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Reddit Audiophiles Test HomePod, Say It Sounds Better Than $1,000 Speaker (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Apple released its much-hyped HomePod speaker to the masses last week, and the general consensus among early reviews is that it sounds superb for a relatively small device. But most of those reviews seem to have avoided making precise measurements of the HomePod's audio output, instead relying on personal experience to give generalized impressions. That's not a total disaster: a general rule for speaker testing is that while it's good to stamp out any outside factor that may cause a skewed result, making definitive, "objective" claims is difficult. But having some proper measurements is important. Reddit user WinterCharm, whose real name is Fouzan Alam, has made just that in a truly massive review for the site's "r/audiophile" sub. And if his results are to be believed, those early reviews may be underselling the HomePod's sonic abilities. After a series of tests with a calibrated microphone in an untreated room, Alam found the HomePod to sound better than the KEF X300A, a generally well-regarded bookshelf speaker that retails for $999. What's more, Alam's measurements found the HomePod to provide a "near-perfectly flat frequency response," meaning it stays accurate to a given track without pushing the treble, mids, or bass to an unnatural degree. He concludes that the digital signal processing tech the HomePod uses to "self-calibrate" its sound to its surroundings allows it to impress at all volumes and in tricky environments. "The HomePod is 100% an audiophile grade speaker," he writes.
The Apple HomePod sounds good, but other smart speakers sound better.
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Too bad all of your losses audio is trapped in music libraries that you are not allowed to connect to homepod. -- "You may want to use iTunes Match or iCloud Music Library to keep your iTunes library in the cloud. If your iTunes library contains lossless files, iTunes Match and iCloud Music Library treat them differently from other files. If the files are matched, then they’re matched to the iTunes Store equivalents: files at 256kbps AAC. If iTunes can’t match them and needs to upload them, iTunes converts them to 256kbps before uploading. This means that your lossless files will never be in the cloud." - Macworld
Just so you know, it's not BT. You can only stream to it with Airplay. But, it doesn't send anything to the internet until it hears "Hey Siri" which is computed locally.
I used to be a sound tech. I've tested more speakers than I care to count, and set up enough audio rigs that I can typically pinpoint sound quality problems in a few seconds with the right test clips.
Pro tip: It's almost never the speakers' problem.
I know it annoys the "audiophile" crowd, but a speaker is, for the most part, just a speaker. The response curve doesn't matter much, if you can equalize it to suit your taste. Yes, I said that evil nasty word: taste. No, you're not usually going to get objective measurements of a "good" or "bad" speaker that are worth anything*, because listening to sound, especially music, is a heavily subjective experience.
If I'm setting up a sound system for a classical piano concert, the whole system is configured for that goal... There is still reinforcement, but it's only to boost what's naturally echoed by the room, not to push anything unnaturally. For a rock concert, I usually arrange the sound differently, boosting instruments to match the band's desired sound profile. Generally, my best advice is to figure out what kind of mood the music is supposed to inspire, and adjust to fit that.
If the HomePod includes an automatic equalizer, that's great, but I'd just as soon spend 15 minutes doing proper configuration on my own. Frankly, a flat response sounds boring. I prefer a thumping (but not rumbling) bass, with clear vocals. In other words, I like a fairly deep low-end disco scoop. Is the HomePod for me? Eh, perhaps not, unless I can tweak it or pull the output to my own system. After all, I'm the one listening to the music, so I should enjoy it, no?
* There are actually bad systems out there, but (barring mechanical failure) they're usually because somebody put too much work into fine-tuning to meet a particular response curve spec, rather than making things that sound good. Such systems can be identified (and rejected) in about 30 seconds by playing the Star Wars main theme.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I'm an Apple house, we have it all, but I've had Sonos Play 5 for a couple of years.
We got the HomePod and I did a side-by-side comparison by playing 'Such Great Heights' from the Sonos and from the HomePod. This song has been a good test for me because there are well-defined trebles and bass notes with a tenor/alto vocal that sounds clean. Both units were tuned to the room using their tuning algorithms.
To be completely honest, based on my hearing (and I'm older than 45, younger than 50), the Sonos has a little bit more depth in the mid-range and bass. But it's close. The HomePod does well with hearing 'Hey Siri' even when the music is on, and so far it seems like Siri works better than it has in the past (we don't push it though). Sonos is also a little louder.
Both have high quality sound, I haven't plugged my Vienna Acoustic Grand Beethoven's into my receiver for three years because they have been good enough for my needs.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
The $999 price is for a *pair* of speakers, so you can listen in stereo.
This Apple thing costs $349 for a single speaker. So unless you listen exclusively to pre-1965 monophonic classics, it will sound significantly less good than any decent pair of stereo speakers.
Not so, for reasons that should be apparent once you take a look at the device's interior layout (see: Apple's HomePod page).
You'll notice that the sound is produced by a circular array of seven tweeters. Were the HomePod relying on the sound going directly from the tweeters to your ears, you're quite correct to suggest that (given the lack of spatial separation) it wouldn't be able to achieve a decent stereo effect. But the HomePod's sound isn't going directly to your ears. Rather, it's relying on the fact that the rear and side tweeters will have their sound reflected—and then coupling that with beam forming that's automatically recalculated whenever the accelerometer detects that the device has been moved—to produce a stereo effect.
The reviews I've seen so far seem to suggest that they've managed to achieve an outsized soundstage for such a small device, but I don't know what that really means in comparison to other devices, and I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup. Even so, it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker.
As for the rest of the claims, which you call BS on, the original redditor didn't make the subjective claim (that the headline does) that the HomePod sounded better than the more expensive speaker. Rather, he claimed that it reproduced sound more accurately than the more expensive speaker, which is a claim that can be empirically tested and verified without subjectivity. Towards that end, he described his control setup, posted pictures of it, discussed how he accounted for confounding variables, and then provided graphs, numbers, and files with the raw data so that anyone interested in verifying or refuting his claims could be capable of doing so.
So, if you think his claims are BS, have at it. He's given you everything you need to disprove him. In the meantime, he's provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.
The "base" response (lol) is total shit under 300 Hz... The +/- 3db range is only 300 Hz - 12 kHz in the figures I have seen... And this article is conspicuously lacking in figures. The figures I quoted certainly line up with the physics of having a driver no larger than about 4 inches... You won't get any kind of real low bass response out of that, regardless of how high the excursion is. If the word "audiophile" wasn't a good enough clue that whatever you're reading is bullshit. $1000 speakers? You can find "audiophiles" spending triple that for turntable tech that was outdated 30 years ago, plus "directional speaker cable" and stands to lift them off the floor and other crap that was never anything more than hocus-pocus at ANY point in history.
Come to think of it, Apple's Reality Distortion Field and audiophiles are a perfect match!
Study the Fletcher Munson curves. You'll find that 75 dB SPL in the bass frequencies - where the THD was up to 56% - is about the same perceived loudness as a 55-60 dB conversation. A quiet level. If you don't know of what you speak - keep your mouth shut.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!