Upcoming 17.1 Software Brings Enhance Dialogue to Original HomePod and HomePod mini

[cjbryce]

OT: does anyone have a setup of apple tv and homepod mini in pair mode? was wondering how's the audio quality in movies? because i plan to setup apple tv with homepod mini in my bedroom but not sure about the audio quality in it. i don't have homepod minis yet, so i don't have an idea how it sounds.

Yes - I have this setup as well as AppleTV/HomePod OGs.

Obviously the larger OGs sound a lot better, but for small rooms the stereo-paired Minis work OK as default output for AppleTV providing adequate volume and overall performance. Movies sound just fine, but you can't expect the small Minis to give you the bass depth of the larger HomePods.

 

[Schnegg]

i switched to using older active near field monitors for my tv speaker set. it sounds incredible, besides the awful surround mixes. I "fixed" this by changing the format of audio within Apple TV settings to stereo. This always ignores surround mixes. Then at night, I turn on reduce loud sounds. it is a far far better experience than my previous denon "dolby atmos" sound bar.

This is very similar to my setup. I have a nice 2.0 stereo and an AppleTV set to transform everything to two channels. The results aren't always perfect, though. I guess some of it has to do with contemporary stylistic choices for the audio mix: https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/17...addressed-by-christopher-nolan-sound-designer

 

[ScrumpyDaniel]

Really looking forward to this. Very intrigued as to why they've backtracked and made it available for the OG HomePod's & mini's. Not complaining however!

 

[B/D]

Really looking forward to this. Very intrigued as to why they've backtracked and made it available for the OG HomePod's & mini's. Not complaining however!

Same here!.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Yes software support needs to be long - or you just need to stick to the last iOS update you are getting for as long as possible - I hear those old iPhone on older iOS are still working fine?

I mean even if you buy a traditional surround system - you kind of have to buy a new AV receiver every couple of years

Receiver tech lasts about as long as good TVs before needing updates- about every 10-12 years… and outdated ones generally still remain fully functional and are easily repurposed for specific audio tasks or are sellable for people still clinging to older A/V sources. I know someone still using a receiver purchased in the 1990s with some old A/V equipment from around that same decade. It works just fine that way and sounds as great as day 1. Quite capable new ones can be bought for the cost of only 1-2 HPs and “loaded” ones cost about 1 iPhone… buying “latest/greatest” good for another 10+ years…which can easily become 15-20 years for many.

And dig up a vintaged Apple phone and try to run some key apps on it like Safari or YouTube and see if they are “just fine.” The game with vintaging is to drive replacement purchases… else I have multiple Macs and an iPad Mini 2 with perfectly functional, “powerful” hardware all left behind by vintaging proclamations, no more security updates, and apps or basic functionality that no longer work right if not fully unable to work anymore. That’s not hardware failings but simply very profitable Corp choices to no longer let that hardware play in the garden.

Let’s see if smart speakers remain fully functional in even 8 years since 7 seems to be the magic number for vintaging. My gut says these are audio iMacs with the entire “dumb” part- the speaker portion- standing in as perfectly good iMac screens, having to be tossed because the tech guts are vintaged or just outright conk. It’s almost a certainty that those speaker portions will still be perfectly good speakers like those iMac screens are typically still perfectly good screens, ready to deliver for many more years if only there was a way to keep using them.

Look to AppleTV as a good proxy for HP smarts longevity. How many people still have fully functional gen 2 or 3 AppleTVs with all apps working “just fine”? When the “smarts” go or are “vintaged,” the speaker portion will go with it. Replace all, again & again, not because the core function part is broken or degraded… but for an arbitrary other reason. 💰💰💰

 

[macdisciple]

We purchased Sonos ARC with enhanced dialog. We still need captions half the time.

 

[DonutHands]

This is huge! Thank you Apple!

Hopefully Apple is also listening about the upgrade we all want and need

2 big HomePods in front
2 HomePod minis in the back
2 HomePod minis left and right
1 HomePod as center
2-3 HomePods on the ceiling

Apple would not only be selling 2 HomePods for stereo pairing but 7-8 HomePods for true surround sound

Another bonus: it might just be the first zero config surround system?

said no one, ever

 

[Powerbooky]

Nothing beats a good center channel speaker for clear dialogue. Phantom centers like phantom overheads (ATMOS) or phantom surround speakers is not the same as actual centers, actual overheads or actual surrounds.

Those happy with stereo, enjoy this new feature. Those willing & able to go for true surround or true ATMOS, there is abundant offerings that can deliver that as fast as you want to move. Your ears will definitely notice.

That's not meant to put down HPs at all- they are great for what they are... which is NOT home theater speakers unless one defines home theater audio as stereo. A good Apple product or two budget will buy an incredible, true surround sound setup that will sound as good 10, 20 or 30 years from now as it sounds day 1. The "smarts" in the Apple devices you already own can make it work just like HPs do... except it will work with EVERYTHING that produces audio, including all streaming audio sources, anything pre-HDMI... and all to come that expands above current audio standards.

We'll have to wait for a decent HomePod that supports at least wifi 6 for fast and efficient connection to enable multi-channel use that is in constant sync. Current models just don't with wifi 5; there's still a slight moving phase in stereo mode.

 

[theLedger]

This will be awesome! I have two original HomePods connected to my Apple TV 4K and have to turn on dialog all the time. I did discover with some foreign films on Netflix that using English SDH subtitles matches the dubbed audio better than just English subtitles.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

We'll have to wait for a decent HomePod that supports at least wifi 6 for fast and efficient connection to enable multi-channel use that is in constant sync. Current models just don't with wifi 5; there's still a slight moving phase in stereo mode.

Or not wait for something that has absolutely no rumors of ever coming and getting such a setup immediately via other home theater speaker options sold for many years now.

Even if that is the cause/solution, that implies it would hog up much of that wifi 6 bandwidth when in use, which would then make any other wifi-using activities in the home slow down... OR the other uses would adversely affect wifi 6 HP surround sound setup from working well.

Many other home theater solutions available now don't even need wifi at all. One can assemble a full ATMOS setup without needing 1 byte of wifi if desired... not in the future... but now, or years ago.

 

[Aves]

finally something useful!
I never needed captions but I'm happy about this.

 

[Nozgog]

said no one, ever

Well Im not the only one interested - there is even articles about this

 

[Nozgog]

Receiver tech lasts about as long as good TVs before needing updates- about every 10-12 years… and outdated ones generally still remain fully functional and are easily repurposed for specific audio tasks or are sellable for people still clinging to older A/V sources. I know someone still using a receiver purchased in the 1990s with some old A/V equipment from around that same decade. It works just fine that way and sounds as great as day 1. Quite capable new ones can be bought for the cost of only 1-2 HPs and “loaded” ones cost about 1 iPhone… buying “latest/greatest” good for another 10+ years…which can easily become 15-20 years for many.

And dig up a vintaged Apple phone and try to run some key apps on it like Safari or YouTube and see if they are “just fine.” The game with vintaging is to drive replacement purchases… else I have multiple Macs and an iPad Mini 2 with perfectly functional, “powerful” hardware all left behind by vintaging proclamations, no more security updates, and apps or basic functionality that no longer work right if not fully unable to work anymore. That’s not hardware failings but simply very profitable Corp choices to no longer let that hardware play in the garden.

Let’s see if smart speakers remain fully functional in even 8 years since 7 seems to be the magic number for vintaging. My gut says these are audio iMacs with the entire “dumb” part- the speaker portion- standing in as perfectly good iMac screens, having to be tossed because the tech guts are vintaged or just outright conk. It’s almost a certainty that those speaker portions will still be perfectly good speakers like those iMac screens are typically still perfectly good screens, ready to deliver for many more years if only there was a way to keep using them.

Look to AppleTV as a good proxy for HP smarts longevity. How many people still have fully functional gen 2 or 3 AppleTVs with all apps working “just fine”? When the “smarts” go or are “vintaged,” the speaker portion will go with it. Replace all, again & again, not because the core function part is broken or degraded… but for an arbitrary other reason. 💰💰💰

Yeah AV receivers can last 10+ years but you kind of have to upgrade them if you buy a new TV? (every 5-6 years?)

Let’s see how long the software support on HPs lasts

A friend got my AppleTV 3 - there is definitely problems with software nowadays - he is fine with it however

I always upgrade to the new AppleTV and trade in the old model for about 50% - the upgrades have been worth it - but 2nd HomePod is actually worse for sound that OG HomePod so hopefully that one lasts long

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Do most people replace TVs every 5-6 years... because I know that number as every 10-12 years? If they are replacing them every 5-6 years, that may be faster than Mac replacements, which seems like a business Apple would want to enter.

And even if they are swapping TV every 5-6, the underlying standards are not evolving that fast, so they can very likely keep using this same receiver for 2 TVs swapped that fast.

I guess the exception to this would be people buying cheap TVs and cheap receivers, both towards out of date at the point of purchase, which might explain the press to replace every 5-6. For example, if someone is buying a 1080p HDTV today, they are buying late in the window for that resolution tier. Similarly, receivers originally sold in 2018 or older are probably getting a bit behind in newest HDMI standards, etc.

My current receiver (not cheap) is on year #9. My TV is new (2020) and I expect to still be using it in 2030. It replaced one that went 12 years and was still functional (sold for a bigger size than anything wrong with it). There's a spare TV in my home that is at least 12 years too and still fully functional and looks great.

 

[Nozgog]

Do most people replace TVs every 5-6 years... because I know that number as every 10-12 years? If they are replacing them every 5-6 years, that may be faster than Mac replacements, which seems like a business Apple would want to enter.

And even if they are swapping TV every 5-6, the underlying standards are not evolving that fast, so they can very likely keep using this same receiver for 2 TVs swapped that fast.

I guess the exception to this would be people buying cheap TVs and cheap receivers, both towards out of date at the point of purchase, which might explain the press to replace every 5-6. For example, if someone is buying a 1080p HDTV today, they are buying late in the window for that resolution tier. Similarly, receivers originally sold in 2018 or older ??are probably getting a bit behind in newest HDMI standards, etc.

My current receiver (not cheap) is on year #9. My TV is new (2020) and I expect to still be using it in 2030. It replaced one that went 12 years and was still functional (sold for a bigger size than anything wrong with it). There's a spare TV in my home that is at least 12 years too and still fully functional and looks great.

I think Mac replacement are 3-5 years on average?

I believe Apple is not going for the TV business because it is highly competitive and low margin?

Yeah maybe in the future audio codecs and connection/HDMI standards are evolving slower than in the past - therefore giving longer life to AV receivers? Maybe OLED has also matured and there won't be much development anymore for TVs as well?

Probably if you are buying on the more expensive side for receivers and TVs - you are better off - our Plasma TV in the basement is still doing great as well

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

OT: does anyone have a setup of apple tv and homepod mini in pair mode? was wondering how's the audio quality in movies? because i plan to setup apple tv with homepod mini in my bedroom but not sure about the audio quality in it. i don't have homepod minis yet, so i don't have an idea how it sounds.

If you don't have the HP minis yet, I suggest something else... like maybe a Sonos soundbar... ARC if you can afford it but one of the lessor ones if not.

While I'm no fan of soundbars, I put an Arc in my bedroom instead of HPs purely for music playback and I have to admit it produces impressive sound. Sonos works just as readily with Apple Music and Airplay and you have HP smarts and Siri in your iPhone, iPad, Mac or AppleTV already. Home kit works just as well with Sonos too. And Sonos is not so locked down, so it plays the same stuff available on HP but also pretty much any other source too. No waiting for deals to be struck with Apple- the multitudes of audio sources are already there. Wish you had some more bass in the mix, just add a subwoofer: all that home theater code is already all worked out & refined by them.

HPs are stereo speakers at best, so dialogue is going to be created with some kind of faux center channel algorithm vs. a soundbar setup which will already have the speaker in the center. Faking sound is never as good as the sound coming from where it should.

If money is no object, I'd step that up to maybe a 3.1 setup minimum: left, center, right speaker with a subwoofer. That will be better audio than MOST people have... especially all people settling for only stereo speakers.

And if you can go a little further, add 2 surrounds for 5.1 and you basically have a nice little home theater audio system in your bedroom. TV watching will be incredible and music will dazzle too.

As is likely obvious by other posts in this thread, I'm a much bigger believer in choosing "dumb" speakers so you can enjoy them for 10-30 years vs. smart speakers which are likely to be vintaged in 7 or so years MAX. With the same smarts already in the rest of the Apple offerings, no real need to have those married to speakers where the speaker part depends on the smarts to play anything.

But in lieu of that, if it must be "smart", I recommend Sonos over HP because Sonos brings the same key benefits with much more open flexibility and a proven track record to not obsolete their speakers in 7 years. I just can't quite imagine Apple keeping this one branch of iOS up to date when it is vintaged for the rest of the products... which seems to doom the HPs somewhere around the 7-year mark. We can hope not but we'll find out with gen 1 in only a few more years.

Unlike Silicon tech, speakers (the core part you hear) do NOT get "long in tooth" or degrade with care. Good ones can play just as well for decades... if they are ABLE... which is questionable in these "smart"- or is that "$mart"- creations.

 

[B/D]

Review. Sounds very promising (starts at 2:00).

 

[B/D]

PSA: Finally got the opportunity to try this thanks to a friendly neighbor that got himself a couple of homepods minis and is not afraid (unlike me, I NEVER use beta software under any circumstance), of installing betas and testing stuff.

First, a warning: for those of you that installed 17.1 RC on the Apple TV, enabled this feature in the audio and video settings, and are NOT noticing any difference whatsoever, its because it also requires 17.1 RC installed on the Homepods themselves. Otherwise it wont work.

Having said that, this is absolutely a game changer feature and the most significant improvement for the homepods and the apple tv experience since the home theater mode was introduced back in 2020.

I´m not exactly sure what Apple did, but it´s not only the fact that the midrange is clearer and less boomy (which it is). The whole speakers are way louder. It´s like previously there was a volume cap with the Apple TV and now is no longer there.

Previously with the Minis, for a lot of content you had to have them at 90-100% volume to really enjoy the experience, and sometimes even that wasn´t enough, but not anymore. Now they are loud, full, vibrant at all volume levels and have a lot of headroom for content mixed at a low volume.

Cannot wait for next Tuesday for being able to test this on my original homepods!.

 

[Powerbooky]

Or not wait for something that has absolutely no rumors of ever coming and getting such a setup immediately via other home theater speaker options sold for many years now.

Even if that is the cause/solution, that implies it would hog up much of that wifi 6 bandwidth when in use, which would then make any other wifi-using activities in the home slow down... OR the other uses would adversely affect wifi 6 HP surround sound setup from working well.

Many other home theater solutions available now don't even need wifi at all. One can assemble a full ATMOS setup without needing 1 byte of wifi if desired... not in the future... but now, or years ago.

Of course there are alternative speaker options that certainly outrank HomePod's for this purpose. All I'm saying is that if one would like to use HomePod's for surround, then it does need fast, low-latency wifi. Wifi 6 is the first standard that could do it (with just one Access Point, no mesh), but it would also require that all other equipment does not use older protocols. And the latter is kind of hard to do since so many new wireless devices sold today are still on wifi 4 or don't even support 5GHz. My wife got this brand new e-reader the other day... only wifi 4, limited wpa2 and 2.4GHz only.

Maybe... it's an idea... a HomePod that can be used wired: instead of the USB-C plug an ethernet-connector with PoE. That would fit perfectly in my house. Same for an AppleTV, powered with PoE. 😉

 

[B/D]

Of course there are alternative speaker options that certainly outrank HomePod's for this purpose. All I'm saying is that if one would like to use HomePod's for surround, then it does need fast, low-latency wifi. Wifi 6 is the first standard that could do it (with just one Access Point, no mesh), but it would also require that all other equipment does not use older protocols. And the latter is kind of hard to do since so many new wireless devices sold today are still on wifi 4 or don't even support 5GHz. My wife got this brand new e-reader the other day... only wifi 4, limited wpa2 and 2.4GHz only.

Maybe... it's an idea... a HomePod that can be used wired: instead of the USB-C plug an ethernet-connector with PoE. That would fit perfectly in my house. Same for an AppleTV, powered with PoE. 😉

Specially taking into account that Apple current implementation of the Homepods "Home Theater Mode (with Atmos support)" with an Apple TV 4K, despite using an ad-hoc network by virtue of AWDL and being currently limited to stereo paired homepods, requires a VERY strong network in order to perform flawlessly (in fact, I had to hardwire the Apple TV to the router despite having a very strong a stable Wi-Fi AC).

 

[Powerbooky]

Specially taking into account that Apple current implementation of the Homepods "Home Theater Mode (with Atmos support)" with an Apple TV 4K, despite using an ad-hoc network by virtue of AWDL and being currently limited to stereo paired homepods, requires a VERY strong network in order to perform flawlessly (in fact, I had to hardwire the Apple TV to the router despite having a very strong a stable Wi-Fi AC).

I must say, I have one AppleTV 4K that sometimes is used wireless. And it does work with HomePod mini's on the same 5GHz network.

802.11ac (wifi 5) is fast, but only when using just a few devices at once.
The picture below explains it better:

Source: All About Circuits

In our house there can be about 25 active wireless devices around (friends, family, work related devices). The most demanding devices do have 802.11ax available and indeed it offers almost the full bandwidth possible with multiple Macs in use, compared to 802.11ac. Note: We have 1 AP in use: WAX650S

 

[B/D]

Here is how to enable the setting system wide. It works with all tvOS apps and content, including video games and live feeds.

 

[ju3rg]

Well, I can´t, since this particular feature works with the Apple TV 4K first gen as well, which means that my theory is incorrect, then.

Prob because it lacks the neural engine hardware.

I think you guys are both correct. I updated to 17.1 last night and tried a bunch of videos, including purchased ones from iTunes. I do not see the enhanced dialog feature. Also don't see it in the video and audio settings.

 

[GizmoDVD]

Here is how to enable the setting system wide. It works with all tvOS apps and content, including video games and live feeds.

Weird, I'm on 17.1 and don't see this as an option at all.

 

[GizmoDVD]

Weird, I'm on 17.1 and don't see this as an option at all.

Ok, so I just left my remote hanging on the screen for minute and it just randomly populated.