Ok I didn't consider that. Yes, ideally the FR measurements would be performed in an anechoic chamber. Though that means the stated FR would really be an approximation (perhaps a close one) rather than any kind of official value.
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Audiophile Review: HomePod 'Sounds Better' Than $999 KEF X300A Digital Hi-Fi Speakers
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Ok I didn't consider that. Yes, ideally the FR measurements would be performed in an anechoic chamber. Though that means the stated FR would really be an approximation (perhaps a close one) rather than any kind of official value.
Correct....Perhaps testing against a monitor speaker would send a much over-hyped better response than testing other smart speakers.
He IS an expert thought, using specialized equipment..
I don't believe they return from the cloud as lossless. They either get matched in which case you get a 256kbit AAC off the store or they get manually uploaded like all my live music and is downsampled to same 256kbit.
Nope. Your post is confused in places, though. You're comparing in-room measurements (the Redditor's measurements of the HomePod in what he describes as a highly unfavorable room) to anechoic or quasi-anechoic measurements for the studio speaker.
If you don't understand why that makes no sense, that's fine. I'm mostly letting others know why you're absolutely comparing apples to oranges here.
Put whatever studio speakers you like onto the average desktop in an untreated room and they'll measure pretty wacky too. I've measured JBL LSR305s (+/- 3dB anechoic, known for having a ridiculously wide sweet spot thanks to their fancy controlled directivity waveguide) in-room before, and the response is nowhere +/- 3dB because duh physics.
Now admittedly, typically.... typically.... measuring a speaker's in-room performance (like he did with the HomePod) is pretty much meaningless because no two rooms are alike, and room acoustics will absolutely swamp the actual speaker response unless you're doing close-mic measurements. Typically you would never measure a speaker in room like this; it would be like measuring the performance of a car by how fast it goes during rush hour on a busy street while the driver obeys all traffic laws.
However, given the Homepod's unique traits, it makes little sense to measure it anywhere *but* in-room. So the Redditor(s) made a sensible choice by measuring it in-room and then performing direct apples-to-apples comparative measurements with a known quantity (the KEFs).
For record, though: I do understand that the in-room performance of a HomePod will not compare to the performance of studio monitors or other accurate speakers when listened to from their sweet spot. At least we agree there I think.
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Someone here claimed 7.1. We went from mono to stereo to 7.1. Lots of arguing. Whatever you want to call it, it sounds pretty good.
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Google and Amazon Ophiles can’t hold a candle to Appleophiles.
it can source/stream music itself directly from your itunes account. that’s not airplay. it streams just like your mac or ipad or iphone would.
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you can control homepod volume from your mac, iphone, siri remote when it is an appletv output, etc...
Yes, again OP was asking about lossless. Nothing that streams from iCloud
Music or Apple Music is lossless. That’s all AAC.
Interesting thought. I’m not sure if anything like that has been done for mids or highs but I thought HomePods were using mics to alter output according to room acoustics. Not make the output frequency response flat, necessarily, but alter it nonetheless.
Subwoofers have had a similar feature available for decades - though not using a mic. Servo-controlled subs can alter the input waveform to compensate for the inaccuracies of cone movement. I suppose this isn’t directly altering frequency response but it should greatly increase accuracy. The most common method uses a dual voice coil transducer where the active circuitry compares both the input and output waveform and makes corrections.
Another method is to put an accelerometer on the cone and use its output to make waveform adjustments. I believe the is the method my computer auto system’s sub, a Martin Logan Grotto, uses. There a section on Servo Subwoofers in this wiki article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subwoofer#Servo_subwoofers.
I guess the servo-sub thing doesn’t directly address your question, but it is related.
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see all a matter of opinion. my wife says differently and she is blind and her ears are far better then mine. but she does have two sonos 5's for stereo.
It's been well-reported that the HomePod's Siri integration is significantly limited right now. That's not a fault of Siri itself, but of the HomePod. That will improve without having to replace the HomePod.
Excellent question! The answer is "yes, absolutely!"
Though, I'm not sure if there are systems besides the HomePod doing it in real time.
A lot of devices have actually been doing this in the real world for the last decade or so. If you've heard passable sound from a teeny tiny embedded speaker, it's probably getting some help from some digital EQ.
Here's a dedicated hobbyist who reviews cheap speakers and publishes DSP EQ adjustments for them to achieve a flatter frequency response and, in some cases, deeper bass extension. He develops these corrections exactly as you say - by measuring the deficiencies of cheap speakers with a ~$100 measurement mic and coming up with compensations. You can employ his EQ corrections with a dedicated DSP box like a MiniDSP or by using freeware like EqualizerAPO on a Windows machine. His work is excellent; I owe this guy a kidney or something. http://noaudiophile.com/
This technique is a big part of the reason why car audio (even on affordable cars) has gotten surprisingly tolerable in recent years.
It's also a big part of the reason why Bluetooth speakers (starting with the original Jambox, I'd say) have been able to produce some surprisingly decent sound from crap drivers and almost-literally-the-opposite-of-ideal enclosures. Picked up one of these little Sony speakers from eBay for like $40 and at low volumes, it really does have a decently accurate FR. Does it sound great? Heck no, but the fact that this kind of sound is emanating from something that's roughly the size of a stick of butter is a heck of an engineering feat. http://www.oluvsgadgets.net/2015/06/review-sony-srs-x33-who-is-going-to-be.html
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Wrong, Sennheiser HD800s’s are NOT tuned to a "flat sound", mind you what DAC, tube or solid state, balanced or single ended.
Back on topic, I went to Best Buy to buy the latest 12 south curve stand and decide to check out the HomePod on display. Not in the market for this kind of device but had to at least listen to it in a crappy large open evirornment. The guy messing with the HomePod while I waited next had some weird Siri hiccups, asked about 5-6 times to play 90’s hip hop and it said and played Chinese hip hop, and he spoke clearly. I had some Siri hiccups as well but the weird part, the louder volume from the HomePod the better Siri worked, /shrugs.
One thing me and the other guy agreed with was the sound emitted from that tiny footprint was the bass and clarity. From the midrange/tweeter array it sounded great on all sides and sounded much much larger, borderline decent output bookshelf. Part of the awe could have been a device that small with big sound but it really was the highlight of demoing it. I don’t think I could fork out 700 dollars for stereo(when they update) but I could see this setup being used in many desk demos by big new tech reviewers(audioengine a2 gets set aside).
Apple will probably open up more features for developers to interface with but not sure catering to competitors like Spotify will be first, double edged sword when you compare what other smart speakers are offering. Apple needs to capitalize on the sound quality and hope it carries them through the lackluster features when comparing to other like devices, giving them time to add many more features. If these were available for $199 per speaker without Siri and still supported stereo I might consider using them on the desktop but I don’t see Apple doing that anytime soon.
It also makes little sense to feed a sine wave through the HomePod at each frequency because of the amount of processing Apple has this thing doing. Every noise is sending through is being compensated by the microphones and being balanced in isolation.
The off axis measures he spent hours doing are utterly pointless too - there is no axis on the HomePod. It is a non directional speaker, there is no sweet spot, no front, no middle to start from. It has a non directional upwards woofer and then 12 tweeters around the outside - technically in between some of the tweeters would be off axis but you're talking of a very small area, there's no need to measure it all the way around.
12 inches away from a speaker is largely going to negate the effects of any room anyway - the mic isn't going to be picking up my room interference and it's not where you'd listen from to have impact from the room either.
So all in the results don't tell us much because without disabling the processing you can't tell what the speaker is doing - however we can very easily use our ears to hear that the 4" woofer is pushing out so much exaggerated bass it sounds like it's attached to a 10" subwoofer, and the top is reduced (as a profile decision presumably).
I have two Adam A7X's, large bookshelf sized speakers with 7" woofers in both, you could fit probably 6 HomePods into the space of two of them, yet they don't create bass anywhere near as big as the HomePod because it's designed to be accurate and flat, not hifi and impressive. If you switch between the Adams and the HomePod at the same volume level, the difference in sound signature is beyond comparison - and of course it would be, one is flat, neutral and revealing, the other is highly processed impressive sounding hyped hifi speaker.
There's nothing wrong with the HomePod but it's still silly to start declaring it a flat response speaker when A. It wasn't designed that way and B. anyone with ears listening for 4 seconds can hear it isn't. But i'm almost certain if you feed it sine waves out of context into each frequency band the microphones are going to pick it up and try and balance it to se a set DB level.
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They one of the most neutral and natural headphones on the market - sure you could pair them with a DAC and and coloured amp that changes that - but if you're mixing and want a reference headphone, apart from it's peak at 4khz it's more or less as flat and revealing as you can get when paired with something like a Vioelectic amp and the studio DAC and you're not going to find much else as clinically revealing and natural sounding.
Not sure what problem that solves - it lets you send audio to PC, Mac or XBox from Apple devices - which is great, but there are plenty of AirPlay receivers out there. I can already AirPlay audio from my iPad or Mac to my TV surround speakers via Fire TV or Raspberry Pi running Kodi/MrMC (not video since iOS 8, but complaints on a postcard to the DRM-obsessed Hollywood there).
I guess I could install it on my Mac, Google cast it from my android phone to the Mac, then set the Mac to AirPlay to a HomePod... but frankly, the only reason I'd want to do that is to prove a point.
Looks like there's no issue with the HomePod if you're only worried about playing from Apple Music and/or Mac or iOS Apps (since you can easily direct all sound from these to AirPlay).
However, I've yet to encounter any non-Apple device that can send audio via AirPlay - its certainly not common. Other mini speakers tend to support at least some of UPnP, Bluetooth audio, MiraCast, Google Cast, and/or have analogue or SPDIF inputs that you could connect a ChromeCast Audio (or a non-Apple MP3 player, CD player or, heaven forfend, a gramophone) to.
Boy, quite a bit of strong opinions on this topic. All I can say is, that I'm of the opinion that sound quality is largely subjective.
I don't get all the audio measuring test being used in the reddit thread, but I do think it boils down to, that if you like the sound, great, if not then find another product. People seem to be lining up like this is some sort of holy war and it ought not be the case.
I don't get all the audio measuring test being used in the reddit thread, but I do think it boils down to, that if you like the sound, great, if not then find another product. People seem to be lining up like this is some sort of holy war and it ought not be the case.
Agreed
This is not debating who’s better warriors or rockets where it can be proved on the court. Sound is completely different.
It’s like people are finding ways to prove that’s the best when it all depends on the individual
I’m no audiophile or anything close to it but my HomePod sounds perfect got my needs. One might be enough and stereo sound really might not be needed for me.
