Yes it does, and the so called "study" in this very thing is also not scientific and yeah, I've got a science and engineering degree so please spare me the pap.
We'll see in 5 years who is on top, meaning who actually makes good money from this.
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First Impressions From New HomePod Owners: Siri's Voice Detection is 'Phenomenal,' Audio Quality is 'Immediately Evident'
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Yes it does, and the so called "study" in this very thing is also not scientific and yeah, I've got a science and engineering degree so please spare me the pap.
We'll see in 5 years who is on top, meaning who actually makes good money from this.
First, Airplay 2 is the communication standard, not the number of speakers.
Second, 5.1 multichannel totally misses the point of how HomePod generates a stereophonic environment. The single HomePod actually is stereo.
Third, Apple doesn't want you to use HomePod for movies, they see it as a Siri and Apple Music accessory. As amazing as the speaker tech really is, they don't want it to be a general purpose speaker.
But isn't the goal to have Apple everything in your house, to buy all digital content from Apple, and to play all content on Apple hardware? Why shouldn't Apple's video content be included?
Because in a year they will sell you another Apple speaker for TV.
Siri hasn't been improved, but the results are improved with the HomePod's stationary mic array because it hears better, not because it understands better. I've always had horrible results with Siri on the iPhone when trying to play specific tracks or albums, but when I dock it for CarPlay, the results go from a D to a B- (compared to the Echo's consistent B+), which is pretty much how my experience with the HomePod has been so far.
Individuals' results with Siri depend on personal variables, like rate of speech, enunciation, accents, pauses, etc. I had a boss with a thick Persian accent who used Siri dictation for all of his texts and many of his emails without a hitch. I've never been able to send a text with Siri without needing to edit the transcript.
If you're thinking about getting the HomePod as a smart speaker, and your experience with Siri has been negative, you should skip this product.
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For what it's worth, Spotify over AirPlay isn't the significant drop in sound quality over native AM playback that I was lead to believe. I'm on AM and Spotify, and while I'm fine using Siri with AM in most cases, Spotify has better playlists (higher affinity to my previous listening), and I'm satisfied with the sound of AirPlaying the latter over the HomePod.
I expect WWDC to introduce music intents for SiriKit, but if that never happens, AirPlay works for me.
I'm not a laissez-faire zealot, but anyone buying a HomePod primarily as an intelligent assistant should be more discerning. Non-music applications are mentioned but not emphasized. There's no way I would've dropped $700 for a pair of these after seeing Phil spend all of 30 seconds extolling the product's query capabilies in a seven-minute presentation.
I expected it to be, based on one review, but I can barely discern the difference—to the point of being skeptical of the reviewer who claimed he could. I don't think Apple's track EQ profiles are the lynchpin to the HomePod's sound quality that some people are implying.
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Given the name, Apple Analytics is almost certainly a dashboard for counting track plays, playlist additions, genre and mood profiling, etc.
Sounds good. Lag can make life interesting, both with slow AirPlay volume control response; and with audio to AirPlay on a MacBook Pro, running Movist, I had to set -2.3 seconds or so on the audio to get it synced with the video. Wonder how it (apparently automatically?) handles audio/video sync issues with Apple TV?
Good but right now not great. The sound is awesome but the Apple TV software needs an update. It’s silly that you can’t use both the tv sound and the HomePod. Hopefully that will change shortly. Plus Siri needs some work. Again, hopefully in an upcoming update and soon
Many, if not most Siri users have had far more than one occasion of misunderstanding, especially relative to other assistants. That's what makes Siri less.
Of course, even less is relative. I'm pretty happy with the HomePod, even if I have to repeat or rephrase every fifth request.
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I don't have 30 feet in this room to speak softly from, but I just walked back to a 20 foot distance from the HomePod, and it heard me say, "Hey, Sir, pause" softly while it played at 40%—and it paused.
In an otherwise quiet room, humans can another human speak softly (not shouting, not whispering) at 20 feet. The HomePod is, in effect, listening to your voice in "silence," since it knows the sound of its own output and can factor it out.
I can easily command my HomePod Siri through the speaker of my Arlo camera. Pretty neat. Sound is unbelieveable. Makes me think about a stereo setup.
So many people have missed this point, including me for weeks. At least in theory, the HomePod can bounce treble off a wall to create a convincing stereo effect.
I haven't tried it so I don't know that it does this for sure, but I've got the impression from reading reviews that it does.
Wow...this has been an interesting listening session. I will say this. The audio quality was not "immediately evident". It took some time but I found that moving the HomePod away from a wall helped a bit. As others have said the mids are not "great" but also I found the speaker to be somewhat neutral. Sound quality will depend a lot on what is played.
The bass I did think was a bit heavy but then after awhile it was pretty pleasing. It doesn't overpower the other frequencies but has a presence that other small speakers don't.
I started off disappointed (raised expectations) to ultimately having them met. Is this a critical listening speaker? Not at all. A casual listening while working in the kitchen, sitting on the couch with a laptop. Oh hell yeah!
Played some K.D. Lang and feel like her voice and songs are mixed for a pretty damn good demo. Try it.
The bass I did think was a bit heavy but then after awhile it was pretty pleasing. It doesn't overpower the other frequencies but has a presence that other small speakers don't.
I started off disappointed (raised expectations) to ultimately having them met. Is this a critical listening speaker? Not at all. A casual listening while working in the kitchen, sitting on the couch with a laptop. Oh hell yeah!
Played some K.D. Lang and feel like her voice and songs are mixed for a pretty damn good demo. Try it.
The point was that you are paying for that featuere. But you can get a full ai such as Alexa for $30 and actually do a lot more. Bottomline is i wish i has Alexa on my phone and not Siri hehe.
What more does Alexa actually do? Sorry I don't own any Amazon products.
TO me from what I can tell ... Music services seem better integrated with a short few commands, but the real benefit to Alexa is not even mapping or driving services or avoiding traffic when about to drive or ordering hailing services (local Taxi, Uber, Lyft, etc) but more on the side of ORDERING products from ... Amazon.
Sorry even if I had a useful surplass of funds to just "buy" stuff I wouldn't ... so what does Alexa do daily better than Siri? Besides ordering products/services>
I didn’t want to believe that either, but the difference is very noticeable playing the same track on Spotify and directly from Apple Music.
When I wrote that, I tested it my launching AM and sending the output to the HP, which I mistakenly believed would play natively rather than over AirPlay (it probably will in AirPlay 2). I'm OK with the sound quality of AirPlay when I'm not AB testing with voice-initiated HomePod output, but I stand corrected.