I now of course want a second one for multiple room use! Dammit!
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HomePod Hands-On: Unboxing and Overview
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Worth $700? If have to have 2 then seems excessive. Paying that much does open up audiophile realm
I just set up my HomePod. The acoustic performance brought me to tears. Seriously, I can’t wait to populate my home with this. Thank you, Apple.
It’s really amazing to hear the delineation of harmony vocals! It’s like I’ve never heard a real blend before.
This is just flat-out wrong. People just think they have to wait, but actually you can just keep talking. This is the case for Siri on all devices.
Stereo setup is working on 11.3 beta 2. EverythingApplePro latest video.
Thanks so much for this. Siri’s usefulness just went up 50%!
Anyone else notice that the sound is better when you ask Siri to play something vs using AirPlay? A lot of the reviews said it should be the same but I’m noticing that AirPlay doesn’t sound quite as good. Maybe AirPlay 2 will resolve this?
Absolutely not. I read a review where the reviewer did indeed remove the cable. And no, that didn‘t break the HomePod:
The cable is six feet long and, firmly attached. You can detach it, in fact, but it takes all your courage and a heck of a tug. I did it and nervously put it back and it works perfectly. I think it’s detachable so you can feed the cable through tight spaces if the plug at the other end won’t go, but my advice would to be to leave it attached, for your peace of mind.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidp...-that-enough-price-release-date/#20d238669be5
Piping in audio broadcast via AirPlay surely had more bandwidth constraints than directly playing audio via onboard hardware.
I'd be cautiously optimistic that AirPlay 2 will completely resolve the difference.
On my computer I was able to listen to music simultaneously on the computer, Home Pod, and Apple TV via AirPlay.
Yeah, it's not multiple HomePods simultaneously, but I have tune-age in every room...
It’s not bad but if you play something both ways clearly native sounds better. I’m hoping that all the criticism will force Apple to create a music domain for Siri. I think it absolutely is limiting sales and holding out hoping people will switch to Apple Music instead is a mistake IMO.
As Long as you set up with an iOS 11 device , it will use airplay 1 , then airplay 2 when released to transfer sound. i done it earlier, it comes up in sound like a bluetooth device would as "HomePod'
Or maybe you‘re experiencing some sort of anti-placebo effect, thinking it sounds worse because one (quite confusing) review claimed so? I have a very hard time imaging a reason why this would be the case, after all HomePod gets the same data to work with.
It's interesting - apparently Apple begun working on this product 6 years ago. It's easy to see that at some point in that development they realized that Siri needed to improve and that their music infrastructure needed to change to enable a product like this. When Apple bought Beats, everyone was too focused on the headphone portion of the business to see that what they really needed was the streaming service piece.
Both Apple Music and Siri have room for improvement, but you can connect the dots in the reverse to see what had to come together for this to be released. It also sheds some light on their mindset as it pertains to the conversation around enabling Spotify and other third-party music services to integrate more seamlessly. As in, they waited at least 4 years and spent $3B and never released it with the idea that they'd let Pandora, Spotify, or Rdio be the music backbone. That kind of conviction may not change anytime soon. We'll see.
Technically speaking, Apple Music direct from HP does EQ to the songs preferred setting held on Apple Music, so it does have a slight better acoustic tuning. But, iv not experienced non AM as worse per say; its just more set to generic EQ, still sounds amazing. Could be slight placebo effect
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
There have been comments about HP doing some pre-processing of AM tracks. If so, maybe it does NOT pre-process Airplay tracks, regardless of source.
Why not? Presumably, someone Airplaying is doing so to get around the AM lock-in. Perhaps they are Airplaying the dreaded Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, etc.
though why any consumer would ever want to use any competing service seems farrrrrrrrrr beyond me. AM- after all- is perfect in every possible way. Don't pre-process the foreign tracks and make AM sound noticeably better... even if one is "throwing" a track from the iTunes store to HP vs. playing the very same track via AM. Maybe it too would not pre-process the former as a way to support a concept that AM sounds best in ALL head-to-head cases. If one wants to imagine a little darker: perhaps there may even be an audio throttling type of thing in play where it pre-processes Airplay sources explicitly to sound a little worse than the very same track via AM?
Why do that if you're Apple? AM $ubscription revenue... a long, long tail of ongoing revenue flowing in every month for up to at least the life of this product.
Do I know this to be the the case? No- just offering you a logical chain of thought in answer to "I have a hard time imagining why..." When something seems illogical, think about the money. The modern Apple seems to revolve around that question first... even above "thinner." The above must at least be plausible, except to those who will expect Apple to be the first corporation to be Sainted.
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Been using with my Apple TV for a few hours now, and three times my network has stalled requiring me to reboot my router or Apple TV (or in once case, both). Hopefully that's just a coincidence, but it's rather foreboding. EDIT: Just happened a fourth time, about an hour later.
Other than that, sound is great (especially crisp vocals or dialog)... better than my Bose Soundlink.
Siri works well (as others have said, does really well recognizing quiet commands across a room). I like that you can use Siri to play/pause content on Apple TV (though, don't understand why you can't use it to turn your TV on or off).
Oddly, Siri on my iPhone or Apple watch seems to override Siri on the homepod (as in, both light up but the phone is the device to respond). This is definitely not frequent, but still happens enough that I'm trying to figure out what the common factor is.
Other than that, sound is great (especially crisp vocals or dialog)... better than my Bose Soundlink.
Siri works well (as others have said, does really well recognizing quiet commands across a room). I like that you can use Siri to play/pause content on Apple TV (though, don't understand why you can't use it to turn your TV on or off).
Oddly, Siri on my iPhone or Apple watch seems to override Siri on the homepod (as in, both light up but the phone is the device to respond). This is definitely not frequent, but still happens enough that I'm trying to figure out what the common factor is.
Yup, you do have to re-select your Apple TV's "speaker" after playing music directly from the Homepod. I thought this would really bother me, but selecting the audio output is as easy as swiping down (on the Apple TV remote) while playing content, which brings up the "Info, Subtitles, Audio" menu. Really no more difficult than needing to turn on a soundbar or receiver.
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Just got mine an hour ago, the sound is amazing for such a small speaker. Karnatic (Indian classical) and Jazz etc sounds so good. I may get a second one once stereo is available.
Anybody else want ‘HomePod Towers’ after listening to this little gem?