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HomePod Early Hands-On Reviews: 'Seamless' Siri Commands and Audio Quality 'Feels Like You're at a Live Performance'
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1. Most assuredly
2. It will play them at the quality that AirPlay 2 can deliver. And I would imagine that is at least as good as the original AirPlay protocol, which uses the Apple Lossless Codec at 44.1k sample rate. So, significantly better than AM's 256k AAC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPlay
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Might want to elaborate. Can it coexist with your Sonos system? Yes.
Can it sync whole house playback with your Songs setup as if it's a Sonos speaker? Probably not.
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Might want to read a little further into the thread. Apparently the answer to #1 is likely no. And if so, #2 is probably "no" too since it will probably be streaming music from the Apple servers even if the same songs are on my local Mac.
But yes, if I choose to bypass the "smarts" and use it as an airplay speaker, then I can push my music files to this (then not-so-smart) speaker.
There's also some hope about the Match service but that still implies it ignores the potentially higher quality originals on my local Mac and streams the matched file from iTunes servers.
Read it again -- she dismissed her knowledge of audio gear, but then spoke of growing up with musician parents and being around rehearsals and performances for much of her life.
If anyone knows what "live performance" sounds like, it's people like her (and myself) who have spent more hours in the same room with instruments and singers than listening to electronically-reproduced sound.
She mentioned a recording of an a cappella group as part of the listening tests, and how the imaging from the HomePod was enough to discern the separate vocalists. That's darned impressive from a single piece of speaker hardware.
I'd like to hear one myself sometime. I haven't bought any audio gear in years because none of it really matches a live performance anyway.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I saw all that. Musician parents are not necessarily talking tweeters, tweeter arrays & mids. But I'll grant that such terms are not deep, deep, hardly-anyone-could-know about this minutia that sometimes flies around in speaker spec debates. That's partly why I don't completely dismiss what is there- just basically pointing out apparent bias, a good reason to be biased and that the conclusion seemed favorable to be predetermined.
She's a reporter. But she didn't report WHERE the tests were done. Who was running the testing? Etc. A lot of phrases sounded PR-ish to me, like maybe whoever was running the tests were emphasizing the positives. Were the test presenters/hosters maybe Apple? Probably, right? If the testing host is biased, a reporter may pick up lines & phrases that the host rolls out in comparisons. If they "know next to nothing about audio hardware", maybe they copy down such phrases to give their article more punch?
If the host was Apple, would Apple zero in on it's own product's shortcomings (if any)? Of course not. Would Apple choose audio test files most flattering to it's product and least flattering to the other products? Of course. Would maybe those files be optimized to sound best on Apple's own product and worse on the competitors? Of course. And so on.
Of course if it sounds overly gushing, positive praise about one choice, maybe someone will question the credibility. So here's a few shortcomings to pin to the favorite that are going to be addressed this year. No deal killers- just some smallish issues with assurances (by a reporter!!!) that it will be addressed in a future software upgrade. Some cons can make the "whole" seem more credible right? If the cons are smallish and fixed soon, they don't turn many readers much away from the favorite.
It may be that this test was truly unbiased & objective, hosted by someone with no desire to show any favoritism to any of these speakers. Perhaps each reporter got to "throw" their own choice of a music file(s) into the pool, with no tweaks or optimization, that the audio files played were exactly the same quality, not lossless here but 64kbps there. Etc.
Again, see my TV-selling reference. Tweak the settings on the set you want to sell and the settings on sets you don't want to sell. Feed the sets you want to sell the best video and feed the other sets a less attractive copy of the same. Etc. People come in, "shop head-to-head" and buy the set you want them to buy. It appeared to be the best. Mission accomplished. Max commission earned.
When the head-to-head is fully OUTSIDE of Apple's control, we'll read objective reviews. Reviewer will set the environment. They'll pick the audio files to be tested- probably a common group of files they use for testing many other small-sized speakers. All such "razzle dazzle" possibilities will be mitigated. It won't be obvious which speaker is the favorite from the start. In fact, they'll go out of their way to identify tangible cons at least as hard as they go to identify tangible pros. The conclusion might end up about the same or it might shift the crown to one of the others. TBD.
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Who else lists THD, Watts or frequency response (for any HomePod competitors)? And if they did, how do you know which is better? Even many major speaker manufacturers are vague with specs, listing things like frequency response without any qualifiers.
Speaker A: 30Hz-20KHz
Speaker B: 25Hz-30KHz
Which one will sound better?
Amplifier A: 100W into 8 Ohms, 0.01% THD
Amplifier B: 100W into 8 Ohms, 0.05% THD
Which one sounds better? Which one will play louder (or are they the same)?
Specs can be useful, but with many companies out there listing figures without any qualifiers they are practically useless.
Do you realize that pretty much everything you listen to has ALREADY been processed? In many cases extensively. So you're going to claim there shouldn't be any processing in your system at home?
Ordered mine, I do have an Echo and Dot , but as you stated I’m all Apple, now that I have my Wemo bridge, works GREAT!, Siri can do all I need it to now.
And how is that possible? The
[doublepost=1517010894][/doublepost]It better work seamlessly. It only works with Apple stuff. What a laugh!
Not true, it works with HomeKit enabled products, non of which Apple makes.
Based on it costing too much. "A fool and their money are soon parted."
Your apologizing for Apple aside, it's way too much compared to any piece of Alexa or Google junk.
True but that won't stop anyone, including me, I also on the Echo and Echo Dot, which this will replace.
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Nope, his is an excited Apple fan and just like everything you must make that decision yourself, I bought one cause well I'm all Apple been so since the '80's.
All the post on audio quality for a device that’s going to used to play crappy mp3s by 90+% of the buyers.
Does it sound better than the competitors - Sounding like a live broadcast would put me off. I never go to live shows and much prefer the 100 takes version as it is what I am used to listening on the radio. I hate the live versions on CD/Radio/TV.
Is the Siri integration useful - Most people agree that Siri isn't very good at working out what you said, has it changed any? It understands me less than 50% of the time.
Is the design good - its fine, just looks like an enlarged stretched version of my google home mini.
HomePod smacks of a me-too product? What other consumer-priced desktop speaker employs adaptive beamforning and dynamic self-equalization through and array of microphones and drivers, in order to produce superior sound?
While I am buying one of these, I do also feel it is a me-too product. Not in the audio sense because that is how Apple is trying distinguish this product from the other assistant speakers. But certainly in the assistant sense it is a me-too product. Apple only has themselves to blame for falling behind with Siri's capabilities as an assistant. If Siri were the equal of Alexa or Google Assistant then this product is a no brainer even without great sound and they could try to get Siri to a broader audience at a lower price point. But they can't so the audio driven approach wound up being the marketing point to mask Siri shortcomings.
I think most of us were aware of this immediately after HomePod was announced. I'm ok with buying one because I wouldn't mind a solid audio product in the kitchen that is tied to the Apple ecosystem because I am also tied to that same ecosystem with zero desire to move away from it. The fact that Siri will certainly improve over time will hopefully keep v1 of HomePod useful for quite some time but in the meantime I hope to have a good sounding device in spaces where I can have wanted music and also make use of Siri for HomeKit and what it can do today. I could have bought a Bose or Sonos system in the past but there wasn't enough there to convince me buy. This intrigues me enough to give it a chance.
Really? Can you elaborate with detailed specifics? I find her extremely knowledgeable and thorough with respect to her reviews (speaking as a hardware/systems engineer).
With Airplay 2 I think you may be able to group it with AirPlay 2 Sonos devices. We’ll have to wait until later this year to see.
Not a problem in my house which was built in 1934 with a real stucco exterior. The entire house is wrapped with a steel mesh which pretty much blocks out most of the signals. Of course when I walk out the door I lose my own WiFi immediately.
So now it is a home assistant? because, you know, people here have been saying this is not really an assistant, but a 'quality' speaker when compared to other smart speakers...
