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Hands-On Experience of New HomePod Reveals 'Exquisite' Audio Quality

Ray2 said:
I’m in the market for one of these. What’s the deal with “Apple Music”? I’ve read other reviews that mention, like the first, it’s limited to playing Apple Music. Is this true? I need to stream my content, resident in my audio devices, no matter what it is, to my speakers.
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This isn’t true, and has never been true. What is true however is that if you’re not using Siri that it’s limited to AirPlay, so if you want to play from another source you need to use airplay.

When using Siri you can use Apple Music and any services that has updated their app to work with the HomePod, like Deezer. So you could set deezer as the streaming service instead of Apple Music. Spotify hasn’t bothered implementing that, because they’re a toxic company that’s in a pissing match with Apple and their iOS-based users are collateral.
 
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ipedro said:
No, you don't. A single one in a room sounds incredible. You'll have a hard time discerning where the sound is coming from. "Stereo" here is a bit of a misnomer. The real benefit of the pair is for using them with a TV. I had just one next to my TV and it never felt like I was just getting one side. However, when I added a second, it did give a truer sense of immersion. But I wouldn't say it was necessary.
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Ok thanks for clearing that up! I actually thought it was a glorified mono speaker unless you bought two of them…
 
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aberdeenmeadows said:
Appreciate the article, but we really need to read articles by true audiophiles - you know, the ones that spend upwards of $5,000 for the perfect sound system through their house to get the correct depth, acoustic quality, and richness of music and we need to have songs that we all have listened to, that has the range needed or the bass.

Pink Floyd music would be a good choice and I am sure others could advise too.

The writer seems to compare this to a 2018 HomePod rather than the Bose speakers, for example. Or Yamaha. Shoot, let's even compare with Sonos but even with Sonos I wasn't too impressed. Friend of mine had Sonos and it didn't sound all that great, but maybe it was the music they were playing on it. Even Altec, JBL. Something!

And that's the thing, I am not an audiophile, but I get irked when the quality isn't that good.

I have the HomePod Mini and I love listening to music from it, and I connected it to the TV last night and the sound was great, but there is no equalizer other than turn bass on or off.

So I take it that Apple Speakers uses <gasp> computational audio AI or some other bs to separate the voice from the instruments and then recompile them and spatially throw it back at us.
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Seems to me sound quality is subjective. But someone gets invited by Apple to a listening session and then their review uses words like ‘exquisite’ to describe the sound and the first thing I’m thinking is this person wants to be invited to more Apple product briefings in the future.
 
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These quotes read a bit like they’re from people who haven’t listened to music except with headphones or a cheap Bluetooth speaker. Vocals almost always sound like they’re coming from the center of a proper stereo setup.
 
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honglong1976 said:
This was all said about the original HomePod. I got one, and there was nothing Spacial about the audio at all.
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Chances are there weren't a ton of Dolby Atmos mixes out then. For spatial audio to work (it's not an effect you can just through onto any recording) the mixes have to be mixed and delivered in Dolby Atmos, or at least binaural via Dolby Atmos.
 
One of the interesting things about the new HomePod 2 is its spatial awareness. As I listened to music from a single and then stereo pair of HomePod 2 devices, I noticed how the sounds often didn't seem to be coming directly from the HomePods (thanks Spatial Audio!). Some were coming from the left, others from the right, and some (usually, but not always, vocals) from dead center.
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This guys sounds like he's never done audio reviews before. The above description isn't some amazing new 'spacial awareness', but rather the basics of stereoscopic audio. Any decent stereo-pair system (playing a good stereo source) can place sounds anywhere in the sound field, including dead center, or off-set center. Pure left/pure right is of course the easiest.

The most interesting sounds though, were the ones that almost seemed to wash over me; they were bouncing off the back wall (maybe a foot away from the HomePod 2) and then rising and, I'm guessing here, bouncing from the walls to the ceiling to my ears.
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Similarly, with delay encoding, one can make sounds even seem (to the brain) to come from behind or beyond the physical range of the speaker placement. This has been around for decades. I have albums from the 90s with this, and it is very effective (given a proper set-up and listening position).
 
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I hate the fanboy over the top glowing everything is great crowd (this is not a jab at ya'll, just in general)

BUT

the OG HomePod is still my absolute favorite way to hear music. But I have a few caveats:
- A stereo pair is key; the difference between just 1 and a pair of 2 is unexpectedly incredible and more than just the sum of their parts
- AirPlay, no matter what device I use including AppleTV, HomePod OG or Mini, Third party, etc -- is just infuriatingly unreliable. BUT when it works, god damn do I love the way it sounds on the HomePod OG

So I really really really hope that the reduction of tweeters isn't going to make a perceptible difference. But my friend who works at Apple stressed to me back in the day how much they labored over making the OG exceptional (thus expensive) and so any changes to that trigger a great deal of skepticism from me. Their original decisions were very well thought out and tested...
 
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skitidetdu said:
Ok thanks for clearing that up! I actually thought it was a glorified mono speaker unless you bought two of them…
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It is a glorified mono speaker in single setup. I played Hendrix and Yes through a single speaker to test since these bands do some heavy instrument panning, and a single speaker would drop instruments. Bought a second speaker for same day home delivery after I ended my test.
 
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wbeasley said:
Cmon, newer Wifi (and most tech) supports early versions.
Dont they fall back on the slower/older standard when local conditions arent great?
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It will not change the standard but the speed. There are lot of differences between the standards.
 
Okay, a bit of reality here... Apple sets up a demonstration in a quality controlled area for hard core, card carrying fan club members and the fan club goes wild. Pretty much like a pep rally at a school before the big game. Calm down, take several deep breaths, and wait for the average Jane and Joe to review these SpecDumpPods in a real world environment far away from the showmanship that would have brought tears of joy to the eyes of P.T. Barnum.

Yep, I said dump, as in fewer speakers and out dated Wi-Fi, etc. They don't even qualify as a spec bump, just a dump...
 
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Lance Ulanoff's sound description is very lousy and using the "Everybody" song as a benchmark is ridiculous. Play a classical or jazz song with many instruments to decide the HomePod's clarity and exquisiteness.

2 questions Apple should address is why they used an older WiFi standard and why they left-out BlueTooth.
 
Is it me or have Apple not learnt from the first HomePod? These still seem too expensive, especially if you really should be buying two of them to get the full experience and if you look at the competition some sell them for less than half the price Apple does. Creating a dust-collecting indentation for the interface screen is frustrating, especially as the older model was easier to clean and yes these collect dust very easily.

Do you still have to ask to play something via another service using Siri or can you just set a default service?

I feel like Apple should be thinking bigger with these smart speakers and working to create full surround sound systems (with further products to meet the need for it) that work with AV systems using an eARC hub or through Airplay 3 on AV receivers, not just AppleTV.

Hopefully they don't do a Google and give up on it again.
 
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skitidetdu said:
Ok thanks for clearing that up! I actually thought it was a glorified mono speaker unless you bought two of them…
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It is!!

I was very curious about the supposed "amazing" quality from the reviews of the original Pod. I bought it on day 1 and it was ok but nothing special. When I bought another and paired them, the improvement to the listening experience was significant - greater than the sum of its parts.
 
BogiTheTomtom said:
Can someone tell me if we can use these homepods as a normal speaker system for a mac? i.e. just get it to produce sound for whatever it receives from a mac? I would like it to act like a normal speaker. Is this possible? Thanks
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yes, but with the HomePod mini (and I guess the new ones too) there's an extra latency due to AirPlay. So unless you're planning on using them just to listen to music, you'd be better off with some wired speakers.
 
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