Stereo-Like Sound With HomePods Coming Before Multi-Room Audio Feature [Updated]

[ersan191]

You are correct to say my assumption is based that all the speakers or drivers in the HomePod is playing the same audio. It's playing the same audio because its designed to play audio 360º and deliver the same audio to everyone, anywhere in the room. There cannot be a sweet spot to the HomePod if it were separating audio through left and right channels, then what people would hear wouldn't be the same. It would sound very bad.

If you watched a movie on the Apple TV using the HomePod as the speaker, would you say it gives you 7.1 surround sound? No, because it cannot split and direct specific sound through specific channels. It's designed to radiate all sound outwards in 360º

You've said the same thing I've been saying. "And for different listeners in the room left and right can be different. If two people are facing each other on opposite sides of the homepod one person's left will the other person's right and so on. With your traditional definition of stereo only the listener in "front" of a traditional speaker setup will experience the sound stage."
I will use classical music as an example. A song is playing and the author wants the listener to hear specific sounds like the far left of an orchestra playing violins while the immediate right or far right plays something else. Based on what you've said this cannot be achieved on the HomePod because multiple people standing around it will have different lefts and right! While with a traditional stereo system we know exactly where in the orchestra the sounds are coming from, left, right, far left, far right, center etc, because people listening to the music will be in front of the speakers, there is only one left and right. With the HomePod this is not the case because everyone standing around a HomePod would have different left and right.

Basically the HomePod plays all the sounds from stereo recorded music through all its speakers, drivers, tweeters or whatever it's called. The HomePod is not capable of stereo separation, an absolutely crucial part in stereo music or stereo sound. You need 2 or more channels for stereo separation, and based on what we know about the HomePod cylindrical design and people orientation to it, there is no true left or right, front or back. I can conclusively say it does not have stereo separation and a listener cannot distinguish the intended left and right sounds in stereo recorded music on a HomePod. While the HomePod plays stereo music inputted to it, it cannot playback stereo sound.

By basic definition the HomePod is a stereo speaker since it has more than one speakers built in and plays through them all. But it does not play back stereo music or stereo sound, because it would require separation of sounds into 2 or more channels. This is what all the commotion is about. It's a stereo that cannot playback in stereo. To some people, a great sounding speaker means nothing if they cannot hear the music the way it was meant to be heard. I do think most people though have no idea nor care about these intricacies in music or speaker systems.

It doesn’t have left and right separation, but it also isn’t playing the same sound through all 7 tweeters. It’s going to adjust what’s playing where depending on how far away the walls are and what it considers background in the song. It is not mono.

The Sonos One, Echo, Google Home (not max), etc are mono speakers - they have one tweeter (or in most cases one speaker) pointing in one direction. The HomePod does not.

Think about it in terms of the audio data in the track itself. The HomePod is going to analyze both channels of the track and determine essentially what is destined for the “center” channel (this is an oversimplification) and play that sound away from the walls towards the middle of the room. It’s going to play anything that is ambient or off to the far left or right of the track by bouncing those sounds against the walls so they are farther away from you. This is more or less what the person mixing the track intended in the first place (center sounds close and ambient sounds farther away).

It’s the same concept as stereo but instead of left and right it’s near and far. I’m sure it works fantastically for the vast majority of music.

 

[ke-iron]

It doesn’t have left and right separation, but it also isn’t playing the same sound through all 7 tweeters. It’s going to adjust what’s playing where depending on how far away the walls are and what it considers background in the song. It is not mono.

The Sonos One, Echo, Google Home (not max), etc are mono speakers - they have one tweeter (or in most cases one speaker) pointing in one direction. The HomePod does not.

Think about it in terms of the audio data in the track itself. The HomePod is going to analyze both channels of the track and determine essentially what is destined for the “center” channel (this is an oversimplification) and play that sound away from the walls towards the middle of the room. It’s going to play anything that is ambient or off to the far left or right of the track by bouncing those sounds against the walls so they are farther away from you. This is more or less what the person mixing the track intended in the first place (center sounds close and ambient sounds farther away).

It’s the same concept as stereo but instead of left and right it’s near and far. I’m sure it works fantastically for the vast majority of music.

Right, it’s basically fined tuned using a software equalizer. I used to do this when I was young, speakers, amps and equalizer. I was able to adjust the dynamics of the track and remove vocals so I could just hear he base pumping.

Analyzing the acoustics and fine tuning how the speakers sound is not the same as stereo sound, or stereo separation into different channels. This is the main argument.

This is also the assumption that it is placed against a wall with both sides and front not blocked. When in reality most people place bookshelve like speakers with only the front facing outwards or in an adjacent angle in a corner, leaving both the back and one side of the speaker blocked.

It’s simple, people who wants stereo separation the way it was recorded and intended to be heard from a music studio. Don’t get the HomePod. Everyone else who doesn’t care about hearing specific coded sounds and sound effects for left and right channel, but still want a great sounding speaker at a fair price, get the HomePod.

 

[kdarling]

I think everyone is saying the same thing:

HomePod is neither traditional stereo nor mono. Basically it makes up its own idea of what the soundstage should be.

Therefore, while HP would obviously sound much nicer than a mono speaker, it is apparently not reproducing what people would expect from traditional stereo output from a music recording or an action movie.

Basically, Apple has "reinvented the speaker" for people who don't care about traditional sound source separation, who just need an easy to set up audio box to put in a room, and who might also want Siri in that room.

 

[JulianL]

It doesn’t have left and right separation, but it also isn’t playing the same sound through all 7 tweeters. It’s going to adjust what’s playing where depending on how far away the walls are and what it considers background in the song. It is not mono.

The Sonos One, Echo, Google Home (not max), etc are mono speakers - they have one tweeter (or in most cases one speaker) pointing in one direction. The HomePod does not.

Think about it in terms of the audio data in the track itself. The HomePod is going to analyze both channels of the track and determine essentially what is destined for the “center” channel (this is an oversimplification) and play that sound away from the walls towards the middle of the room. It’s going to play anything that is ambient or off to the far left or right of the track by bouncing those sounds against the walls so they are farther away from you. This is more or less what the person mixing the track intended in the first place (center sounds close and ambient sounds farther away).

It’s the same concept as stereo but instead of left and right it’s near and far. I’m sure it works fantastically for the vast majority of music.

As a non-expert who's just read the last couple of pages on this debate this is the best explanation I've seen.

Do you think the upcoming Stereo-like "FullRoom" configuration (using the terminology from this article's headline) might attempt to do some stereo-like stuff? I'm thinking of effects that are deliberately panned from left to right, someone mentioned that it happens in a few Yes tracks and I think the train at the start of David Bowie's Station to Station would be another example. I would think that the sort of audio analysis you mention could identify a component in the music that has deliberately been panned across a stereo soundstage and create a similar effect by panning it from one HomePod to the other. Would it matter where in the room a listener was? A listener would always hear the sound moving from one HomePod towards the other in the room as the pan happened but maybe phase coherence issues might mess things up and dealing with that requires knowledge of the listeners position or would those be too minor to be an issue?

Presumably another stereo trick that would be quite easy for FullRoom to replicate if it wanted to would be the sort of duet thing that sometimes happens when vocalists are exchanging lines with each other, one from each speaker.

Perhaps a 2-in-a-room HomePod setup could have two modes, one being where the listener is mostly going to be within a typical living room sized room and does want it to try and give some of those stereo effects and the other where 2 HomePods are being used to fill in coverage in a really big room where for instance lyrics alternating between speakers would not make sense because the second speaker might be almost out of earshot for a listener standing close to the first speaker.

 

[ersan191]

As a non-expert who's just read the last couple of pages on this debate this is the best explanation I've seen.

Do you think the upcoming Stereo-like "FullRoom" configuration (using the terminology from this article's headline) might attempt to do some stereo-like stuff? I'm thinking of effects that are deliberately panned from left to right, someone mentioned that it happens in a few Yes tracks and I think the train at the start of David Bowie's Station to Station would be another example. I would think that the sort of audio analysis you mention could identify a component in the music that has deliberately been panned across a stereo soundstage and create a similar effect by panning it from one HomePod to the other. Would it matter where in the room a listener was? A listener would always hear the sound moving from one HomePod towards the other in the room as the pan happened but maybe phase coherence issues might mess things up and dealing with that requires knowledge of the listeners position or would those be too minor to be an issue?

Presumably another stereo trick that would be quite easy for FullRoom to replicate if it wanted to would be the sort of duet thing that sometimes happens when vocalists are exchanging lines with each other, one from each speaker.

Perhaps a 2-in-a-room HomePod setup could have two modes, one being where the listener is mostly going to be within a typical living room sized room and does want it to try and give some of those stereo effects and the other where 2 HomePods are being used to fill in coverage in a really big room where for instance lyrics alternating between speakers would not make sense because the second speaker might be almost out of earshot for a listener standing close to the first speaker.

I don’t know for certain but since Apple explicitly said you can’t designate speakers as left or right I don’t see how. I think it just makes the same effect wider and louder. I do find it intriguing that they use the word “stereo-like” though - I can’t even begin to guess what they mean by that.

It’s important to keep in mind that the HomePod has no way of determining where the listener is. It would have to at least have a target to employ any kind of L/R panning effect. They could one day theoretically use the microphones to determine that (ex. wherever the last voice command was issued from) but that presents its own problems and I don’t know how viable Apple thinks that is. I don’t think a feature like that is on their radar at the moment.

Having it pan from one HomePod to the other regardless of direction isn’t really a solution either - it could be completely backwards from the original recording for instance, or if both HomePods are on the wall to the left of you it would sound completely wrong and disorienting.

They could also walk back the decision to not specify a left and right speaker - that would solve a lot of problems. Seems like a stupid decision to begin with to me, as it drastically reduces the usefulness of two HomePods.

 

[ke-iron]

I think everyone is saying the same thing:

HomePod is neither traditional stereo nor mono. Basically it makes up its own idea of what the soundstage should be.

Therefore, while HP would obviously sound much nicer than a mono speaker, it is apparently not reproducing what most people would expect from traditional stereo output from a music recording or an action movie.

Basically, Apple has "reinvented the speaker" for people who don't care about traditional sound source separation, who are okay with a nice sounding single unit, and who might also want Siri in a room.

Yes Apple is doing something new here, basically they’re delivering the music to us how they think we want to hear it. This is why I said earlier they started the “stereo war”.

One of my speculations is that they’re basically taking a stereo recorded song, multiplying the song by 7, then manipulating the 7 audio tracks with software equalizers and spatial awareness so they sound best based on the objects in the room before sending them out to the 7 tweeters or drivers. This is how they’re able to taylor the sound going to each driver. Or they’ve figured out how to pull information information from a single track, up to 7 times to send to the 7 tweeters? Oh what the hell. Apple hurry and explain how it’s done, no one will steal the idea, it’s already patented. Speaking of patents, can someone find the patents and figure out how it’s done?

 

[MacLoveMacHate]

I'm surprised by their delaying the ability to add more speakers when this would clearly be a boon to their bottom line at launch, especially as the product itself had already been delayed.

 

[JeffyTheQuik]

I don't get posts like this.

Are you so naive to think that the team working on a speaker is the same team working on a file system? Like really, think before posting.

You mean that I shouldn't see a heart surgeon when I have a broken pinkie? :O

 

[ersan191]

RIP FullRoom 2018-2018
[doublepost=1518031951][/doublepost]

I'm surprised by their delaying the ability to add more speakers when this would clearly be a boon to their bottom line at launch, especially as the product itself had already been delayed.

Maybe they thought they wouldn't have enough for initial demand so they wanted to temper multiple purchases by delaying the feature intentionally?

Both features that benefit from multiple HomePods are not available.

I don't think this is true btw, it's more likely they just couldn't get it working properly in time.

 

[chabig]

Unfortunately that turns it into a $500 speaker and cuts into the HomePod’s small, unobtrusive size.

And you think that Apple would be able to add a battery with no increase in price, size, or weight?

 

[vipergts2207]

And you think that Apple would be able to add a battery with no increase in price, size, or weight?

Do I think it would add $150 and come in the form of a giant separate power brick? No, no I do not.

 

[ersan191]

Do I think it would add $150 and come in the form of a giant separate power brick? No, no I do not.

FWIW they make battery bases for the Echo - there's no reason some company wouldn't make one for the HomePod as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Battery-Power-suitable-Generation/dp/B01K1OKWZW

 

[gnomeisland]

Patience fellas. The audio engineer crowd will soon show up and make "full room" and "stereo-like" out to be far superior to actual stereo. They won't call Apple wrong but imply Apple is not quite wording their own marketing copy right (but still not actually write down that Apple is wrong about the copy either). And just ignore that Apple themselves went to the trouble of showing 2 HPs as an image (the editors didn't notice that either when they missed the "it takes 2" messaging). Basically, Apple will be right in everything they are saying but still holding back on revealing that this is far superior in every way to pretty much any other speaker sets.

And to that: I've spent a few hours reading all of these pre-release reviews and am yet to see any one of them reference how the beam-forming is creating better-than-stereo reproduction from a single HP along the lines of anything that was being spun in the last 10 days. One review even said that audio sounded better in some seating positions but worse in others and, at one point, sounded better behind the speaker than out front. Where's that magical left & right beaming off walls, including the speaker knowing where the listener happens to be sitting to adjust left & right AND somehow dynamically doing the same for 2 listeners, 3 listeners, etc?

Disclaimer: not really trying to get that debate going again (dead horse no?)... just taking a poke at the incredible armchair puffery slung around that went way beyond even what Apple themselves claimed about their own product. Now we have real(er), pre-release reviews all seeming to mostly ignore some of that amazing functionality implied so heavily. Maybe the reviewers as a group are just stupid for not noticing?

I've only read two reviewers that felt there was a definite sweet spot, or more precisely, some spot where the sound quality fell off. One of those placed the HomePod in the center of her room and she admitted it worked better against a wall or corner. So it sounds to me like the Apple has delivered, to some degree, on its promises. Most reviews have mentioned a discrete soundstage and sound placement which is stereophonic if not exactly what we've come to think of as "stereo".

What I haven't done is read this whole thread so maybe there were some outlandish claims. Or some confusion about what Apple is doing with beamforming. There are other companies using beamforming in different ways. Apple doesn't (current) seem to be targeting one particular listener, rather sculpting the sound to use the room itself to fill the room with sound and widen the sweet spot. That's what Apple promised, that's what reviewers are experiencing. Why the snark?

 

[aylk]

Thank you for this. This is indeed how people interpret stereo, as a 2D line from left to right, reproduced with two channels outputting sounds lower or higher through a speaker placed left or right. Makes sense yeah? We have two ears after all. Two receivers placed some distance from each other, able to perceive where sound is coming from. But when you stop to think about that, that’s an incredibly narrow view of representing recorded or produced music. What stereo is, is an illusion of how we experience sound in space.

Sound does not come from left to right, but any three dimensional distance around our head.

Perceiving direction and distance from where sounds are coming from has an obvious evolutionary advantage: it helps you gauge how close, how fast and from where a threat is approaching. Or if you are extra perceptive, pinpointing where your next meal is coming from.

For humans however, those functions are also how we perceive non-threatening sound. We enjoy certain sounds and how they make us feel. Which brings us to music. Music makes us, well, feel. We appreciate hearing combinations of rhythm, bass, notes and chords in a way we don’t appreciate random noise. I could go on in this direction for a long time, but for the purpose of the scope of the HomePod it applies to this:

How does listening to music on the HomePod feel? Is it going to be a pleasurable experience that’s both complimentary to the listener and the artist? Is it going to sound wide, multi-dimensional, deep, bass-y, and rhythmical? Is the bass going to shake your bones and the highs give you goosebumps? It might sound intangible and non-sciency, but good audio you can feel, not just hear. Same as how good cooking can give you involuntary food-gasms, or a smell can bring up a childhood memory; music can elevate your life - simply through experience.

Think of a good movie you watched in the theatre, rewatch it again on mute. See if it makes the same impact. I doubt it will. Audio is incredibly powerful - and the means to reproduce it in a way that feels right are now (semi) affordable.

Stereo sound still is what it has been for the past 6 decades, dynamic directional sound. This thing is monophonic. It's monophonic with two of them, or three, or four. The sound may come from all around you, it might be even high fidelity. But it will be degraded from the original recording, non-directional, monophonic. Like a 1930's record player.

 

[ErikGrim]

Stereo sound still is what it has been for the past 6 decades, dynamic directional sound. This thing is monophonic. It's monophonic with two of them, or three, or four. The sound may come from all around you, it might be even high fidelity. But it will be degraded from the original recording, non-directional, monophonic. Like a 1930's record player.

You have zero understanding of the term mono. One of them will output “dynamic, directional sound”.

 

[ersan191]

To anyone still following this thread it appears the information in it was WRONG!

You DO specify which speaker is left and right when setting up a stereo pair. You are able to set them up in the latest iOS beta and someone uploaded a video of the process. It’s 5 minutes in.

This is great news and gives me hope that a pair of homepods might work as a decent home theater replacement. I haven't actually seen it referred to as "stereo-like" outside of this article. It still says "Create stereo sound with a second HomePod." on the Apple website.

Now that I’ve got mine I can assure you that it is mono when playing video on an Apple TV through one HomePod.

 

[The Game 161]

To anyone still following this thread it appears the information in it was WRONG!

You DO specify which speaker is left and right when setting up a stereo pair. You are able to set them up in the latest iOS beta and someone uploaded a video of the process. It’s 5 minutes in.

This is great news and gives me hope that a pair of homepods might work as a decent home theater replacement. I haven't actually seen it referred to as "stereo-like" outside of this article. It still says "Create stereo sound with a second HomePod." on the Apple website.

Now that I’ve got mine I can assure you that it is mono when playing video on an Apple TV through one HomePod.

The fact this option is in beta I think is proof it's not that far away from launching.

 

[ersan191]

The fact this option is in beta I think is proof it's not that far away from launching.

To be fair, AirPlay 2 has been in the betas off and on since WWDC, same goes with iCloud Messages