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HomePod Homepod's microphones reception worsen after a few days

Ya ours went for maybe a day then it would come and go unplugging it would fix it for a bit I was thinking it was voiceover doing it but I guess not.
 
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FWIW, I've had mine for 10 days of heavy usage and have experienced no such thing. In fact, I discovered yesterday that I can go across the room and down a flight of stairs and talk to my HomePod without yelling.
 
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yadmonkey said:
FWIW, I've had mine for 10 days of heavy usage and have experienced no such thing. In fact, I discovered yesterday that I can go across the room and down a flight of stairs and talk to my HomePod without yelling.
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Ditto

In fact, when there' s no music playing or other significant background sound such as my TV, I barely need to raise my voice above a whisper.
 
I've started to try to use Siri more and I have noticed that if I don't use it for a while, it doesn't pick up my voice on the first try. I have to wake it and then I can use it.
 
Same. Last week it wasn't responding to me as well as it was the day I unboxed it. HOWEVER testing it right now and I can't find fault in it. Weird, maybe a placebo, maybe I was mumbling, not sure what is/was going on.
 
NO issues here......
I can be in the next room and speak normal volume with the music playing pretty loud....she responds like a good little girl . ;)
 
My HomePod is upstairs and my bedroom is downstairs. Every workday morning for two weeks I've asked Siri to turn on the upstairs lights while I'm in my bedroom, and every morning the lights are on when I go upstairs. No deterioration in hearing that I can tell.
 
za9ra22 said:
My HomePod is upstairs and my bedroom is downstairs. Every workday morning for two weeks I've asked Siri to turn on the upstairs lights while I'm in my bedroom, and every morning the lights are on when I go upstairs. No deterioration in hearing that I can tell.
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For me, the deterioration occurs only while the Homepod is playing music. At first HP is able to pick up my commands even when playing music at high volume, after a while its either I have to shout or it doesnt pick up my commands at all. If I unplug the HP and power it on again it works fine again until it doesnt..
 
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Ok I was having this issue. I had to shout and half the time it wouldn’t hear me. Power cycling fixed the problem. I hope I don’t have to keep doing this.
 
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cynics said:
Same. Last week it wasn't responding to me as well as it was the day I unboxed it. HOWEVER testing it right now and I can't find fault in it. Weird, maybe a placebo, maybe I was mumbling, not sure what is/was going on.
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Same experience. The other day I felt like it was harder to invoke and use but right now I spoke with my regular voice, not raising it at all while music playing at about 40% volume, and it heard me and did wha5 I asked.

Kind of weird.
 
za9ra22 said:
My HomePod is upstairs and my bedroom is downstairs. Every workday morning for two weeks I've asked Siri to turn on the upstairs lights while I'm in my bedroom, and every morning the lights are on when I go upstairs. No deterioration in hearing that I can tell.
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That’s amazing. My HomePod has never been able to do that distance. Even if I shout to next door, HomePod being about 10 ft away. It never responds
 
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I'm not saying this is what is happening but here is some anecdotal experience using Amazon Alexa for two years in every room of our house and now HomePod...

When you first get these devices, speaking to them seems unnatural. You think about what you are going to say and then speak clearly and fairly slow. Quiet or loud doesn't matter, its the pace and distinctiveness of the words. Once you get used to talking to them you begin have smoother more "normal" speech patterns where "Hey Siri, turn on the lights" all kinda slurs together and then what do you know... it begins to have difficulty recognizing speech. Without question our two HomePods are miles better at hearing quiet commands and commands over loud music compared to Amazon Echo units *but* they aren't immune to when we speak quickly without enunciating the words clearly. The more we got "used" to talking to Alexa/Siri we got the worse the recognition was until we began talking to it more slowly and clearly having to remember it isn't a human but a computer that hasn't gotten as good at recognizing speech as a real person.
 
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I could be right next to mine with no music playing and she still wouldn't respond. Like others, I unplugged it and it seems to have fixed it .. for now. I hope this can be fixe via software.
 
canyonblue737 said:
When you first get these devices, speaking to them seems unnatural. You think about what you are going to say and then speak clearly and fairly slow. Quiet or loud doesn't matter, its the pace and distinctiveness of the words.
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I've definitely noticed this, except that I haven't reverted to sloppier speech, which might account for my continued success with HomePod. I've actually carried the habit into my normal life, trying to speak more clearly and concisely in every situation. I love that my HomePod keeps me conscious of it!
 
I am also having this concern while music is playing, I have owned HomePod apprx 2 weeks.

I typically listen to music / NPR between 70-80% volume and when I fist got HomePod i was impressed that I could activate Siri at normal or slightly above normal speaking volume.

I noted after a week that i was having to speak louder for the speaker to respond and a few times I had to say "Hey Siri" more than once. My concern has happened frequently with both music and NPR Fresh Air Podcast.

I think I have remedied my concern, or atleast for the time being.

After purchase I sat HomePod on a nightstand and have not moved, nor touched it. After noticing and verifying the activation concern I picked up the speaker, turned it sideways so it would recalibrate and placed it back in the same spot. It has worked properly for the last few days.
 
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I’m 15 days I’m now and I’ve had no microphone issues at all. Even when I’m next door in the kitchen I can ask it to do something and it responds, there is a door opening but no line of sight to the HomePod which is tucked round a corner in relation to the opening. I don’t even have to shout.

When I’m blasting my music out I only have to talk at a normal speaking level to be heard over the music, when I’m in the same room as the HomePod. In fact it’s one of the things I love most about the HomePod compared to my Echo 2, which I had to scream at to be heard over even moderate noise.

I’m very curious though as to why there doesn’t seem to be a consistency with this though. Other than the potential for some people to have defective devices, we should all have pretty much the same experience in this regard.
 
Just did it again. Doing things around the house, HomePod had responded to change stations / songs a few times, worked normally then quit responding to 'Hey Siri".

When concern happened I changed tone of voice a few times even yelling once and changed room positions a few times.

Yes I know a hard rock band is playing this instance and someone has suggested that it may not be able to hear clearly, but this has happened listening to Fresh Air on NPR, a talk show.


Here is a YouTube link'
 
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