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HomePod mini and HomePod Can't Be Stereo Paired, But HomePod Home Theater Support Coming Soon for Apple TV 4K
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Multiroom and intercom works. This article is saying that you cannot create a STEREO pair with a regular and a mini (where one act as left speaker and one act as the right speaker). You can only create a stereo pair with 2 regulars or 2 minis.
Agreed. People shouldn't complain about this.
Typical, I just bought an Amazon Fire TV and Echo Studio as well. I knew the moment I bought them Apple would announce home theatre mode for the home pod.
Luckily, the Fire TV is actually quite good, streams Dolby Atmos to the Echo Studio (in Home theatre mode) and actually sounds very good.
By the low price homepod mini and home theatre mode, it looks like Apple is trying to compete with Amazon (which is good).
Luckily, the Fire TV is actually quite good, streams Dolby Atmos to the Echo Studio (in Home theatre mode) and actually sounds very good.
By the low price homepod mini and home theatre mode, it looks like Apple is trying to compete with Amazon (which is good).
While the iPhone takes the road to be completely wireless, its the opposite with the HomePod.
Mini has the same flaw as the original HomePod. It's AC wired. At least, a usb c port to power that thing with an external battery. But no. Apple not being smart, Apple stubborn.
Not spending money on this.
Mini has the same flaw as the original HomePod. It's AC wired. At least, a usb c port to power that thing with an external battery. But no. Apple not being smart, Apple stubborn.
Not spending money on this.
I was planning the same thing until I realised that spatial audio with AirPods Pro is not supported on Apple TV.
Now, I don’t own a pair, but I guess this is right: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211775
Multi-room: You have one mono speaker in one room, and one in another room. They don’t have to match exactly because you hear only one at a time.
Stereo: You have one pair in a room as a stereo pair, that is one speaker cares more about the left channel and one cares more about the right channel. You need identical speakers, or one would be weaker than the other. They must play at exactly the same time, or you hear that they are out of sync. And you can hear whether vices or instruments are on the left or the right.
Trying to get stereo out of one big speaker and one small speaker would be a very bad idea.
AppleTV 4K supports Dolby Atmos, Airpods Pro support Dolby Atmos.... do these really not work together? Surely they must, especially when Airpods Studio land...? And surely AppleTV 4K should send Dolby Atmos to HomePod for spatial audio too when the new feature lands?
The HomePod has six speakers built in. So you should be able to get not-very-good 5.0 out of one HomePod, and quite decent 5.0 out of two HomePods.
You really want battery powered speakers? Plug them into a charger every few hours? I mean they are not headphones, they are proper speakers making proper noise and needing proper power.
I wonder when the HomePod 2 upgrade will be out? Seems like it is needed.
Edit with why it is needed from my reply below:
This is why a v2 HomePod is needed:
1. No UWB.
2. An A8 vs something more modern.
3. Only 1GB RAM.
4. I doubt if Thread will be on the HomePod v1 given it seems to need a separate transmitter.
5. HomePod mini was released in Fall 2020 and HomePod is from 2017.
In short, parity on some areas with the Mini, and updates for the rest of the components. These are things that can't be updated in software.
I don't mind paying a premium for the HP, but given the additional things added to the Mini, I wouldn't buy a non-mini before they upgrade it. I do like the $99 mini too.
To me it seems like a no brainer to have an update for the old HomePod, whether it is called a v2 or v 1.1.
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Hopefully, the update to Homepod will allow us in the UK to easily play nice with BBC Sounds; it is a real bug of mine and why I will be sticking with the Alexa (for now).
If they continue to add features by software, there doesn't seem to be a need for HomePod 2 any time soon?
What don't you understand. Multiroom audio works - obviously it can't be made into a stereo pair with a different sized speaker.
Why do people expect AirPlay 2 to be lag-free forg gaming? It was never designed to be used for real-time audio. The way it's able to make sure multi-room playback is playing synchronised is by having a buffer on each speaker to make sure playback is done simultaneously on all speakers without any delays from one to the other.
All of this will of course make it horrible for real-time audio as this will cause lag between video output and audio output. When using the Apple TV for video and HomePods for audio Apple is applying the same amount of delay on the video as the buffer on the HomePods to make sure everything is synchronised.
This wont work for gaming of course as you can't apply a buffer to the video when gaming as this would provide an incredibly frustrating experience as you would have a crazy amount of input lag.
Using AirPlay for gaming audio is going beyond its design.
All of this will of course make it horrible for real-time audio as this will cause lag between video output and audio output. When using the Apple TV for video and HomePods for audio Apple is applying the same amount of delay on the video as the buffer on the HomePods to make sure everything is synchronised.
This wont work for gaming of course as you can't apply a buffer to the video when gaming as this would provide an incredibly frustrating experience as you would have a crazy amount of input lag.
Using AirPlay for gaming audio is going beyond its design.
It's great that we're talking about stereo pairing HomePods. But somebody needs to get one of the Apple higher ups to go on the record with an explanation of why Apple still doesn't support using stereo paired HomePods as an output device on a Mac computer. Stereo pairing was a feature introduced with AirPlay 2. But more than two years after the rollout of AirPlay 2, Apple still hasn't added AirPlay 2 support to the Mac OS. I think we deserve an answer from Apple as to why.