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It's really strange that Apple keeps adding new features to a product that is quietly being discontinued? eARC passthrough, a possible lossless music streaming, spatial audio and what not.

What's the deal here really? I really want to buy a second HomePod for the bedroom as stereo pair. But the dire situation of it being discontinued keep bugging me.
Get the second, while you can. I finally bit the bullet about a week ago and the stereo sound is incredible. So much more flexibility too if you have an ATV and want to try theater out (also pretty amazing). Hopefully you can return or resell if you’re disappointed, but I strongly doubt it - again, I was the complete opposite. I think you’ll be more disappointed if you don’t try and then it’s gone.
 
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That’s fantastic! I have been looking around on ebay and FB marketplace and I have only come across £180+ That too opened.
Yeah. It just came up in my feed on Thursday as I’ve set it up to be alerted about homepods on market place. It was advertised as £150 but the guy said he was open to offers. To be honest I would have taken it at £150. I asked him what’s the lowest you would accept because it says open it offers and he said £120. I picked it up yesterday. Set it up and it’s all good.
 
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Does anyone think the Bose headphones with AR will gain support for Spatial audio through software updates in the future? (Provided apple lets them.)
 
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No. The support article was only talking about Apple Music streams played back directly onto the Homepod. Not about lossless playback of local files.

Since 2018, you have indeed been able of playing lossless files on the Homepod via Airplay 2, which supports lossless CD quality wrapped in an Apple Lossless container. So yes, the difference that you perceived is real.

You have been able to do this because, hardware wise, the Homepod has hardware decoding support for ALAC and FLAC streams up to 24bit/48khz. CD quality is 16/44.

So it made NO SENSE whatsoever that these wont support Apple Music lossless, specially when, right now, you can play lossless Deezer (CD quality) directly on the Homepod (not using Airplay, they added natively support not long ago). If a third party music service can do this, them im sure as hell Apple Music can too.
From the FAQs on Lossless from the Apple support article:

“Can I listen to lossless audio on my HomePod or HomePod mini?

HomePod and HomePod mini currently use AAC to ensure excellent audio quality. Support for lossless is coming in a future software update.”

I believe what you’re saying is true, but the article did not seem specific to streaming.
 
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Glad I bought those two homepods. Just like 3D Touch, they failed on the marketing. The HomePod sucks when compared to Alexa and all that other stuff for smarts. But it does the basic stuff I need that google home did.

But, it’s a freakishly incredible sounding device and adding this functionality pushes ir closer to soundbar/home audio space.

there’s no way a HomePod successor isn’t inbound. While discontinued, new features are still inbound.
I find Siri to be more capable and easier to use for smart home stuff then both Alexa and google home.
 
Does anyone think the Bose headphones with AR will gain support for Spatial audio through software updates in the future? (Provided apple lets them.)
Possible. Apple Music surround is Dolby Atmos so all you need is a Dolby Atmos compatible headphone.
 
so we come full circle for the stupid decision to remove the 3.5mm jack. wonder if apple will backtrack on that just like they did with their stupid decision on macbook ports.
I don’t ever expect the headphone jack to return on phones. Hopefully the streaming services moving to higher quality audio pushes Bluetooth to get better. Personally I hadn’t used the headphone jack in my phone since the iPhone 3g
 
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Still no mention of CarPlay anywhere. Considering CarPlay is a fully digital connection, I would imagine lossless would work. Maybe even hi-res.

The larger question would be which DAC is being used. The iPhone sends a digital signal to the car system, which I guess the car uses it’s own DAC to convert the stereo signal to analogue.

So, which format does it send the car DAC?
 
Curious to see what DAC's Apple will recommend (sell on the store) for Hi-Res.
Or if they will make one......... Either way, future Mac's should end up with decent to fairly good DAC's built in.
As in it will be a standard, not something you have to get after the fact. The next iPhone may very well have a DAC on the level of the older LG phones. One can hope :)
 
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Ah now that makes more sense. Bluetooth just doesn't have the data bandwidth for uncompressed, raw, digitised music.
But for Apple to not support it on its on Music playing hardware, which it touted at launch a few years ago as being best in class, made no sense at all.

I was doubting my reading comprehension when I saw this as the most voted comment.

Apple clearly says,
“…However, given the analog to digital conversion in the cable, the playback will not be completely lossless.”

I guess people focus on what they want to see. Sure the Max will be able to play some enhanced but not yet fully lossless form of audio, and perhaps people are relieved with just that. However, “not…completely lossless” was what stood out most to me.

FYI, I do admit I’m not the average apple Music subscriber with audio gear costing near a used car.
 
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From the FAQs on Lossless from the Apple support article:

“Can I listen to lossless audio on my HomePod or HomePod mini?

HomePod and HomePod mini currently use AAC to ensure excellent audio quality. Support for lossless is coming in a future software update.”

I believe what you’re saying is true, but the article did not seem specific to streaming.

The entire support document is only talking about Apple music streaming.
 
This is great news. Wonder why Apple didn’t have this announcement ready when they first announced lossless?
 
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I was convinced I could hear a difference on my stereo pair of OG HomePods between the Apple Music stream and CD-quality music from my library (pushed over AirPlay 2), but the support article says they have only been playing AAC format (so now I’m not so sure).

Feel free to not use Lossless if you can’t hear a difference. Save the bandwidth or storage space. I at least look forward to the FREE opportunity to test it out for myself.
Fair enough. I’ll be using lossless and perhaps hi-res lossless on my high-end headphones. Looking forward to try it out :)
 
This is great news. Wonder why Apple didn’t have this announcement ready when they first announced lossless?

Again, they did. Quoting myself:


They did. T3 reported that Apple confirmed to them that both the Apple TV and the Homepods will support Apple Music lossless, but shortly thereafter Macrumors published an article that said the exact opposite. Every other media (inclusing international ones), seemed to replicate what Macrumors said. Hence the confusion.


In short, all of this was MR fault.
 
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