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.

Comments

I don't know...

[magusxxx]

...still needs more cowbell.

Re:I don't know...

[asliarun]

Never thought the day would come when slashdot becomes reddit, and reddit becomes slashdot.

(just poking fun at ourselves, don't take offense)

Duh

[uvajed_ekil]

Of course some people are saying it's better than everything else, it's got an Apple logo on it.

Not saying they're right, but this should not be unexpected.

Re:Duh

[uvajed_ekil]

Equally obvious alternative title: some audiophile gear is way over-priced.

Re:Duh

[Zaelath]

Monster audio cables are worth every penny, some people just don't have the aural capacity to appreciate their greatness.

Re:Duh

[avandesande]

each speaker has a few micrograms of Steve Jobs ashes emitting a reality distortion field

No Spotify, no deal

[Little_Professor]

And yet it can't even play Spotify using voice control A major fail. The walled garden works as long as the services you are tied to are actually competitive with the alternatives. Apple Music sucks in terms of compatibility. I want a service I can use to play music anywhere

Re:No Spotify, no deal

[Anonymous Coward]

So, in other words you never had any intention of purchasing an Apple product and it has nothing to do with Spotify after all.

Re:No Spotify, no deal

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apple Music is your only streaming source. You can use Airplay (Apple-specific) to stream from your phone to the speaker, but every time it starts or stops you have to reconnect your Airplay stream and start again. So if it's not Apple Music or an iPhone - you're SOL.

Re:No Spotify, no deal

[TheFakeTimCook]

And yet it can't even play Spotify using voice control
A major fail. The walled garden works as long as the services you are tied to are actually competitive with the alternatives. Apple Music sucks in terms of compatibility. I want a service I can use to play music anywhere

Do you have to use Apple software or hardware as a sound source? If so, I won't even bother reading reviews, since I've never once used either of these things and have no desire to.

It uses AirPlay as its audio protocol; but that is available on many devices and applications, including, but not limited to, Spotify.

Here is an AirPlay Server. Also does GoogleCast and Miracast:

https://www.airserver.com/ ...and another one:

http://www.airsquirrels.com/ai...

Here's a Free one:

https://www.5kplayer.com/airpl...

Here's a money-grubbing one:

http://www.x-mirage.com/x-mira... ...or Roll-Your-Own:

https://github.com/jamesdlow/o...

https://github.com/watson/airp...

So, yeah, it's AirPlay; but, as you can see, that Protocol isn't exactly non-accessible.

So, to say "I can't use a HomePod because it only uses AirPlay" at this point, is like refusing to buy a WiFi router, and then complaining you can't connect to your home network with your smartphone...

Re:Uh huh

[cayenne8]

Hmm....well, if it does sound that good, AND...if Apple gives me a way to disable the Siri "always listening" parts, I might consider buying one for my office.

I"d like a really good sounding BT set up for my office, but I have no need nor want to bug my surroundings with an always on listening device talking to the internet.

An article with audiophiles and Apple products

[Headw1nd]

...and it involves actual tests? I'm pretty shocked.

Re:An article with audiophiles and Apple products

[mikeiver1]

Semi anechoic measurements in ones home or office with a calibrated mic are fine but the facts are still the same... Rooms have peaks and dips in response due to the reflections of the sounds at various frequencies. These build up in ways that, though they can be corrected for a specific listening location, will still cause havoc in the rest of the space resulting in a less than satisfactory listening experience. IE: listening out of the "sweet spot". There is in reality no way to correct a rooms acoustics for all listening locations. The other issue for some will be listening fatigue. A small driver is unable to reproduce the lowest octaves of the audio range and must resort to psycho acoustic trickery to make you think you hear what is not really there. This will lead to listener fatigue. In the case of speakers there is literally no replacement for displacement.

I call bullshit

[ReneR]

Also this homepot certainly is quite mono, ..?

Re:I call bullshit

[Anubis IV]

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.

Re:I call bullshit

[thesupraman]

except, of course, 6 speakers in a circle CANNOT ACHIEVE BEAMFORMING.

This is PURE marketing BS from Apple, there is no beamforming happening, because it is physically impossible given the physical layout, frequencies involved, driver geometry, etc. It is not even a matter of opinion, it is simply impossible.

What is being used is a mixture of room mode excitement, perceptual tuning and direct/reflect sound to give people some feeling of 'space', however there is practically no actual stereo separation. Really. Try listening to strong left/right panning audio on one - it is just a mess.

Of course the pudits, as usual, just swallow the pseudo-tech terms thrown out by marketing, and write big glowing reviews which assume thats what is actually happening...

What this 'with the numbers' review fails to address is the HORRIBLE compromises in other areas (I am looking at you, phase and group delay) that must be made to achieve what they are doing. These speakers are 'better' than a cheap PC speaker (and 90% of the shite bluetooth speakers people listen to these days), and yet such a large distance away from even a middling proper speaker setup that A/B blind testing is made impossible as it is simple to audible tell if you are listening to this is a proper pair of separated speakers.

If having flat frequency response was the main target of speaker design, then speakers would have been near perfect in the 60s.. and yet they were not.

But that wont stop the believers, marketers, and consumers who need to rationalise their purchases.

So, No, he has NOT 'provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.' .
It is trivial to get flat response - and few look for that as the only requirement, because it comes at the cost of other bad problems.

Re:I call bullshit

[DCFusor]

Can't make real bass without moving a lot more air than anything in a box that size can manage...even if you allow doppler distortion, which sounds nasty. You can fool the human ear (there are patents on the tricks) but you can't make ripples in my drink from across the room or fool my guests into going out to roll up their car windows on a sunny day with recorded thunder. Of course, no one tests with the hard stuff, even when using just ears. Recorded music, especially these days, has little to no relation to anything "real".

Re:I call bullshit

[Anubis IV]

So, No, he has NOT 'provided empirical evidence that the HomePod reproduced sound more accurately than a speaker that costs nearly 3x its price.' .

Yes, he has, and your assertion to the contrary is nothing more than denialism. While you’re quite correct in arguing that having a flat response curve is not the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to speakers, that doesn’t change what he provided evidence of. You can disagree with his methodology or you can disagree with the conclusions people are drawing from his evidence (and by all means feel free to do so, since I’ll be right there with you in agreement that many of them are way off-base), but I don’t see how you can suggest that he didn’t even provide the evidence at all.

It is trivial to get flat response - and few look for that as the only requirement, because it comes at the cost of other bad problems.

Getting a truly flat response is hardly the trivial task you make it out to be, but I do agree that it’s generally not desirable. Flat responses are great for people mastering tracks or doing mixing (which is where I was first exposed to them), but the general population is usually better served with the warmed up sound that’s more popular in audiophile circles. Accurate sound can be fatiguing to listen to for prolonged periods and sounds unpleasantly harsh to most people’s ears.

As for your claim that beam forming isn’t possible, why do you say that? It seems perfectly plausible to me. You’d simply rely on reflection instead of spatial separation to achieve distance.

Will the results be as good? By no means! I agree with you on that. Direct line sound with proper spatial separation is going to be far superior, but using reflections and then calculating the correct delays to account for those reflections (for their seven tweeters, incidentally, not six as you incorrectly stated) is still beam forming. Again, I already said, “I frankly don't see how it can hold a candle to a proper stereo setup”, so I agree with your assertion that it will likely be a mess compared to real stereo. Even so, I stand by my remark that, “it does sound like it'd be pretty decent for people who want just one speaker”, which is a large chunk of the population.

Re: I call bullshit

[Zero__Kelvin]

I wholeheartedly agree. If you are one of the few people who will use this device to listen to recorded music this might be great, but for the vast majority of us who intend to use it to trick people into going outside to shut their windows and return to wonder why their wine is rippling it is not worth it!

Confused

[PhrostyMcByte]

So is it actually measured as neutral, or is it applying DSP tricks to *sound* neutral given the environment? The summary seems to indicate both, but these are mutually exclusive goals. Interestingly enough, most people aren't used to hearing neutral sound and react poorly upon hearing it for the first time. It'll be interesting how this is received.

Re:Confused

[PIBM]

I don't know about you, but I don't call +- 10dB flat..

Re:Confused

[arth1]

I'm confused by your confusion: if it measures neutral on a highly calibrated microphone in a given environment then wouldn't it sound neutral to a listener in the same environment?

Not necessarily, and actually highly unlikely. The problem is that if the sound is shaped to sound better in one spot, it will sound worse in other spots, especially when it does trickery like bouncing sound off walls. Unless you plug one ear with wax, and put the other one in the exact same spot as a directional mic, you won't hear the same.

There are some other problems with the test procedures here, including not testing sound latency nor echo effects as noise. If you send continuous tones, you won't capture these kind of problems, which are quite common in speaker systems that aren't unidirectional.
Playing back a rattle sound with varying speed easily exposes this problem, which direct line speaker systems are immune to.

Then there's the high-pass filter. You won't actually get deep bass, only psycho-acoustic approximations. But then again, today's generation grew up with music without any deep bass like tympani, or even mid-deep bass like bass guitar.
To get bass that moves your diaphragm, you need speakers that displace air with their diaphragm.

Wow, I'm getting one

[110010001000]

If there is anyone I trust, it is audiophiles from the Internet. They are the ones that prompted me to buy the $10,000 gold plated cables to hook my gear together. My music has never sounded better!

Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

THD in the lower frequencies (below ~75 Hz) is between 18% and 56%, per his own graphs. I guess that is audiophile?

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

Nope. It's Apple Music, or Bluetooth/Airplay. You're limited - by the Apple ecosystem - to AAC, or MAYBE 24 bit/48 kHz if you have a Lightning output device. High res audio? 24/192 or 32/384? DSD? Sorry - no love for you in the Apple world. Even decent Bluetooth codecs like AptX HD and Sony's LDAC are barred from iOS (due to it not using/supporting CSR chips). Audiophile and Apple stop at source - and apparently that stoppage is now reinforced with a speaker that has 50%+ THD at average SPL levels.

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apple Music is at 256 kbps. Airplay can do 16/44.1, basically redbook audio. No high res, though...

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

Airplay can do Redbook audio if your SOURCE material is that bit rate (good luck getting that on to your phone, though). Apple Music is 256 kbps; you'd have to do your own rips to get to redbook (16/44.1), but you cannot do high resolution audio at all. Period. Nada. Apple doesn't care about high quality audio - just Beats and earpods and a mono speaker it claims can be full stereo (but which, in reality, it is not per lots of reviews, not to mention the laws of physics).

The butt hurt is strong with you!

Re:Check the THD plots

[arth1]

It's not even Hi-Fi by the old DIN 45500 standard of the early 70s.

And certainly not by newer standards which require 20-20,000 Hz @+- 3dB, max 10% THD @ 96 dB @1m.

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

Quit with the crap!

Yes, you should!

1. THD is VERY hard to hear. IM distortion is what is annoying.

False. Go and check any of the AES papers by gentlemen like Louis Fielder, Grant Davidson, or Dane Grant (all gentlemen I work with weekly). THD audibility is dependent upon SPL and frequency, and levels as low as 0.5% are not only audible, but objectionable based upon the spectrum of the THD.

Don't believe that? Perhaps Dr. Earl Geddes' presentation on the audibility of distortion will help. Of course, when you live in a reality distortion field, I guess THD might be a good thing!

2. Even Audiophile-quality (whatever THAT means!) Subwoofers generate around 25-30% THD when they are crankin'.

Really? In 2004 I was well below that level, and later I took it to >100 dB SPL with single digit THD. You're flailing here. Oh - and these SPL levels are a solid 20+ dB beyond the HomePod, meaning literally 100 times the sonic power, with one quarter - or less - the THD.

3. To get that 56%, he was driving the woofer to within an inch of its life.

Funny, because it can't move even close to an inch, or even half an inch.

And here are his comments in the "Distortion" Section:

"If we look at the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) at various sound pressure levels (SPLs) we see that Apple begins to “reign in” the woofer when THD approaches 10db below the woofer output. Since decibels are on a log scale, Apple’s limit on the woofer is to restrict excursion when the harmonic distortion approaches HALF the intensity of the primary sound, effectively meaning you will not hear it. What apple has achieved here is incredibly impressive — such tight control on bass from within a speaker is unheard of in the audio industry. [...] Even though Distortion rises for the woofer, it's imperceptible. The (lack of) bass distortion is beyond spectacular, and I honestly don't think there is any bookshelf-sized speaker that doesn't employ computational audio that will beat it right now."

So he likes the sounds of the compressor kicking in, and he believes that you cannot hear which, provably, you can. And he's - like you - a self-admitted Apple fan. The bottom line is his measurements are middling performance at best. And yes, I work in this industry, I design speakers, and you HAVE heard my work - guaranteed. Probably directly (SONOS, Polk, Genesis, Infinity, Beats, Blue, Audioquest, Mackie, EAW, KRK, Polycom, Microsoft, etc.) or indirectly (monitors for Mackie, Event, KRK, microphones for a dozen brands, etc).

The HomePod is an interesting idea - but it's got, at best, middling performance. These measurements confirm as much.

Re:Check the THD plots

[Pieroxy]

Apple Music is at 256 kbps. Airplay can do 16/44.1, basically redbook audio. No high res, though...

FLAC and Apple Lossless is probably as best as it's going to get. High res audio - while useful for mastering/mixing and other pro transformations - is utterly useless for end-user music listening gear.

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

No, the human ear is quite sensitive to THD in the bass, it comes down to the order of the harmonics. If it is just 2nd and 3rd, then it can be much less objectionable (you can hear 2-3% of each harmonic, but it's not "bad"). Higher order harmonics, though, become extremely pronounced and easy to hear and objectionable. In fact, as you go up in frequency, the importance of those higher harmonics somewhat lessens. All this is pretty heavily documented in the several AES presentations by Louis Fielder of Dolby Labs. It's the structure of the harmonic distortion, not the total level itself, that becomes critical in the bass.

That said, when you push a woofer to its limits, reaching beyond its linear BL or Cms range (motor force and suspension force), the lower order harmonics start to increase - but the higher order harmonics explode. Le (inductance) nonlinearities can exacerbate this issue when it comes to wideband transducers that are a bit small for their size, because of the broader frequency range over which they are moving a lot.

So for example, a woofer that is still not quite at its BL or Cms limits, and is generating 10% THD, but it's 3% 2nd, 6% 3rd, and 1% higher orders, will sound "better" than a woofer at its limits, generating 8% THD, but it's 2% 2nd, 4% 3rd, and 2% higher orders. It turns out it is really hard to keep those higher order components low - and that is one of the biggest differences between a "good" woofer and a "bad" woofer. But in any case, 18% and more will be audible - and 56% is atrocious. That is effectively a 3 dB SNR - the signal is only 30% higher than the noise of the distortion, the THD will be extremely easy to hear, even if it's all 2nd harmonic.

Last thing: many people consider the ear insensitive to THD in the bass range because of the general insensitivity to SPL for low frequencies (plus the complete breakdown of ITD/IAD localization below ~100 Hz). However, harmonics are NOT in the bass range! What is the 5th harmonic of 80 Hz? It's 400 Hz - right in the lower midrange. Meaning you can end up with situations where, because of a bad driver (high THD) at lower SPLs, you can hear a bunch of harmonics and not hear the fundamental! For example, the threshold of hearing says you can hear ~55 dB SPL @ 40 Hz. The 5th harmonic would be at 200 Hz. You can hear ~10 dB SPL at 200 Hz. That means you could hear ~1% 5th harmonic of a 40 Hz tone that was inaudible (50 dB SPL @ 40 Hz, -40 dB 5th harmonic). You hear the distortion - not the fundamental.

Re:Check the THD plots

[LynnwoodRooster]

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.

Meanwhile, in the real world...

[DontBeAMoran]

The Apple HomePod sounds good, but other smart speakers sound better.

256k

[Toxiz]

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

24-bit audio support

[DigiShaman]

Hey APPLE! Where's the support for 24-bit audio?

Re:24-bit audio support

[LynnwoodRooster]

They have it! In fact, they have nearly eleven times that type of audio, since it streams a solid 256 kbps! Oh wait, you mean 24 bits per PCM sample? Sorry - you have to go elsewhere for high quality music...

Better Than $1,000 Speaker

[PPH]

To be accurate, they compared the HomePod to a $999 speaker. That extra dollar might make all the difference.

So what?

[Sarten-X]

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.

Re:So what?

[LynnwoodRooster]

I was a sound tech, way back when, but for the last 20 years I've spent 99% of my time designing speakers and headphones for everyone. And if you think and EQ is all you need to fix problems with speakers, well - best go back to just running snakes and taping them down, you have a LOT to learn. EQ will not fix IMD, THD, dispersion, comb filtering, dynamic compression (thermal and positional/BL), CSD issues, and many, many more.

My own two bits

[Hussman32]

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.

Monster cable's new router for Apple HompePod

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Monster Cable has introduced a new router specifically for the Apple HomePad.

It uses gold coated platinum antenna on the wifi. The spokesman said, "It is a myth to say signal quality does not matter for digital transmission. The new Monster Cable Wi-Fi router will broadcast perfectly circular zeros and the perfectly straight ones. All audiophiles will appreciate the difference in the sound quality".

Comparing apples and half apples

[Waffle Iron]

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.

Audiophile says it all

[DrXym]

I'm sure it is quite possible to do some ABX testing on this speaker vs some others and arrange them into an order that represents their comparative quality without people's bias / imagination creeping into reviews.

Re:Uh huh

[LynnwoodRooster]

That's the same thing that Amazon and Google say, and they're hated around here because of it. But I guess it's because this is Apple, we're all good?

Re:Uh huh

[arth1]

PROVE it sends constant audio to Apple Servers (or to anyone outside your LAN), or STFU.

Why does it have to send "constant" to be a problem?

It certainly captures sound (or it wouldn't react to keywords), and it certainly has the capabilities to connect to the mothership (or it wouldn't be able to look anything up), and whether it combines the two now or not is enough of a potential problem that I won't allow it in my home or my office.

Re:Stereo sound

[fluffernutter]

I think it must lack volume though. If I'm listening to music that has bass, I like my windows to rattle a little. In movies with explosions it should feel a bit like the explosion is in the room with you.

Re: Stereo sound

[sound vision]

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!

Monster?

[rnturn]

Bah! Pear Anjou cables are the minimum acceptable cables you should be using. Sure, they're about $450/foot but aren't your ears worth it?

(Yes... I'm kidding. But not about that pricing.)

Re:Uh huh

[Nocturrne]

Tell that to the apple users in China. Oh wait... Apple gave control of their servers to midget hitler and removed all VPN and privacy related apps from the app store.