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HomePod How is classical music on HomePod?
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I have and it sounds great. The HomePod is great at detail and this comes through with classical. I played some from Apple Music and Tidal.
Agreed. I listened to some Apple Music Classical, Pops, and Broadway. Music was clear, with good definition of instruments (piano, harp, violin) and vocals were excellent!
Good classical recordings sound great. I do find some classical albums to be pretty mediocre, sound wise. Of course, that’s not the Homepod’s fault.
So far I've tried my HomePod with various types of music, and I would say that the sound is less immediately impressive with classical, although the clarity and quality is exceptional. It could be that fully capturing the sound of a symphony orchestra, for example, is really something that you need a couple of HomePods to do justice to.
I will be trying that this weekend, as I have several of these to set up and experiment with. At the moment I'm listening to the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Wolfgang Schneiderhan on violin, with Eugen Jochum conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. a 1962 recording I have in my iTunes library (ripped from CD to Apple Lossless). The sound is excellent.
I will be trying that this weekend, as I have several of these to set up and experiment with. At the moment I'm listening to the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Wolfgang Schneiderhan on violin, with Eugen Jochum conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. a 1962 recording I have in my iTunes library (ripped from CD to Apple Lossless). The sound is excellent.
I find the main issue with classical music is getting Siri to understand me (UK English). She found it quite difficult to understand "Sibelius" and kept suggesting the names of modern artists whose names begin with S and have 4 syllables. Also, Siri appears to prioritise modern music - when asking her to play Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, she played ELO's version 
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On an iOS device, go to Settings > Music > EQ and use AirPlay.
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I find the main issue with classical music is getting Siri to understand me (UK English). She found it quite difficult to understand "Sibelius" and kept suggesting the names of modern artists whose names begin with S and have 3 syllables. Also, Siri appears to prioritise modern music - when asking her to play Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, she played ELO's version
I gave up on Siri for classical music very quickly.
I find it easier to select the right work in the Music app and use AirPlay. That way, I can also use the “classical” EQ setting and it sounds less like a rock concert. 
I'm using the HomePod mostly as an Airplay speaker for my own collection. I spent the last few weeks maniacally ripping some box sets (hint my avatar hint) losslessly and moving them to my music server (an SSD-bearing 2010 mac mini wired to my router). I'm very happy with the results, although so far I've been working at the quieter end of the spectrum -- solo or chamber music.
I suspect that classical music on Apple Music remains the basic big bag of hurt as it was in 2015, when I tried the trial and found it a trial. I will likely try it again at some point, though, because the Apple music world has always been about the accumulation of features over time.
I suspect that classical music on Apple Music remains the basic big bag of hurt as it was in 2015, when I tried the trial and found it a trial. I will likely try it again at some point, though, because the Apple music world has always been about the accumulation of features over time.
Have only listened to some of Ryuichi Sakamoto's soundtrack work which is orchestral and it sounded beautiful. The best so far was Nightporter by Japan. I thought David Sylvian was in the room with me.
Discovered another capability this morning - I can play different music to two different HomePods. I'm not sure if they both can be from my iTunes library, though. I do have some music in my iTunes library that I've purchased from iTunes over the years, so those limited pieces are accessible using Siri.
Thanks for asking the question.
I'm interested to hear what buyers have experienced.
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So true.Also, Siri appears to prioritise modern music - when asking her to play Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, she played ELO's version
Though I also think that is Apple Music as well. Classical is not high on their list.
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Exactly. Not a great Classical music experience.
I've been testing mine on and off since it arrived yesterday and i can honestly say that all genres of music sound great on the HomePod, i'm really impressed with the amount of detail that each song gives, i don't know the technological reasons behind it but i've heard new bits to songs that i have never heard before (guitar, noise in the background and so on).
More people imagining things
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/10/tune-homepods-sound-using-equalizers-in-ios-and-macos
More people imagining things
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/10/tune-homepods-sound-using-equalizers-in-ios-and-macos
Ok, so this post is not very helpful. It's hard to tell if your being sarcastic or not. That link seems to be informative and the 26 comments don't seem to contradict the article.
So in other words, you can apparently adjust EQ with airplay. This other fellow is posting in numerous threads that EQ cannot be adjusted manually. I read this and perhaps mistakenly believed it. Goes to show you how utterly confused I am
I find the main issue with classical music is getting Siri to understand me (UK English). She found it quite difficult to understand "Sibelius" and kept suggesting the names of modern artists whose names begin with S and have 4 syllables. Also, Siri appears to prioritise modern music - when asking her to play Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor, she played ELO's version
I agree. She had not idea who Francois Couperin was! ;-0
More people imagining things
http://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/10/tune-homepods-sound-using-equalizers-in-ios-and-macos
The article linked to above does show how to adjust equalization - I have just tried experimenting with it, while playing music from my iTunes library (not Apple Music), and trying various manual adjustments that were deliberately large enough so that I could easily tell if it made a difference, repeating portions of a particular track after making changes. It does work with the HomePod.
From the article:
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First, open iTunes and connect to HomePod by clicking on the AirPlay icon located to the right of the volume slider. Select HomePod and begin music playback.
Next, navigate to Window > Equalizer in the menu bar and either select a preset or drag the frequency sliders to increase or decrease volumes of individual frequencies. The Preamp slider controls adjustments to overall volume of all frequencies, but these modifications can come at a cost to fidelity.
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I then went to my iPhone and made changes there, using the 'Music' settings. This did not affect the setting for EQ in iTunes.
By the way, it takes a short period of time for settings made using iTunes on the computer to get to the HomePod, maybe just a second or two but there is a lag. I suspect that there is some buffering going on, and so the HomePod takes a short amount of time to adjust to anything changed from the computer. This is also what I've observed when changing volume levels or song selections, anything that affects what the speaker is being told to do.