HomePod's Sound Continues to Receive Top Marks After Listening Demos in New York and London

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Not sure why you're worrying about that so much. What HiFi has given the exact same five star rating to the Sonos One, Play 1, Play 3, and Play 5 in their own reviews.

I'm not worried about it. What you're doing is suggesting that since the Sonos got a 5-star review and in this head-to-head demo, they thought that HP sounded better, HP must be getting a 5+ star review too (when they get to do a full review). And it could indeed play out just like that.

What I'm suggesting is that a corporate-controlled demo could be configured to make anything sound better than anything else. For example, feed that same Sonos an inferior-quality version of a song like Hotel California. Feed the HP a lossless quality version of the same. Which will sound better based upon just that one variable? We can't know for sure but probably the HP. Now do it again and this time flip the sources. Now which one sounds better? Again we can't know for sure, but probably the Sonos.

That's the problem with taking a demo conducted by the seller and weighing it against a real review done by any of these entities. The best you can do is what you seem to be doing... implying that since it got some "better than Sonos" notes, it's probably better than the 5-star review they gave the Sonos. But only at the very best can that be true. There's plenty of room for the demo to be biased, not necessarily by the attendees but designed that way by the demonstrator, extraordinarily wanting their product to be reviewed well so it sells to the max.

That doesn't put down HP or Apple- just basically clarifies that the implied 5-stars + "better than" does not necessarily equal 6-stars. Perhaps in this demo, the Sonos was fed inferior source? Etc. Real, fully objective, head-to-head comparisons will come AFTER such entities and others can take one home and put it through their own testing protocols, play their own musical selections and compare features perhaps not highlighted by Apple in these demonstrations. Until then, it's mostly Marketing just doing great marketing. A demo is a powerful marketing tool.

 

[vipergts2207]

I referenced the zeppelin wireless because it’s $700. You’re claiming a 2.1 setup will sound better and be cheaper than $700 or 2 HomePods. So find me a 2.1 setup that sounds better and is cheaper than the zeppelin wireless.

You “chuckled a bit” because they called their 5.9 driver a woofer yet you have no idea how great the system sounds. Well it’s a 6” woofer and the frequency range isn’t from 150Hz to 8000Hz. So why would you make up numbers that you say Sound would be “pretty garbage” and place it in the same discussion as the zeppelin wireless when it’s totally irrelevant? You’re trying to dis B&W when you don’t know what the zeppelin wireless is. Just stop.

It isn’t called the best sounding or one of the best sounding wireless music systems for no reason. In reality you’d be hard pressed to find a 2.1 system that sounds better and costs less than $700.

Back to the original point, do you think 2 HomePods are going to outperform a decent 2.1 setup for the same price? And as far your zeppelin goes, I'll take a dedicated 2.1 over it too, even the setup I mentioned earlier.

The frequency response range I quoted has nothing to do with your zeppelin, which for whatever reason you continue trying to shoehorn into every point. I put the hypothetical range out there because you said, "I’m not referring to how low frequencies the sub in the HomePod can go. I’m talking about overall sound quality," when frequency response and sound quality are very clearly related. It seems that perhaps you were unaware of that fact, so maybe you should "just stop."

You seem to be hyper defensive about B&W for some reason, as evidenced by your claim that I'm somehow trying to "dis them" simply because I don't think their wireless speaker can outperform a real 2.1 setup. In actuality, I have nothing against B&W and actually think their equipment is very nice stuff. Further, I can't think of a ~$700 wireless speaker from any company that I'd take over an equivalently priced 2.1 setup, and that includes B&W. The fact that you put the qualifier 'wireless music system' in there in the first place says something.

 

[gnipgnop]

Yeah. It seems that way. Maybe it’ll change in the future. After all, you’re paying for iTunes Match.

iTunes, iTunes Match, and Apple Music are not interchangeable in terms of their rights structures, so that may have something to do with it not being available on HomePod at the moment.

 

[tubular]

At the moment I'm in the process of reripping a ton of CDs as lossless, because I'll finally have a good reason to.

 

[WhiteHawk]

Which, because that isn’t part of Apple Music, you can’t play through HomePod.

What are you talking about? You are not limited to Apple Music streaming on the HomePod. You can play anything it supports from your iTunes library on you phone, iPad, Mac or PC, including FLAC and ALAC. So if you have some higher quality tracks it should play them fine.

 

[lsutigerfan1976]

Shameless plug to try and sell this product. I hope Apple paid you well for this, lmao!

 

[OllyW]

What are you talking about? You are not limited to Apple Music streaming on the HomePod. You can play anything it supports from your iTunes library on you phone, iPad, Mac or PC, including FLAC and ALAC. So if you have some higher quality tracks it should play them fine.

You can play the other stuff using AirPlay but only Apple Music and iTunes purchases will play directly on the HomePod with Siri control.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

One of the reviewers made the point that the Google Home Max sounded surprisingly muffled ;-) It was Tom's hardware or T3.

Tom's is usually pretty objective in their reviews. But this wasn't a review. It was an opportunity to participate in a demo. Something is better than nothing, but we shouldn't confuse demos as reviews. For example, I could demonstrate sawing a lady in half... but she's not really sawed in half.

At various points in time, Apple's key competitors have had features like NFC (payments), bigger screen phones, OLED, and similar well before Apple. But Apple- as demonstrator- doesn't key in on competitor superior features... until Apple adopts those features themselves. I'm in Marketing. I've done demos many times. I've done tech demos many times. It's not hard to make whatever product is to be pushed seem to be the best if one just sets up the demonstration in the right way. That's good marketing. People get paid well to make a chosen product seem much better than competing products- whether it is or not.

Tom's will likely give a fuller (and real) review after they can actually possess one. Let's see what they say in the real review. And let's see what press not hand-picked by Apple to come to an Apple pre-release demo has to say too... especially dedicated AV press. Certainly, those near-term, real reviews could come off just as positive- or even more so- but they also may key in on things that Apple- as master of the demo here- chose to ignore per the "focus on the positives" fundamental of good marketing.

New information is always good for us consumers. But all information should be weighed, recognizing that there are various tiers of information in terms of quality & objectivity.

 

[nylon]

Seems like the weirdest least hyped Apple launch yet.

 

[WhiteHawk]

Okay, let me get this right... in reality the Homepod can only play subscription music, so my complete iTunes library is totally useless except for the few dozen paid tunes?

I can't connect it to anything, like my TV or Record Player, so what is point of paying $499 Australian for something I can't really use?

I don’t know where people are getting this from but no, you can play anything on your iPhone and iPad that’s in your own library, same from your computer in iTunes.

 

[H2SO4]

What HiFi does have an initial impression...the interesting thing is that they say the Play 3 sounded "flat" in comparison to the HomePod even when set up with the TruePlay feature, and the Play 3 got a five star review from What HiFi.

https://www.whathifi.com/apple/homepod/review

Apple didn't invite them, that's the point I'm making.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

But not iTunes Match.

Is this confirmed? A lot of guys have been spinning Match as making a lot of our rips playable via HP. Did someone confirm that Matched (ripped) content is not Siri-searchable on HP? That would be new info to me.

And if so, I can't believe even Apple would exclude our own ripped content, on our own Macs? The whole "1000 songs in our pocket" iTunes thing started with Apple encouraging us to rip our music from CDs (long before there was an iTunes store). I can grasp the motivation here- sell more AM subscriptions and/or lock-in more AM subscriptions- but it seems a bit beyond even Apple to lock out iTunes content we've ripped ourselves and Matched.
[doublepost=1517163841][/doublepost]

I don’t know where people are getting this from but no, you can play anything on your iPhone and iPad that’s in your own library, same from your computer in iTunes.

Com'on man. Tell the WHOLE story. It's exactly what you said VIA AIRPLAY. The "smarts" part of the speaker won't be able to "see" ripped content in iTunes on our own Macs. The "smarts" view is limited to what you rent or have purchased from Apple.

As such, no one needs this speaker if they are going to lean heavily on airplay. ANY airplay speaker setup will work, including perhaps airplaying to an TV already hooked to probably the best speakers in the home. No TV? You can buy 2 of them for about the price of 1 HP. And they come with Siri voice-control and AM, PLUS apps such as Pandora if you want to listen to any sources other than AM without air playing. And some other benefits too that a HP can never get via "just one software update."

 

[gnipgnop]

Real, fully objective, head-to-head comparisons will come AFTER such entities and others can take one home and put it through their own testing protocols, play their own musical selections and compare features perhaps not highlighted by Apple in these demonstrations.

I'm not following why your suspicions of non-objectivity would disappear simply because a 3rd party handles everything themselves. That doesn't actually improve the ability of the reader to verify a fair test or verify objectivity.

 

[WatchFromAfar]

If 9to5 Mac, an Apple website, thinks this is a poor product why are people dumb enough to defend it? It;s poor

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/27/homepod-first-impressions-sound-lacking/

 

[weckart]

Anyone who is given early exclusive access to Apple's hardware is not going to give any strong negative comments to the product. The reason is obvious.

Also, they probably are given suggestions or instructions as to which part they should focus their reviews on.

I'm not an Apple hater obviously but these early reviews have not much substance to it.

True but it seems that Wired didn't quite get the memo and its review seems to damn with faint praise:

while the HomePod looks great, is super simple to set up and is undoubtedly powerful, the sound produced does not immediately match up to its £319 price tag.

There is a distinct lack of mid-range, leaving you feeling that something is missing in the mix.

So poor value for money and so-so sound. Wired remains unimpressed.

 

[OllyW]

Is this confirmed?

That’s what iMore are saying.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.imore.com/how-homepod-works-apple-music-itunes-match-icloud-music-library-airplay-and-flac-files?amp

 

[The Game 161]

If 9to5 Mac, an Apple website, thinks this is a poor product why are people dumb enough to defend it? It;s poor

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/27/homepod-first-impressions-sound-lacking/

huh? you must be seeing things as nowhere says it's a poor product.

funny how you don't mention the links praising the product uh? guess it doesn't fit your agenda doing that I suppose.

btw 9 to 5 Mac were linking to the wired's hands on not their own.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I'm not following why your suspicions of non-objectivity would disappear simply because a 3rd party handles everything themselves. That doesn't actually improve the ability of the reader to verify a fair test or verify objectivity.

True, third parties could have their own agendas. Maybe Amazon heavily advertises in some third party and Apple doesn't. Surprise, surprise: echo comes out on top in their head-to-head.

The assumption here is that the demonstrator- Apple- is certainly motivated to present Apple's new product in the best possible light. While that doesn't absolutely mean there was any biased testing or messaging done in such a session, one can think about the probabilities for themselves.

Let an independent AV source known for reviewing AV products get their hands on one and put it through their own review process, and odds are probably better that they'll be MORE objective than the seller doing a pre-release demo. But I do concede that any one of them could certainly bring their own bias to such a head-to-head.

Myself: I await a group of such (third party, post-launch) reviews and look at them as a whole. If one is biased, the biases may show against a group of the others.

 

[vipergts2207]

If 9to5 Mac, an Apple website, thinks this is a poor product why are people dumb enough to defend it? It;s poor

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/27/homepod-first-impressions-sound-lacking/

That's incredibly disingenuous of you. Those are not 9to5Mac's thoughts, it's their summary of Wired's thoughts.

 

[Felix01]

Nothing from Ars Technica?

 

[WatchFromAfar]

huh? you must be seeing things as nowhere says it's a poor product.

funny how you don't mention the links praising the product uh? guess it doesn't fit your agenda doing that I suppose.

btw 9 to 5 Mac were linking to the wired's hands on not their own.

apart from the URL i provided which says "homepod-first-impressions-sound-lacking/"

 

[gnipgnop]

If 9to5 Mac, an Apple website, thinks this is a poor product why are people dumb enough to defend it? It;s poor

https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/27/homepod-first-impressions-sound-lacking/

They're quoting from the Wired initial impression. The criticism from Wired about the mid-range doesn't seem to be a common take either.

 

[redmac]

Free units often get good reviews. Don't want to cut the hand that feeds you right?
I'll wait for paying users to post some reviews.

Demo units are not to keep, and they are certainly not free. Also, these reviews did not use demo units loaned to the press.

 

[fatalogic]

I'm just shocked they are releasing this without a major siri update.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

Apple basically limiting this to Apple Music makes it kind of extra expensive. Should have at least fully supported Spotify. Apples aggresive policy when it comes to Siri on 3rd party services is kinda lame. If they can't make money of it... well no or only very limited support. I mean there was a cydia app to control spotify with Siri... So, this, again, is an arbitrary limitation by Apple. I don't see how this wins agaist Alexa/Sonos...
Anyway, since Apple limits Siri to a few chosen countries, this is only a massively overpriced Airplay speaker in the rest of the world...

Because my wife has no interest in learning to use our home theater system even though it's pretty well setup with just a couple clicks of a remote to get it going. With this she can be the kitchen and say hey Siri play Bruno Mars, and it will start playing with a descent sound.

Sounds a lot like the other reasons for the HP... "I'd like to buy a HomePod -how do I justify it?".
If you want to buy it, because you want to have one, just buy it and be done with it, but don't wrap some generic arguments around it. I don't see where Echos and/or Sonos couldn't have done that already long ago. Let's be honest here, to YOU both will likely sound bad compared to your HiFi system. Your wife, however, likely won't even notice the difference between the Echo solution and the HomePod.