recreating the concert hall experience was just marketing BS to begin with. Nearly all recordings aim for better-than-concert hall. Anyone who tries to pirate a concert recording from a seat in Row J learns why. Better-than-concert hall means, among other things, far better localization than can be achieved (or exists) in a concert hall. A live acoustic environment is a VitaMix of sound - with sound bouncing off walls, ceilings, and floor. Our minds interpret that complex sound field as "real," while a simpler, less-complex sound field seems artificial. That's a key reason there is so much reverb added to recordings.

As someone who recorded orchestras, chamber music, small ensemble jazz, big bands, folks and rock on location and in studio, for broadcast... I never had the illusion that the majority of my audience would be listening in anything approaching ideal conditions. I did my best to deliver a sound that would sound good, regardless. I started in this business early enough that a large proportion of car radios were mono. I knew that a fair number of people with home stereos would have one bad/missing speaker (so I rarely placed anything full-left or full-right, as it might get lost); the sound from clock radios was a joke... and that the vast majority of listeners were just going about their daily lives, not sitting respectfully in the living room, all attention focused on the music, facing the speakers as if they were in Carnegie Hall.

As I've said several times in this thread, the single-HomePod experience will be neither Stereo or Mono. What it does is create a room-sized sound field from a single box. If you can place a single box in a room with almost no regard to the seating arrangement and still get something satisfying to listen to... that's nearly a miracle.

 

[helvetica237]

Every article about this speaker has comments about how apple reinvented the audio wave. Semantics over science. This timeline is for goofballs. I was so excited to buy this when they announced it but it has become maddening reading about how much they broke this product. Is it a secutity thing? Can apple not do what google and amazon can because they are scared to get hacked? Seriously. Why is this product so ass backward?