Audiophile Review: HomePod 'Sounds Better' Than $999 KEF X300A Digital Hi-Fi Speakers

[DevNull0]

What the hell are you expecting out of a $350 speaker? He said it is amazing for it's price point and nothing exist under $1000 that can compete with it.

What $350 speaker? All I see mentioned in the article is a $1000 speaker and $350 Siri/Apple music accessory.

If I can't connect it to my Mac, my TV, and my iPod mini, it's not a speaker. A speaker has one job to do, and that's play audio from a standard source. HomePod is an extremely limited lock in to Apple's eco system. I can't even play my music on the HomePod except through Airplay. What a ridiculous piece of junk.

And I would love a speaker with the sound quality of the HomePod and the price of the HomePod. Too bad it doesn't exist. I need it for TV and Mac audio.

 

[2979382]

"Audiophile" - the fella is a tit - he tried to tell me the HomePod has a perfectly flat frequency response. Even £10,000 studio monitors don't have a perfectly flat frequency response - further more the HomePod wasn't designed to have one.

His actual graphs show anything but perfectly flat, they show huge peaks and troughs everywhere - which is fine, it's a consumer hifi product and Apple haven't designed it to be flat, they've used every trick in the book to get big sound from a small speaker and to make it sound "wow" when you first play something through it "how is that bass coming from this" - the woofer is plenty big enough to get good bass, but they've gone for psycho-acoustic processing as well to make it even bigger.

To be honest this sort of sound is going to work well for most people, it's the sound signature they're used to. It only changes if you start listening on studio monitors which are designed to be neutral flat and revealing - many people may find that sound "boring" compared to a HomePod type signature though. But when you get into the £300+ headphone market that is what they try to do as well, the £1000 Sennheiser HD-800's are more or less as flat as you can get in a headphone. The idea being to just present the music in as much detail as possible as it was from the studio without applying any sort of EQ curve or enhancement to it in anyway.

But it's a bit like getting a high end TV calibrated - some people watch with the shop "vivid" mode on their TV and some people want a perfectly calibrated TV. Many people would think the calibrated one looks flat, boring and too yellow, yet it's the accurate representation of what the original picture is. Horses for course - depends if you want hyped or accurate, you can't have both.

The HomePod is a perfectly good "hyped" speaker, but it is anything but revealing, clear, detailed, open, transparent, flat, bright or even top end hi-fi. It does however sound better than 90% of the stuff most people will have heard or bought before, which is all Apple needed to do (and yes it destroyed the entire Echo range and easily puts Sonos to shame, not that i'd ever want to listen to either for extended periods)

Thank you man! You're spot on. I agree. Just because it sounds "amazing" it doesn't mean it's "audiophile" grade speaker. Any decent audiophile is looking for studio sound and if the Homepod would deliver that, most consumers wouldn't even go near it. I wish people would get the difference between "great sound" and "accurate sound".

 

[prasand]

Due to the nature of the test pushing the HomePod at max volume in a way that it cannot EQ the output, I believe it's a good measure of what the HomePod is capable of. However, it's not a measure of the reality of HomePod, since in reality songs are dynamically EQ'd, they aren't reflective of what the HomePod is capable of.

In other words, the HomePod itself is audiophile level ... but the song processing algorithms are not. If that makes sense. But that in part is why the subjective listening varies, and people's biases are valid. Apple really should add the ability for people to EQ it themselves, otherwise they're handicapping how great it could be (subjectively).

 

[DevNull0]

"Audiophile" - the fella is a tit - he tried to tell me the HomePod has a perfectly flat frequency response. Even £10,000 studio monitors don't have a perfectly flat frequency response - further more the HomePod wasn't designed to have one.

Would it possible to generate something close to a perfectly flat frequency response on a relatively cheap speaker by using microphones to listen to the sound being produced and altering the input signal to compensate?

 

[throAU]

What $350 speaker? All I see mentioned in the article is a $1000 speaker and $350 Siri/Apple music accessory.

If I can't connect it to my Mac, my TV, and my iPod mini, it's not a speaker. A speaker has one job to do, and that's play audio from a standard source. HomePod is an extremely limited lock in to Apple's eco system. I can't even play my music on the HomePod except through Airplay. What a ridiculous piece of junk.

And I would love a speaker with the sound quality of the HomePod and the price of the HomePod. Too bad it doesn't exist. I need it for TV and Mac audio.

You can airplay to it from your mac, apple tv, or really any modern apple device.

I've been playing music through it via the appletv, mac, and iphone all evening.

Yes, it is locked to the apple ecosystem, but this shouldn't be news to you. If you don't like it, buy something else.

 

[DevNull0]

But it’s a ‘smart’ speaker.

"smart" speaker the same way "smart" TV is smart.

In other words, much more limited than the "dumb" version and only "smart" for the manufacture who can control what you do with the device.

 

[MacDawg]

How does one become an audiophile? Is it something you go to school for or does it apply to anyone who spends a lot of money on audio gear?

I'm not sure it is an actual prerequisite, but being an asshat is definitely helpful

 

[DevNull0]

You can airplay to it from your mac, apple tv, or really any modern apple device.

I've been playing music through it via the appletv, mac, and iphone all evening.

Yes, it is locked to the apple ecosystem, but this shouldn't be news to you. If you don't like it, buy something else.

Where did I say Apple TV? I said TV. As in the signal from my cable box to my audio receiver. Or Blu-ray player to audio receiver. Or HTPC (which happens to be a mac mini) to my audio receiver.

As for Mac. I actually just spent time googling it again after reading your post. Do you mean airplay to an Apple TV from the mac?

Edit: Okay it looks like you can airplay directly from the Mac with no Apple TV. But not being able to use it as TV audio or with my music is still a non-starter.

 

[cfurlin]

I think it’s someone who can hear better than you

Without the ability to listen to differing opinions. That’s the important part.

Usually self-appointed “experts” are only good at one thing: marveling at their own perceived magnificence.

 

[Kirkster]

Could anyone, who owns HomePod, and likes electronic music, give a listen to

TIPPER - AMBERGRIS
TIPPER - SCAPULA
TIPPER - DEAD SOON

and tell me, how does it sound?

The thing with Tipper’s music, is, that it is very skillfully mastered in surround sound.
Sounds good in stereo, sounds amazing in surround. Just would like to know if HomePod is good enough to reproduce the sound like this

Thank you

I just listened to Scapula and Dead Soon on my Totem Forest speakers with sub setup in my stereo. I then listened to the same two songs on the HomePod.

Of course the Totem setup is in a different league than a stand alone single speaker. But the HomePod does a pretty respectable job with the music. Pretty happy/impressed with the HomePod so far. If you have a small/medium space to fill the HomePod does a great job. I will probably get another one once they get a few code revs in to try having 2 of them in the same room.

 

[raazman]

How does one become an audiophile? Is it something you go to school for or does it apply to anyone who spends a lot of money on audio gear?

Anything, literally.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/audiophile

 

[dannys1]

Would it possible to generate something close to a perfectly flat frequency response on a relatively cheap speaker by using microphones to listen to the sound being produced and altering the input signal to compensate?

I mean technically yes - but "flat" is often a sound the general public would want.

A studio monitor is not supposed to sound "good" but accurate. If you're used to that sound you prefer it - but most people aren't so they'd probably find it too clinical.

There's nothing wrong with the way the HomePod sounds it's just there are two very different sound signatures and it fits in the Sonos type (and kills the Sonos at it)

 

[anson42]

I challenge sombody to play a CD through it.

Why would you want to? This is a streaming device. The whole point off a product like this is to have a self contained playback device with no need for a companion device (except for setup) or physical media. CDs for music delivery is dying faster than I thought it would. Not saying I'm all in – I have thousands of the shiny buggers (and vinyl LPs).

 

[kruegdude]

"Audiophile" - the fella is a tit - he tried to tell me the HomePod has a perfectly flat frequency response. Even £10,000 studio monitors don't have a perfectly flat frequency response - further more the HomePod wasn't designed to have one.

His actual graphs show anything but perfectly flat, they show huge peaks and troughs everywhere - which is fine, it's a consumer hifi product and Apple haven't designed it to be flat, they've used every trick in the book to get big sound from a small speaker and to make it sound "wow" when you first play something through it "how is that bass coming from this" - the woofer is plenty big enough to get good bass, but they've gone for psycho-acoustic processing as well to make it even bigger.

To be honest this sort of sound is going to work well for most people, it's the sound signature they're used to. It only changes if you start listening on studio monitors which are designed to be neutral flat and revealing - many people may find that sound "boring" compared to a HomePod type signature though. But when you get into the £300+ headphone market that is what they try to do as well, the £1000 Sennheiser HD-800's are more or less as flat as you can get in a headphone. The idea being to just present the music in as much detail as possible as it was from the studio without applying any sort of EQ curve or enhancement to it in anyway.

But it's a bit like getting a high end TV calibrated - some people watch with the shop "vivid" mode on their TV and some people want a perfectly calibrated TV. Many people would think the calibrated one looks flat, boring and too yellow, yet it's the accurate representation of what the original picture is. Horses for course - depends if you want hyped or accurate, you can't have both.

The HomePod is a perfectly good "hyped" speaker, but it is anything but revealing, clear, detailed, open, transparent, flat, bright or even top end hi-fi. It does however sound better than 90% of the stuff most people will have heard or bought before, which is all Apple needed to do (and yes it destroyed the entire Echo range and easily puts Sonos to shame, not that i'd ever want to listen to either for extended periods)

You seem to live in a rarified audio world and you certainly have a lot of Apple kit. One question. Would you ever own a HomePod?

Oh, actually two questions. How do you like the iMac Pro?

 

[LinusR]

Mirroring: As usual, the "cheerleaders" here are crowning the HomePod supreme best of all speakers. Positive reviews (or only cherry-picked positive comments within reviews) are the only reviews that are right, fans offering glowing praise are the only legitimate judges, the HomePod has been pre-perfectioned on MacRumors, even long before any ears could hear it. Just another day on this forum.

I agree with you that this type of biased reporting (in the comments, that is) is quite common around here, but have you seen any negativ reviews yet? How is it biased if there simply are no negative reviews?

 

[dannys1]

Pretty refreshing to hear those comments though. As far as whether obsessing ruins the experience...there’s a sweet spot; it’s as much in the mind as the DAC converters.

Funny you should mention DAC - There must have been half a million words written about the HomePod now and an iFixit tear down and no body has mentioned what DAC it uses once...

 

[anson42]

But I'm already thinking in terms of $$$ / convenience / sound quality / ease of set up they'd be great in other rooms.

And this. Does anyone really want to set up a perfectly great sounding stereo system in the kitchen? In the garage? Kudos if you want to and have, but the effort required to do that properly for most folks is either cost prohibitive, not decor friendly, not user friendly or plain impossible thanks to the non-listening room nature of those types of spaces. Something like the HomePod is IMO a fantastic option for those types of situations. HomePod's detection of movement and self correction for room space is inspired stuff, whether you like your music mucked with or not. You can bet you will see this type of feature in many "room adaptive" speakers going forward. For me, this is what justifies the cost of the HomePod.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I agree with you that this type of biased reporting (in the comments, that is) is quite common around here, but have you seen any negativ reviews yet? How is it biased if there simply are no negative reviews?

Define negative reviews.

If you mean have I seen any overwhelmingly negative reviews that can't say one good thing about HP, no- nor have I have ever seen such a review about any such product. Generally reviews that are not by extremist fans or extremist haters are able to offer up both pros & cons about most any commercial product.

If you mean have I seen any reviews that have some negative things to say about HP? Sure, plenty... maybe even most of them? Generally just about every "review"- even those that generally gush about HP in most ways- have something negative to say, particularly toward the relative performance of Siri and the tight "lock-in" in native use.

Did you read the head-to-head redux review offered by one of the mods near the start of this thread (post #3)? I don't take that as purely negative or purely positive, but it does show what can happen when a review gets more objective, especially when the audience has no sense of which speaker is playing. In that one, the tester was basically replicating Apple's demo, only this time with a different variety of songs and it not being obvious which speaker was playing at any given time. Presumably, the tester was not overly guiding the presentation, nor talking about the strong points of a chosen speaker, nor putting down the weak points of another.

I don't take the result as purely scientific, nor any extremist bash or praise of HP- just another point of comparison that appeared to not be catering to a pre-determined outcome objective. Pile up a bunch of that kind of testing and one can draw some conclusions to help them make a smart speaker decision... which could very well still be HP, but it could also be something else.

 

[anson42]

Funny you should mention DAC - There must have been half a million words written about the HomePod now and an iFixit tear down and no body has mentioned what DAC it uses once...

Is it separate from the A8? That processor is more than capable of being an effective DAC. But at the end of the day, does it really matter? What if it was designed in house and not an off the shelf part like a Sabre or Analog Devices? What if it a simple single bit design vs multi-bit? Does that make the HomePod less or more than it is? I have a few outboard DAC devices in systems around the house and what chip they use is hardly a concern as long as they sound good to my ears.

 

[_Refurbished_]

Remember when iPhone didn't have 3G or MMS? People said the same thing about it that you are saying about HomePod.

Siri isn’t as easily fixable, and the lack of Spotify may never be rectified.

The two issues you listed are checkbox features that were easily added to the iPhone in the next version.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

There is also the question of: how does one play lossless music in the HomePod? Is AirPlay the only way?

Isn't AirPlay the only way to play any music on HomePod? It doesn't play music via BT and has no wired ports either.

 

[DakotaGuy]

I'm starting to think it isn't the Amazon Echo or Google Home that the Homepod will kill off, but the expensive audiophile grade studio monitors. When only one little Homepod can outperform two expensive speakers like these I'd say the speaker companies that market 'audiophile' grade speakers should be very worried.

 

[_Refurbished_]

It can play Spotify, Pandora or any other music service.

What sorts of things are people typically actually using Alexa for semi regularly, the Siri won't do?

Not through Siri.

Read recipes, provide visual feedback via display, and better understand the context of your questions. The “smart” portion of the “smart” speaker.

 

[oneMadRssn]

Isn't AirPlay the only way to play any music on HomePod? It doesn't play music via BT and has no wired ports either.

It can play music from Apple Music directly, for what it's worth.

 

[redmac]

Mirroring: As usual, the "cheerleaders" here are crowning the HomePod supreme best of all speakers. Positive reviews (or only cherry-picked positive comments within reviews) are the only reviews that are right, fans offering glowing praise are the only legitimate judges, the HomePod has been pre-perfectioned on MacRumors, even long before any ears could hear it. Just another day on this forum.

Sorry mate, it must be hard to you to accept, but I haven't seen anything but positive reviews. As usual, the only critical comments are coming from people who never listened to a HomePod.