Personally, I’ve seen people saying all kinds of crazy conjectures about how it works. Most of it unsourced.
How do you get true stereo with a single woofer?
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First HomePod Pre-Order Customers Get Charged as Speakers Prepare for Shipment
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Personally, I’ve seen people saying all kinds of crazy conjectures about how it works. Most of it unsourced.
How do you get true stereo with a single woofer?
And how wide the stereo sweet spot? Just because it does stereo decoding with two distinct channels doesn't mean you're going to get a stereo effect. I think the most amazing thing about the HomePod launch is discovering how little most people understand about stereo sound.
...there's probably a better way to phrase that, but its true.
Yup, I expect to take full advantage... I love how I can swipe down on the ATV remote to change speakers on the fly... I use that feature all the time.
I never claimed it has a particularly good stereo effect, I’ve never even heard one.
It plays the left sound out of the left speaker and the right sound out of the right speaker - that is discrete stereo.
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As utterly wrong as that guy is, you don’t need multiple woofers to get stereo sound. Humans aren’t capable of determining which direction low frequency sound is coming from.
Only so very low frequencies, of which the HomePod will only output a portion of with just a 4” woofer. The woofer likely will be playing a bit into the upper midrange since the crossover will probably be somewhere in the low 2000 Hz range, which means it will be localizable. Once you hit ~100 Hz, audio becomes increasingly easy to pinpoint a source.
As opposed to the actual quote, which said that it "slaughters most speakers under $1000."
I never said it didn't play stereo sound. My point is that there is world of difference between speaker(s) playing stereo and the listener hearing in stereo. If it isn't realistically feasible for anyone to hear the stereo effect from a speaker is that really a feature? My understanding is one HomePod won't give you a traditional stereo sound but it will give you many of the same effects (a sense of spatial placement, soundstage, etc.). So one HomePod isn't traditional MONO either. It is it's own thing. The HomePod's effect (in theory, and based on the feedback I've read so far) is also far more achievable than true stereo sound in most people's home listening environments.
Yeah I agree, it’s a different effect from anything before - they claim to be able to pick out individual instruments in a song. It’s going to be software manipulated sound but I’m sure it sounds great - I’m very much looking forward to getting mine.
If anyone thinks they’ll (for example) be able to watch a movie with one HomePod and hear sounds destined for the left side of the screen in their left ear they are going to be disappointed, though.
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That’s an excellent point - I just meant more in general, not specific to the HomePod. But definitely the crossover frequency in the HomePod would have to be pretty high, making it even more unlikely that it can produce stereo sound alone (not that anyone with a brain thinks it can...)
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You’d think it would be hard to make the argument that the 20 reputable publications listed posting positive first impressions are somehow all afraid of saying anything bad about Apple. But this is the internet after all.
Bass is omnidirectional. That’s why home theatres typically have a single subwoofer.
And what exactly is “true stereo”? I have extensive experience as an audio engineer and that’s not a term I’ve ever heard before.
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Sonos 3 can’t play stereo. At all.
First off, it’s backwards. They have the L & R channels going to the bass/mids and only have a single tweeter.
Secondly, the drivers are all located in the same plane and face in the same direction. You can’t get any kind of soundstage from drivers physically placed so close together. The speaker will just sound like a mono speaker with no separation unless your face in literally inches away.
Im usually only here for the new iphone releases but this homepod has my blood rushing.
I HAD the google home and the google home mini, now it does pair with the iphone BUT it does not support apple music you have to have google play music or spotify which i despise. The sound on the google home was ok not the greatest and the sound on the google home mini was just terrible. I had fun with the broadcast feature i could tell 1 to tell them all my message it was fun. I since returned and pre ordered this little baby. I love siri I use "hey siri" very often. I have a Bluetooth speaker in my office I listen to music on which is very good actually. BUT.. I have been waiting for the apple siri pod (i call it) for a while so I am excited!
p.s. preparing for shipment
I HAD the google home and the google home mini, now it does pair with the iphone BUT it does not support apple music you have to have google play music or spotify which i despise. The sound on the google home was ok not the greatest and the sound on the google home mini was just terrible. I had fun with the broadcast feature i could tell 1 to tell them all my message it was fun. I since returned and pre ordered this little baby. I love siri I use "hey siri" very often. I have a Bluetooth speaker in my office I listen to music on which is very good actually. BUT.. I have been waiting for the apple siri pod (i call it) for a while so I am excited!
p.s. preparing for shipment
First off, only very low frequencies are omnidirectional. Second, the HomePod has no equivalent of a sub. It has a 4” woofer, just like a smaller bookshelf speaker has. A woofer is not the same as a subwoofer; I’d expect an audio engineer to know that.
As far as “true stereo” goes, I’m simply using your exact choice of words. Interesting that you’ve never heard it before since I have you in quotes using that phrase.
Well if you mute the mic with a pair of wire cutters...
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Good choice. Catchy tune. It's one of the handful of songs my nieces keep asking for in the car.
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Laughs at Taylor Swift... but thinks that Kiss is real metal...
First off, only very low frequencies are omnidirectional. Second, the HomePod has no equivalent of a sub. It has a 4” woofer, just like a smaller bookshelf speaker has. A woofer is not the same as a subwoofer; I’d expect an audio engineer to know that.
As far as “true stereo” goes, I’m simply using your exact choice of words. Interesting that you’ve never heard it before since I have you in quotes using that phrase.
I never said a subwoofer is the same as a woofer. I gave a common example that people with a home theatre would be familiar with and could relate to. What purpose would it serve to write a complex technical post about acoustics that nobody could understand? Don’t assume that because I’m dumbing things down that I don’t understand the theory.
I’ve had many previous discussions with people using the term “true stereo” in several HomePod articles. I was curious if any would comment.
That said, if you’re also familiar with audio engineering then I’m more than happy to have an in-depth technical discussion with you about the HomePod and what it can/can’t do.
Been encountering a lot of “audio engineers” on this forum lately.
It shouldn’t take an “audio engineer” to take one look at a play:3 and realize the drivers are angled away from each other.
Barely angled. And still mounted literally right next to each other. Impossible to create a stereo soundstage in any significant manner. And vastly inferior to how the HomePod positions it’s drivers.
Any time you want to discuss theory around audio and acoustics let me know. I’d love to have a technical discussion of that sort.
There is some very interesting discussions in this thread about the technicalities of stereo/mono etc. I’ve learned quite a bit, but will probably have forgotten most of it by tomorrow.
I question how relevant it all is in the real world, when talking about something like a HomePod. Of course some people will buy two, as recommended by Apple, but that really is the expensive option. My guess (and we can only really guess for now) is that many of these speakers will going into rooms where the quality of the output is more important than whether that output is mono, true stereo, discrete stereo or any number of other types of stereo that people can come up with.
In fact, in the rooms that I could see us putting one in, the other options that we have would be tv speakers or another single speaker. In most of those instances, a two speaker system is actually a negative as people are spread out or moving around, so two speakers mean that individuals get too much of one channel.
I’m looking forward to getting my HomePod, and hearing how it sounds. I’m looking for clarity and I want that sound to fill the room. I’m not particularly interested in whether it is stereo or not, and wouldn’t even have considered it were it not for these discussions. My guess is that most laypeople buying a single speaker aren’t worrying about whether it is stereo or mono. They will assume the latter.
I question how relevant it all is in the real world, when talking about something like a HomePod. Of course some people will buy two, as recommended by Apple, but that really is the expensive option. My guess (and we can only really guess for now) is that many of these speakers will going into rooms where the quality of the output is more important than whether that output is mono, true stereo, discrete stereo or any number of other types of stereo that people can come up with.
In fact, in the rooms that I could see us putting one in, the other options that we have would be tv speakers or another single speaker. In most of those instances, a two speaker system is actually a negative as people are spread out or moving around, so two speakers mean that individuals get too much of one channel.
I’m looking forward to getting my HomePod, and hearing how it sounds. I’m looking for clarity and I want that sound to fill the room. I’m not particularly interested in whether it is stereo or not, and wouldn’t even have considered it were it not for these discussions. My guess is that most laypeople buying a single speaker aren’t worrying about whether it is stereo or mono. They will assume the latter.
Oh, never said that. I just picked an opposing genre. I was gonna use Steel Panther, but I didn’t wanna scare the Android guys. /s
They don't need to worry about the name because it will not be as successful as anticipated and will be shelved in order introduce another product to hype as a replacement with more and better features... revisit this comment in 3 years to confirm!!!
Surround speakers? The damn thing is already smaller than a lot of speakers of that kind, and besides that you don’t want to be using omnidirectional speakers for that job, would not work well I wouldn’t have thought.
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