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HomePod's Multi-Room Audio and Stereo Features Will Not Be Available at Launch
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Right, but it's a "dumb" pairing, meaning the speakers don't do anything other than split the channels differently. Apple is doing more than that with the HomePod stereo pair due to the sensing/beam forming aspect.
They play the left channel on the left speaker and the right channel on the right speaker. In other words, how it was mastered in the studio and how the recording engineer intended it to sound...
Lack of stereo doesn't bother me. I'm afraid, though that no Airplay 2 might mean that the standard won't yet be available for third parties to implement, either, and that sucks, because it increases the risk that the protocol won't catch on.
While I am sure they will work out the bugs for this feature, having perfectly sync audio isn't easy, but others have done it, also they could be running into patent issues.
Right, but the speakers themselves aren't interacting in terms of how to balance sound for the room and cancel certain sound waves etc. They'll play the exact same way regardless of where they're placed or how far apart they are. That's the "dumb" part.
Actually you are wrong. That’s only true if you don’t perform a trueplay calibration with your phone. This tunes each speaker for the room you are playing in.
Dumb question - Can you use the HomePod to stream music from your Mac? I only saw references to iOS on Apple's website.
Don’t move the goal posts. Stereo is just a left and right channel. Two speakers. Whatever other features Apple brings to the table are in addition to creating a stereo pair. Apple promised that feature for HomePod and have delayed it. And Sonos has offered that feature for years.
Furthermore, Apple is hardly the only, much less first, company to offer a beam forming speaker system. I have no doubt that HomePod will sound great, but does it offer anything over the competition? I don’t think so.
What bothers me as a 35 year customer and longtime investor is how sloppy Apple has become lately. There haven’t been any major disasters (yet), thankfully, but there have been plenty of sloppy releases. Why did they even announce HomePod, only to delay it, miss the holiday season, and now finally ship it minus two key features that the competition has offered for years? Really?! That’s ridiculous. I understand that delays happen, but then get it right when you do ship.
I’m losing confidence in today’s Apple and worry that releases like this indicate a deeper, more systemic issue has taken root.
More importantly, they WANT to allow anything on it rather than Apple which makes 3rd party integration difficult if not impossible on some of their devices.
Good Lord. Just get SONOS. At least you know they're not going to drop support.
When this things fails to drive subscription numbers to AppleMusic, it's done.
When this things fails to drive subscription numbers to AppleMusic, it's done.
They'll probably end up saying taking 1 minute of their time to calibrate it is a waste of their time and that it should just do it on it's own. Yet here they are commenting on a rumor forum.
Over promised and under delivering. When they announced it will go on sale in December 2017, there is no way they thought stereo pair or AirPlay 2 will be ready by then, if those features are now "coming later this year". But they still announced those features without mentioning a delay anyways.
This really does feel odd for Apple. Announced too early, delays, and now missing features. I've bought pretty much everything Apple has put out the last decade but this doesn't do it for me for some reason.
From a smart speaker perspective, the Echo is a better "assistant" type home speaker because they've let Siri lapse into near-irrelevancy. From an audio quality perspective, I have my Mac workstation hooked up to a nice pair of studio monitors in my office with AirServer so I can AirPlay to them, and an Apple TV hooked up to my main TV/speakers in the living room.
Why do I need a HomePod? I feel like most are going to feel similarly.
It just gives me pause for concern with what's going on inside Apple that a project like this can falter. Why is Siri so much less responsive than Alexa? Where are they with this stuff?
From a smart speaker perspective, the Echo is a better "assistant" type home speaker because they've let Siri lapse into near-irrelevancy. From an audio quality perspective, I have my Mac workstation hooked up to a nice pair of studio monitors in my office with AirServer so I can AirPlay to them, and an Apple TV hooked up to my main TV/speakers in the living room.
Why do I need a HomePod? I feel like most are going to feel similarly.
It just gives me pause for concern with what's going on inside Apple that a project like this can falter. Why is Siri so much less responsive than Alexa? Where are they with this stuff?
I can't say for sure but I think it must have been more hardware related. I was "lucky" enough to get a pair about a week after launch. I had to go though 3 warranty swaps in the course of a year before I finally got a pair that did not flake out on me.
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Well not a dumb question because Apple IS being awfully cagey about what the HomePod can and cannot do. My own reading is that, yes, you can stream music from your Mac via AirPlay -- it is an Airplay speaker after all. What you cannot do is use Siri to control your music. For that you need Apple Music. Essentially the HomePod looks to be first and foremost an Apple Music accessory. Everything else is 2nd fiddle or persona non grata.
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Surely it will be AirPlay compatible. And AirPlay2 doesn't really offer any features to ATV anyway does it?
Apple's system actively monitors sound waves and makes adjustments for how certain sounds are reflected or cancelled. The complexity of how that works is increased by introducing a second unit. The two units have to interact with each other in order to get the reflection/cancellation correct in combination with the space and placement. That's totally different than Sonos, which offers an initial set-up (Trueplay) using the microphone on a mobile device. Once that's done, there's nothing else happening within either speaker during audio playback. It's not actively monitoring anything.
Sonos One with Alexa built in with stereo and multi-room function - £199
HomePod with Siri built in with no stereo or multi room function - £319
No "audiophile" is buying this for the sound quality. They would have a setup that they already use, I know I certainly do. If I want to listen to music properly, then I'll do it through that.
When it comes to a small speaker to have in the kitchen however that you can say "Hey *insert assistant name here*, set a timer for 20 minutes" while cooking, why would I pay 60% more for something that isn't even finished yet. Being able to say "Hey Alexa, play blah de blah on Spotify" is a massive plus as well. Regardless of whether is a competitor to Apple Music, it IS the largest streaming service available, and not everyone drinks Apple Kool-Aid exclusively, and not having that support built in isn't acceptable these days.
HomePod with Siri built in with no stereo or multi room function - £319
No "audiophile" is buying this for the sound quality. They would have a setup that they already use, I know I certainly do. If I want to listen to music properly, then I'll do it through that.
When it comes to a small speaker to have in the kitchen however that you can say "Hey *insert assistant name here*, set a timer for 20 minutes" while cooking, why would I pay 60% more for something that isn't even finished yet. Being able to say "Hey Alexa, play blah de blah on Spotify" is a massive plus as well. Regardless of whether is a competitor to Apple Music, it IS the largest streaming service available, and not everyone drinks Apple Kool-Aid exclusively, and not having that support built in isn't acceptable these days.
But again, that’s all in addition to creating stereo sound using two paired speakers. Sonos does that. Today. Last year. Two years ago. HomePod will not do this when it ships, much less any of the other fancy stuff you describe.
What you describe is also not terribly different from what other beam forming speakers do today. Most just don’t adjust themselves dynamically. But is that really even necessary? Once you set up a room, why would the speaker setup really need to change?
Trueplay is still "dumb" specifically because it requires an external device to be implemented. The speakers themselves aren't capable of actively doing anything in relationship to the audio being played.
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No, it's the requirement for the HomePod stereo pairing to even work correctly. It's an active system, not a passive system like the Sonos Play 1. The A8 isn't in there just to run Siri.
And now you’re missing the fact that Sonos has Trueplay, so this isn’t accurate either
So in other words, the HomePod can’t create a stereo pair when it ships. Sonos can. Today. Give it up already.
Furthermore, what Sonos is doing today, and has done for years, isn’t “dumb”. It’s just not active, like the HomePod, which may or may not even be necessary. Either way, though, doesn’t matter because that feature is delayed.