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HomePod HomePod first impressions
- Thread starter ApeBot
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If I had one criticism in regards to HomePod I think it would be the lack of anything other than WiFi connectivity.
On the whole I’m very happy with it (and understand everyone is different) but even the ability to plug in your iDevice so you could charge it/playback music would have been a welcome touch.
Sadly, it's always been this way with AirPlay and video... With non-Apple apps I actually thought that was by design - so you would use iTunes for video, for in instance.
Apple TV to HomePod has no delay when watching something. (tvOS 11.3 beta 2, no clue with the lastest non-beta release)
Not allowed your speakers. That seems unacceptable to me, have you considered a new girlfriend? (I'm joking)
To be honest if I had enough rooms, I'd consider moving by 5.1 system out of the living room too and have something smaller in there. I still don't know about the HomePod though, I had a listen in the Apple Store near me and although it's far from an ideal listening environment the mid range really did seem muddy to me. Decent sharp bass, clear treble details but it seemed somehow empty to me. Maybe I need to buy one and try it at home, I'm thinking I'll wait until at least Airplay 2 is released though.
Supposedly Airplay 2 will resolve that issue. I have no idea when that comes out, but its something that many people are waiting for.
So, where do you reckon those 14 speakers are facing?
I tried in a few different room, in the open on a kitchen worktop, on a shelf, up high, down low. I also tried a variety of different surfaces.
I certainly noticed a difference with a wall behind it and it sounded better on a good solid surface.
I think it sounded better through iTunes on the Mac after playing around with the EQ settings. If I could customise the EQ on the music app on my iPhone and not use the presets that that would have made a huge difference!
using Homepod with Apple TV is pretty damn good sound wise. Nice from the normal audio on the Apple TV where you have to turn it up so loud to even hear it
around in a circle. so sound is bouncing around all the walls. it makes it hard to separate channels when sound is not focused.
Just to give the problems i got.
I have an iPhone X with 11.3 (beta). I'm from Portugal and yesterday i received my HomePod that i bought from UK.
I turn on, setup as normal and ask siri to play something. After that, i enter on HomeKit and touch on HomePod. Said that was trying to connect but the HomePod is still playing some music. After this i try to use my control center on iPhone and i can't push it, seems a bug. I reboot my iPhone again, touch HomePod on Homekit and said: trying to connect and after that, can't use control center again.
I delete homepod from icloud, turn on auto-login on my wireless and can't connected. So, turn on again and i did it but it's still a little bit buggy.
So, i tryied HomePod on my girlfriend house, so today i will try it on my and see if everything run smoothly.
I guess homepod is fine and the problem is something from wireless, i'm not sure. I thought to downgrade iPhone but i guess it will be the same thing. I tried this things at 1:30 am, so was a little bit tired. Today i will try to do everything correct and if i can't i will try to contact support in Portugal (i'm not sure if they can help me...).
I know this is confusion, but i try to explain everything i tried. But if you have any question, ask and i reply.
Anyone got that bug on iPhone X?
For me, the quality is insane! Everyone at the room said: Such a nice quality!
I have an iPhone X with 11.3 (beta). I'm from Portugal and yesterday i received my HomePod that i bought from UK.
I turn on, setup as normal and ask siri to play something. After that, i enter on HomeKit and touch on HomePod. Said that was trying to connect but the HomePod is still playing some music. After this i try to use my control center on iPhone and i can't push it, seems a bug. I reboot my iPhone again, touch HomePod on Homekit and said: trying to connect and after that, can't use control center again.
I delete homepod from icloud, turn on auto-login on my wireless and can't connected. So, turn on again and i did it but it's still a little bit buggy.
So, i tryied HomePod on my girlfriend house, so today i will try it on my and see if everything run smoothly.
I guess homepod is fine and the problem is something from wireless, i'm not sure. I thought to downgrade iPhone but i guess it will be the same thing. I tried this things at 1:30 am, so was a little bit tired. Today i will try to do everything correct and if i can't i will try to contact support in Portugal (i'm not sure if they can help me...).
I know this is confusion, but i try to explain everything i tried. But if you have any question, ask and i reply.
Anyone got that bug on iPhone X?
For me, the quality is insane! Everyone at the room said: Such a nice quality!
Well, it's been a week now since 'HomePod Day', and we're completely satisfied with ours (WAF is very high, as is mine).
It is to be expected that there will be a wide variety of comments, pro and con, regarding the sound quality, comparisons with other speakers, as well as reports from experts of various sorts. The most important thing to anyone, really, should be how good it sounds to them, in their own environment, for the music they enjoy listening to. It is a very subjective thing, and regardless of how 'accurate' the sound is, or how sophisticated the processing is, people will ultimately judge it based upon their own preferences. Some will love the HomePod, others won't.
With that said I do find the technical evaluations very interesting, for example the Omenti article posted here almost a week ago -
http://tingilinde.typepad.com/omenti/2018/02/the-next-step-in-home-audio.html
As I write this, I'm listening to Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041 performed by Isaac Stern on violin, with Alexander Schneider leading the English Chamber Orchestra, a 1976 recording on Sony Classical CD that I have ripped to my iTunes library as an Apple Lossless file. The sound is superb from the two speakers flanking my iMac, stereo or not the two give a wider and more full soundstage and the clarity of the sound even at very modest volumes is excellent. I feel grateful to be living in a time when I am able to enjoy such things - not the products as much as the music they bring to us, which is what the point of this should be, after all.
It is to be expected that there will be a wide variety of comments, pro and con, regarding the sound quality, comparisons with other speakers, as well as reports from experts of various sorts. The most important thing to anyone, really, should be how good it sounds to them, in their own environment, for the music they enjoy listening to. It is a very subjective thing, and regardless of how 'accurate' the sound is, or how sophisticated the processing is, people will ultimately judge it based upon their own preferences. Some will love the HomePod, others won't.
With that said I do find the technical evaluations very interesting, for example the Omenti article posted here almost a week ago -
http://tingilinde.typepad.com/omenti/2018/02/the-next-step-in-home-audio.html
As I write this, I'm listening to Bach's Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV 1041 performed by Isaac Stern on violin, with Alexander Schneider leading the English Chamber Orchestra, a 1976 recording on Sony Classical CD that I have ripped to my iTunes library as an Apple Lossless file. The sound is superb from the two speakers flanking my iMac, stereo or not the two give a wider and more full soundstage and the clarity of the sound even at very modest volumes is excellent. I feel grateful to be living in a time when I am able to enjoy such things - not the products as much as the music they bring to us, which is what the point of this should be, after all.
There is some troll going around on these forums claiming there will be (without owning or trying it) and doesn't realize users are saying the opposite here and there are videos on youtube showing it works fine.
I wondered about that, thanks!
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Even a line in would be a huge help.
I've been using iTunes on my iMac to play "whole house" audio over AirPlay to my iMac (den), HomePod (kitchen) and Pioneer Elite A/V receiver (living room). I've got an Apple TV 4K connected to the Pioneer receiver but I don't need it. The Pioneer receiver has AirPlay built in. I don't have to bother turning on the TV or, for that matter, I don't have to use the Pioneer's remote to turn it on or adjust volume. If I choose the Pioneer receiver as one of the AirPlay devices from iTunes on my iMac, just checking the box in AirPlay automatically turns on the Pioneer receiver and sets it to the correct input. It's a piece of cake to control "whole house" audio from my iMac, with every location having individual volume sliders to balance everything.
I'm not having any sync issues either. When first starting it up if I start playing the song before the Pioneer receiver is fully booted it might be out of sync. But if I switch to a different song and back again everything is back in sync (or, just wait until the Pioneer is ready to go).
Once whole house audio is playing, if I go in the kitchen and ask Siri (HomePod) to lower the volume it gets lowered in ALL locations at the same time. I'll have to wait for AirPlay 2 to be able to control the volume at individual locations via voice.
All in all, this is working pretty darn well while I wait for AirPlay 2 on HomePod. So much so that I'm tempted to get additional HomePods to put in a few other rooms.
Mark
I'm not having any sync issues either. When first starting it up if I start playing the song before the Pioneer receiver is fully booted it might be out of sync. But if I switch to a different song and back again everything is back in sync (or, just wait until the Pioneer is ready to go).
Once whole house audio is playing, if I go in the kitchen and ask Siri (HomePod) to lower the volume it gets lowered in ALL locations at the same time. I'll have to wait for AirPlay 2 to be able to control the volume at individual locations via voice.
All in all, this is working pretty darn well while I wait for AirPlay 2 on HomePod. So much so that I'm tempted to get additional HomePods to put in a few other rooms.
Mark
Similarly, when I'm using Airplay to stream music from my iMac to my HomePod speakers throughout the house, if I want to turn off one of the speakers, it's necessary to do that from the computer. If for example I have speakers playing in the living room and bedroom, and I go to the bedroom speaker and touch the center of the top control to turn that speaker off, it turns off both speakers. I must go back to my computer to deselect the bedroom speaker and then press 'play' again, and music will come out of only the living room speaker.
AirPlay 2 will allow each HomePod speaker to be controlled independently from the HomePod, I'm certain.
Mark
We had two guesses:
- either downward
- or towards the solid plastic enclosure
went today to the apple store to check out the HomePod..now Im used to playing around with the amazon echo since my sister used to have one(Before it broke) I asked it "Hey Siri, find me a chicken recipe" and it said "Sorry Homepod can't find this" I just assumed like the echo it would be able to go to allrecipes.com or something and locate something is that not the case? at least it told me what 8x4 is lol
As far as I can tell, Apples descriptions of the HomePod don't clearly say which direction the 7 tweeters are facing, but the 'Roundup' here on MacRumors states the following:
At the bottom, there's a custom seven beamforming tweeter array, each with its own individual driver. Precision horns drive audio from the inside of the speaker out through the bottom with what Apple says is "tremendous directional control."
When I pick up my HomePod and hold it to my ears to try and determine where the sounds are coming from, it seems to me that the sound is coming from the bottom of the speaker rather than the sides, which is consistent with the description above.
It seems counter-intuitive that a speaker would have inward-facing speakers that then are directed down and out through the base of the speaker, and that this would result in a better sound image than speakers firing directly outward from the sides of the speakers, but this is what seems to be happening.
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Rene Ritche on MacBreak Weekly mentioned that the Apple Engineers worked hard at tweaking the Apple TV/HomePod combination, to the degree they were able to eliminate the lag, perhaps some of that work will make its way into Airplay 2
That isn't really how stereo works. Firstly, where ever the listener's ears perceive the sound to be coming from, is the direction, from stereo perspective, the sound is coming from. Listening to a HomePod it is very easy to locate the source direction, because the ear can locate where the higher frequencies (those are the directional ones) are coming from.
Secondly, stereo isn't about the actual source, it's the overall sound stage the listener perceives to exist, which will spread mostly between the sources, and project into the listening space if the speakers are well designed.
Because sound from the HomePod sounds like it emanates from and surrounds the device, creating a stereo sound stage won't be a problem at all. And one suspects that the beam-forming technology will be used to detect and place each HomePod in the listening space, and tune driver performance to help reinforce that sound stage.