What surprises me most are the rave reviews in the absence of stereo (coming later), which I always thought was de rigueur for audiophiles. I look forward to those future reviews.
Does anyone really expect proper stereo from a single speaker?
Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
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Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#22Great marketing to let an obvious fan (check his history) who loves writing get an early look at your product.
The reviewer seemed to be very frank about listing their biases in fairness (see the big section titled 'Bias' in the review). And they shared their original data, so it's up to you what you want to make of it.
Now if only more tech reviewers gave out raw data or even actually measured. Too many just read off the specs and go yep sounds good!
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#23I am a bit surprised, having received mine last Friday, I was very disappointed by the sound quality but even more with the actual features themselves. Of course this is highly subjective but I will keep my two Sonos Play:1 stereo and return the HomePod. I just wish Sonos Play:1 had a line-in or/and bluetooth connectivity...
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#24Even measurements on the paper looks great when we talk about how it actually sounds, this review explains it the best https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=uzbTRMIFL-4
That's the difference with "mainstream" companies (sony, panasonic, ...,apple?) and hifi one (rotel, nad, marantz, ...): sony will probably send the amp/speaker to production after it looks ok in measurements, while hifi companies always listen after measurement, tweak, measure again, listen, ... you get the point.
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#25I'm no audiophile, and I don't plan on getting a HomePod, but the interesting tidbits to me were the following:
>Apple uses Balanced Mode Radiators (BMRs) instead of industry typical tweeters. They have a response range of ~250Hz-20kHz, whereas typical tweeters have a range of 2kHz-20kHz. Here is gif of a BMR compared to other speaker technologies [1]
>Apple applies Equal-loundness contours[2] to equalize absolute energies of loudness to perceived loudness by the human ear. That is, the dB of sounds in the 2KHz-5KHz is decreased by several decibels, because the human ear is more sensitive to them.
>They recommend putting the HomePod on a small stand (5 in), because even the room correction processing Apple is using is unable to compensate for echoes that originate so close.
>There is apparently some agreement within this community, at least, that if Apple made a HomePod Plus with a larger subwoofer to allow reproducing sounds down to 18Hz, they would essentially beat the entire high-end audio market.
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#26What surprises me most are the rave reviews in the absence of stereo (coming later), which I always thought was de rigueur for audiophiles. I look forward to those future reviews.
I'm a bit surprised as well, but I've also recently realized how few songs actually benefit from having stereo mixes, given they're almost all added in post processing. It matters even less for a room-wide speaker, when the listener is not at a fixed point. That said, stereo can matter, but only when the recording itself was done in stereo. Proper stereoscopic recording is pretty cool to listen to with headphones. Al…
Personally I disagree on the stereo not really mattering due to post-production. Proper stereo imaging can really do wonders with vocals being dead center, for example.
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's part of the point: it has a 7-tweeter 360º array that is used to add directionality to the sound. Obviously won't compare to a true stereo pair, but it's not nothing either. Personally speaking, I'd take great mono over sub-par stereo any day anyway.
This is part of what I don't understand; directionality of sound is a concept understood to be in reference to the listener (or point of measurement). So what exactly is the homepod doing? Since the listener could always be moving within the room is it dynamically tracking and adjusting? I assumed it just optimized the sound for the room in a more generalized sense (i.e eliminating weird reflections, dead spots, etc)
It uses beam forming to create a left right and center channel spread.
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#28I'm no audiophile, and I don't plan on getting a HomePod, but the interesting tidbits to me were the following: >Apple uses Balanced Mode Radiators (BMRs) instead of industry typical tweeters. They have a response range of ~250Hz-20kHz, whereas typical tweeters have a range of 2kHz-20kHz. Here is gif of a BMR compared to other speaker technologies [1] >Apple applies Equal-loundness contours[2] to equalize absolute en…
> That is, the dB of sounds in the 2KHz-5KHz is decreased by several decibels, because the human ear is more sensitive to them.
I would expect recorded material to already account for this. Does anyone know why Apple finds it needed to further apply sound shaping to recorded sound?
(That is, I would expect audiophile-grade equipment to best mimic the monitors on which most recordings are mixed, which presumably is a flat loudness curve.)
Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#29Re: Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements
#30What surprises me most are the rave reviews in the absence of stereo (coming later), which I always thought was de rigueur for audiophiles. I look forward to those future reviews.
There are 7 tweeters in each Pod. Not only does a single Pod do stereo, it will analyse the surroundings to make use of walls etc to make wider stereo than it could just do by naively choosing a side speaker.
So, I guess it determines which direction to use for the left and which for the right channel based on closeness to the wall. If so, what does it do when in the center of a symmetrical room? Is there a weird border case where it starts oscillating between multiple states?