HomePod Updates Will Be Installed Over-the-Air Using the Home App

[vipergts2207]

Ah, indeed @ one woofer. I overlooked that obvious thing.

— edit —

In hindsight, all of the 2.1, 5.1, 7.1 channel systems i’ve used only have one speaker in the subwoofer. That .1 doesn’t invalidate stereo. Technically the HomePod has enough speakers to do 7.1 sound (which I think is highly unlikely that it does, but it’s possible that it can).

The woofer in the HomePod is not in anyway the analogue of a subwoofer in a x.1 setup. It does what a standard woofer does in a bookshelf speaker, play frequencies of ~50-2000 Hz. You’ll notice a standard 2.1 setup is generally a 3-way system: subwoofer, woofer, and tweeter. HomePod skips the subwoofer level frequencies, much like a subless 2.0 setup.

 

[dannys1]

As an audio engineer this is a completely absurd argument. Panning bass frequencies never happens. Bass and sub-bass is something you want to feel, not something you want to spatially place. It is always centred for maximum impact - in music and FX.

And if you were an audio engineer (at least a good one and not a hobby home one who's read a book) you'd realised a tweeter does up to about 2k and between 300hz and 2k material is easily pannable.

Sub-bass is the only thing that is never panned and the reason for that has little to do with "impact" and everything to do with the fact that you'd make the needle jump out of cut vinyl. Without the worry of that anymore you'll find these days lots of electronic and hip hop producers pushing the boundaries and having stereo and panned bass and kick drums - Danja and Timbaland just had their Justin Timberlake record mixed with the live bassline panned hard left for instance.

Regardless of that, on any record there is lot's of stereo information between 300hz and whenever the tweeters on the homepod kick in that it can't reproduce - check it out on any decent spectrum analyser.

@Ploki will also confirm this for you.
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Ah, indeed @ one woofer. I overlooked that obvious thing.

— edit —

In hindsight, all of the 2.1, 5.1, 7.1 channel systems i’ve used only have one speaker in the subwoofer. That .1 doesn’t invalidate stereo. Technically the HomePod has enough speakers to do 7.1 sound (which I think is highly unlikely that it does, but it’s possible that it can).

@vipergts2207 already answered this but yes - the Homepod is just a standard bookshelf speaker with a woofer and tweeter, except there are multiple tweeters - which is where I think it'll create a "fake" stereo throw - but a tweeter is a tweeter it can't create frequencies below whatever it's crossover is.

For the average user this will probably not be noticeable and they'll hear, through processing what sounds like a wide image when it's bouncing stuff off the walls with its rear tweeters and the like - it'll probably start throwing 10k material all over the place. But you'll need two of them to create whatever the original master had in terms of stereo separation.

 

[prasand]

The woofer in the HomePod is not in anyway the analogue of a subwoofer in a x.1 setup. It does what a standard woofer does in a bookshelf speaker, play frequencies of ~50-2000 Hz. You’ll notice a standard 2.1 setup is generally a 3-way system: subwoofer, woofer, and tweeter. HomePod skips the subwoofer level frequencies, much like a subless 2.0 setup.

Ah, makes sense. So basically it would need 15 speakers in a 7.1 situation, 7 high, 7 mid, and 1 low.

 

[Ploki]

As an audio engineer this is a completely absurd argument. Panning bass frequencies never happens. Bass and sub-bass is something you want to feel, not something you want to spatially place. It is always centred for maximum impact - in music and FX.

Sub-bass is sub 40-50Hz, Bass is everything up to 120, and 120-400 is plenty of low-midrange that can take panning like a champ, and its not uncommont for bass frequencies to occupy a stereo field in 2010+ productions.

But its a moot point anyway, since we're not talking about sub-bass with homepod, but about mid/low woofer. (plenty of stereo going on.)

Oh yeah, i say that as an audio engineer, and can confirm what @dannys1 said about the topic.

Ah, indeed @ one woofer. I overlooked that obvious thing.

— edit —

In hindsight, all of the 2.1, 5.1, 7.1 channel systems i’ve used only have one speaker in the subwoofer. That .1 doesn’t invalidate stereo. Technically the HomePod has enough speakers to do 7.1 sound (which I think is highly unlikely that it does, but it’s possible that it can).

You're missing a very important point, 7.1 speakers are positioned inverted of how HomePod has them.
also, any decent x.x systems have full-rangers for at least the fronts, as any decent cinema mix is not bass-managed but has a separate LFE channel.

And surrounds are usually for the backs only.

This is more akin to having surround mid/woofer driver completely bypassed only using tweeter for spatial position and merging everything to one single bass driver. (not going to sound all that well.)

(edit: i see this has already been answered for you)