AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
Who told you it was designed to only play 256kbps music ? Why do folks refuse to educate themselves about a product before speaking on it?
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
Who told you it was designed to only play 256kbps music ? Why do folks refuse to educate themselves about a product before speaking on it?
1) How is FLAC being supported? It would be disingenuous to make someone think that iCloud Music or iTunes Match files can be FLAC if that's not the case, and sincere primary UI is the Siri interface, not simply using it like a dumb, wireless speaker, that's an important detail that shouldn't be omitted.
2) It would also be disingenuous to say that it supports FLAC, even over AirPlay, if it's only able to take a FLAC (or ALAC) encoded file from the source device and then transcode it on the fly to a lossy format for AirPlay which would remove any of the benefit of using a lossless codec. I don't know if this is what is happening but the HomePod Tech Specs clearly have a citation that indicate that it could happen and certainly creates more questions than it answers.
3) Personally, I'd think that using Apple's official documentation is better starting point than secondary sources. That first link to 9to5mac has so jaw-dropping errors that if it said water was wet I'd have to verify that data. Case in point, "For those unaware, FLAC is a lossless format, meaning there is no compression whatsoever."
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
Who told you it was designed to only play 256kbps music ? Why do folks refuse to educate themselves about a product before speaking on it?
I didn't said it was designed only to play 256kbps music. I know it can play many formats. My point is related to sound quality, and how Apple focused the HomePod for Apple Music. I don't think that playing lossless music files in the HomePod will make it an audiophile speaker, as the post I respond said it is.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
I haven't stated in a single post that listening tests aren't valid, nor have I made mention of anything about the listeners, their positions within the physical test space, nor even the listener's hearing deficits. Heck, if you want to get a bunch of old construction workers together to do an audio test? Don't let me stand in the way. I haven't as well stated the need for a technical or scientific test requiring any kind of test facility, nor any specific test equipment. So you surmise incorrectly about what I am looking for.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
I'd be happy if CR, David Pogue, et al, would at the least, acknowledge that they don't really know how to do a proper comparison/listening test of 2 way speakers that would include speakers with computational audio architectures. That would at least set the stage for interested parties to begin creating more valid procedures, comparison and otherwise, which will surely be necessary when competitors of the HomePod arrive, some likely before the end of this year.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
EDIT: I wanted to add that I am not currently looking to buy any speaker of any kind, but if I was, and I was to choose a HomePod, I would wait until most of the software/Siri fixes are onboard. I'm not really keen on buying HomePod with the promise of "great features to come later!". My mileage varies from others.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
I'd be happy if CR, David Pogue, et al, would at the least, acknowledge that they don't really know how to do a proper comparison/listening test of 2 way speakers that would include speakers with computational audio architectures. That would at least set the stage for interested parties to begin creating more valid procedures, comparison and otherwise, which will surely be necessary when competitors of the HomePod arrive, some likely before the end of this year.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
Still doesn't answer what you think your desired test is going to accomplish. It's certainly not to determine the best sounding speaker since that's objective and better accomplished with listening to one.
...and FWIW while the HomePod and HomeMax are designed for varying use-cases, one 360 and one front-firing, both attempt to adapt sound to the listening space and both monitor the "woofer" using one on-board microphone to adjust the low-end in real-time as needed to minimize distortion. They actually have quite a bit in common which is why you're now seeing more live listener tests finding the sound they produce also very comparable. Sometimes the HomePod gets the vote and sometimes the Home Max, or "other". Just more proof that specs don't tell tell those teens and college-age kid you mentioned what will "sound the best" for them.
I don't see any benefit to this test you want to see, nor have you been able to come up with one yourself so far. Apple seems quite content to trust the audio pros and their proven testing procedures, modeling their own after it. Yet you think Apple should have done something differently during the development and testing instead of rely on audio professionals and the science and physics behind them?
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
I'd be happy if CR, David Pogue, et al, would at the least, acknowledge that they don't really know how to do a proper comparison/listening test of 2 way speakers that would include speakers with computational audio architectures. That would at least set the stage for interested parties to begin creating more valid procedures, comparison and otherwise, which will surely be necessary when competitors of the HomePod arrive, some likely before the end of this year.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
Still doesn't answer what you think your desired test is going to accomplish. It's certainly not to determine the best sounding speaker since that's objective and better accomplished with listening to one.
...and FWIW while the HomePod and HomeMax are designed for varying use-cases, one 360 and one front-firing, both attempt to adapt sound to the listening space and both monitor the "woofer" using one on-board microphone to adjust the low-end in real-time as needed to minimize distortion. They actually have quite a bit in common which is why you're now seeing more live listener tests finding the sound they produce also very comparable. Sometimes the HomePod gets the vote and sometimes the Home Max, or "other". Just more proof that specs don't tell tell those teens and college-age kid you mentioned what will "sound the best" for them.
I don't see any benefit to this test you want to see, nor have you been able to come up with one yourself so far. Apple seems quite content to trust the audio pros and their proven testing procedures, modeling their own after it. Yet you think Apple should have done something differently during the development and testing instead of rely on audio professionals and the science and physics behind them?
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
I'd be happy if CR, David Pogue, et al, would at the least, acknowledge that they don't really know how to do a proper comparison/listening test of 2 way speakers that would include speakers with computational audio architectures. That would at least set the stage for interested parties to begin creating more valid procedures, comparison and otherwise, which will surely be necessary when competitors of the HomePod arrive, some likely before the end of this year.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
Still doesn't answer what you think your desired test is going to accomplish. It's certainly not to determine the best sounding speaker since that's objective and better accomplished with listening to one.
...and FWIW while the HomePod and HomeMax are designed for varying use-cases, one 360 and one front-firing, both attempt to adapt sound to the listening space and both monitor the "woofer" using one on-board microphone to adjust the low-end in real-time as needed to minimize distortion. They actually have quite a bit in common which is why you're now seeing more live listener tests finding the sound they produce also very comparable. Sometimes the HomePod gets the vote and sometimes the Home Max, or "other". Just more proof that specs don't tell tell those teens and college-age kid you mentioned what will "sound the best" for them.
I don't see any benefit to this test you want to see, nor have you been able to come up with one yourself so far. Apple seems quite content to trust the audio pros and their proven testing procedures, modeling their own after it. Yet you think Apple should have done something differently during the development and testing instead of rely on audio professionals and the science and physics behind them?
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Oh, now you have a new reason that the HomePod was at a disadvantage: It isn't able to adjust to nearby obstructions, ie a couple of books, a vase, a small speaker, or a wall despite Apple's claims to the contrary. Well that's not a great showing if true.
Why is it beyond belief that the HomeMax and Sonos CAN just as good or better to some listeners, while the HomePod will sound better to some others. If anything David Pogue did everyone a favor by proving that there really are other smart-speaker options that really do sound pretty good, maybe as good or even better than the HomePod for some, if you don't want to go all in with Apple. Viable options are a good thing aren't they?
Anyway we've both probably worn out our welcome in this thread so I'm done with it.
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Before HomePod: I want speakers that will direct sound a central point of a room. After HomePod: Speakers should be centrally located in a room so that you scurry along walls and huddle in any corner.
Let us know when nightclubs replace all their equipment with a single giant tower in the center of the dance floor so everyone can dance around it. Hell, even at concerts where the stage is centrally located there are speakers in the back and to the sides. Do you really think that a single, centrally located music box is how dance clubs or even HECs are going to be set up now because of the HomePod? Apple doesn't even think that since they 1) demonstrated it against a wall and 2) talked about using two in unison for surround sound.
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Before HomePod: I want speakers that will direct sound a central point of a room. After HomePod: Speakers should be centrally located in a room so that you scurry along walls and huddle in any corner.
Let us know when nightclubs replace all their equipment with a single giant tower in the center of the dance floor so everyone can dance around it. Hell, even at concerts where the stage is centrally located there are speakers in the back and to the sides. Do you really think that a single, centrally located music box is how dance clubs or even HECs are going to be set up now because of the HomePod? Apple doesn't even think that since they 1) demonstrated it against a wall and 2) talked about using two in unison for surround sound.
Gee, is that even what I represented? No.
Have I not been speaking of this since the great med student audiophile test. Yes.
Did Apple have it against the wall or in proximity to the wall? How far away was it? There's a substantial difference when you are speaking of beam forming between two tweeters spaced 51 degree apart.
I only stated that objects in close proximity to any of the tweeters would potentially have an adverse impact. The so-called speaker test was an example; the other speakers were within four to five inches of the sides of the HomePod, potentially blocking output of a couple of the tweeters. Sure, algorithms will resolve this the best that they can, but why would anyone want to arbitrarily decrease performance? Would you look shocked if someone placed a couple of beers in front of your tiny little 2 way speaker, blocking the output? I'm thinking probably, but you think it is all fine to do that with the HomePod; really shows a basic lack of awareness of the workings of beam forming.
The more space, the better the beam forming for the direct and ambient sound. The woofer is not even an issue.
I am impressed with how incurious so many of you so called audiophile's are; almost afraid of upsetting the status quo.
AI has actually been one of the sharpest criticisms of the HomePod, Apple's first smartspeaker, since Siri doesn't offer as many functions -- or as much flexibility -- as voice assistants from Amazon and Google.
APPLE ISN'T SELLING THE HOME POD AS A VOICE ASSISTANT LIKE AMAZON AND GOOGLE! It's called HomePod for a reason, to call out the iPod and music, if they wanted it to be considered a voice assistant, they would have called it SiriSpeaker, but, they didn't, did they?
To quote Apple's Phil Schiller on HomePod: "We Want to Create a New Kind of Music Experience in the Home That Sounds Incredible"
The HomePod is a speaker first and foremost, it is about music, and it is innovative, the innovation is in the sound and the adaptive audio tech (AI), to deliver consistent sound in any room, in nearly any location, can amazon or google do that? Do their speakers even sound any good to begin with? So, the problem is, people who have voice assistants that have a speaker in them, compare the homepod to those, but, the comparison should be to other speakers, not other voice assistants.
As an audiophile, especially after reading ifixit's teardown, seeing how tightened down everything is and what they've done to prevent vibration noises or things falling apart on the longer term, if I could, I'd buy at least two right now, (I will in the future).
As far as Siri and voice assistant functions, those will surely be beefed up with software updates in the future, but, that's not it's main function.
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
There hasn't been a properly conducted test from anybody at this point in time, as far as I can tell, and I don't even consider myself an "audiophile".
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Of course it's been properly tested... Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
The listening tests were flawed; CR's, David Pogue's, and even AI's. Testing as if all of the devices are simple 2 way speakers is the flaw and doesn't do justice to anything more advanced. Heck, even Apple's HomePod listening tests for the media were flawed; Apple knew how to setup the HomePod to favor the room setup.
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
Flawed?? You mean you are incapable of knowing what sounds good to you without some "authority" telling you it does and using charts and graphs and industry buzzwords to do so? Heck Apple wouldn't even allow early reviewer access to the HomePod without taking a class from them in advance to explain why they should love the HomePod sound.
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
Oh, so you are attempting to shift the conversation 180 degree as you are oft wont to do? Fair enough.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
Serious question then: What do you think will be accomplished with this test you're looking for, one that Apple presumably didn't already discuss in connection with the HomePod development?
I'd be happy if CR, David Pogue, et al, would at the least, acknowledge that they don't really know how to do a proper comparison/listening test of 2 way speakers that would include speakers with computational audio architectures. That would at least set the stage for interested parties to begin creating more valid procedures, comparison and otherwise, which will surely be necessary when competitors of the HomePod arrive, some likely before the end of this year.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
Still doesn't answer what you think your desired test is going to accomplish. It's certainly not to determine the best sounding speaker since that's objective and better accomplished with listening to one.
...and FWIW while the HomePod and HomeMax are designed for varying use-cases, one 360 and one front-firing, both attempt to adapt sound to the listening space and both monitor the "woofer" using one on-board microphone to adjust the low-end in real-time as needed to minimize distortion. They actually have quite a bit in common which is why you're now seeing more live listener tests finding the sound they produce also very comparable. Sometimes the HomePod gets the vote and sometimes the Home Max, or "other". Just more proof that specs don't tell tell those teens and college-age kid you mentioned what will "sound the best" for them.
I don't see any benefit to this test you want to see, nor have you been able to come up with one yourself so far. Apple seems quite content to trust the audio pros and their proven testing procedures, modeling their own after it. Yet you think Apple should have done something differently during the development and testing instead of rely on audio professionals and the science and physics behind them?
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Oh, now you have a new reason that the HomePod was at a disadvantage: It isn't able to adjust to nearby obstructions, ie a couple of books, a vase, a small speaker, or a wall despite Apple's claims to the contrary. Well that's not a great showing if true.
Why is it beyond belief that the HomeMax and Sonos CAN just as good or better to some listeners, while the HomePod will sound better to some others. If anything David Pogue did everyone a favor by proving that there really are other smart-speaker options that really do sound pretty good, maybe as good or even better than the HomePod for some, if you don't want to go all in with Apple. Viable options are a good thing aren't they?
Anyway we've both probably worn out our welcome in this thread so I'm done with it.
Considering that I have been posting about this concern since the great med student audiophile test, why am I not surprised that you have just now figured that out?
Perhaps if you were less concerned with winning an argument, and more curious, you might have a broader understanding of the bigger picture of computational audio?
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Before HomePod: I want speakers that will direct sound a central point of a room. After HomePod: Speakers should be centrally located in a room so that you scurry along walls and huddle in any corner.
Let us know when nightclubs replace all their equipment with a single giant tower in the center of the dance floor so everyone can dance around it. Hell, even at concerts where the stage is centrally located there are speakers in the back and to the sides. Do you really think that a single, centrally located music box is how dance clubs or even HECs are going to be set up now because of the HomePod? Apple doesn't even think that since they 1) demonstrated it against a wall and 2) talked about using two in unison for surround sound.
Gee, is that even what I represented? No.
Have I not been speaking of this since the great med student audiophile test. Yes.
Did Apple have it against the wall or in proximity to the wall? How far away was it? There's a substantial difference when you are speaking of beam forming between two tweeters spaced 51 degree apart.
I only stated that objects in close proximity to any of the tweeters would potentially have an adverse impact. The so-called speaker test was an example; the other speakers were within four to five inches of the sides of the HomePod, potentially blocking output of a couple of the tweeters. Sure, algorithms will resolve this the best that they can, but why would anyone want to arbitrarily decrease performance? Would you look shocked if someone placed a couple of beers in front of your tiny little 2 way speaker, blocking the output? I'm thinking probably, but you think it is all fine to do that with the HomePod; really shows a basic lack of awareness of the workings of beam forming.
The more space, the better the beam forming for the direct and ambient sound. The woofer is not even an issue.
I am impressed with how incurious so many of you so called audiophile's are; almost afraid of upsetting the status quo.
I underlined a specific statement you made and addressed it specifically. I didn’t think there was any ambiguity to my observation. In no way am I discounting any of your statements with GG (or his, for that matter, because I’m not anyaying that aspect of this thread).
To restate point another way that is more succinct and hopefully comes across as more nuetral: the HomePod is the first time I can recall ever seeing people talk about centrifugal audio, as opposed to the common centripetal audio, for lack of better terms.
PS: I don’t think I’ve ever described myself as an audiophile, nor would I consider myself one. I only know what I believe sounds better or worse during a listening a test. If that makes me a audiophile then those slides the optometrist puts in front of your eyes and asks you better or worse for clarity would make a photophile, and I guess if you asked me to judge if a child is older or younger than another one I guess that would make me a… wait a minute.
It's almost like you have to work at not understanding...
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Before HomePod: I want speakers that will direct sound a central point of a room. After HomePod: Speakers should be centrally located in a room so that you scurry along walls and huddle in any corner.
Let us know when nightclubs replace all their equipment with a single giant tower in the center of the dance floor so everyone can dance around it. Hell, even at concerts where the stage is centrally located there are speakers in the back and to the sides. Do you really think that a single, centrally located music box is how dance clubs or even HECs are going to be set up now because of the HomePod? Apple doesn't even think that since they 1) demonstrated it against a wall and 2) talked about using two in unison for surround sound.
Gee, is that even what I represented? No.
Have I not been speaking of this since the great med student audiophile test. Yes.
Did Apple have it against the wall or in proximity to the wall? How far away was it? There's a substantial difference when you are speaking of beam forming between two tweeters spaced 51 degree apart.
I only stated that objects in close proximity to any of the tweeters would potentially have an adverse impact. The so-called speaker test was an example; the other speakers were within four to five inches of the sides of the HomePod, potentially blocking output of a couple of the tweeters. Sure, algorithms will resolve this the best that they can, but why would anyone want to arbitrarily decrease performance? Would you look shocked if someone placed a couple of beers in front of your tiny little 2 way speaker, blocking the output? I'm thinking probably, but you think it is all fine to do that with the HomePod; really shows a basic lack of awareness of the workings of beam forming.
The more space, the better the beam forming for the direct and ambient sound. The woofer is not even an issue.
I am impressed with how incurious so many of you so called audiophile's are; almost afraid of upsetting the status quo.
I underlined a specific statement you made and addressed it specifically. I didn’t think there was any ambiguity to my observation. In no way am I discounting any of your statements with GG (or his, for that matter, because I’m not anyaying that aspect of this thread).
To restate point another way that is more succinct and hopefully comes across as more nuetral: the HomePod is the first time I can recall ever seeing people talk about centrifugal audio, as opposed to the common centripetal audio, for lack of better terms.
PS: I don’t think I’ve ever described myself as an adiophile, nor would I consider myself one.
In my statement, the words "close proximity to other speakers" was in that very same sentence. In no way did that sentence either state or imply the center of a room for HomePod placement.
A speaker that can output over a 360 degree arc and beam form up to 7 individual tweeters based on the ambient sounds that 6 microphones pickup, and that the A8 SOC processes.
Not the same as a two way speaker, and not the same as the HomeMax, which has more limited direct beam forming, with no ambient beam forming.
Comments
In case you didn't know, the articles you mention that show how the HomePod is an audiophile grade speaker, was edited by the author, since the test wasn't done properly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/7wwtqy/apple_homepod_the_audiophile_perspective/
I don't think a $350 speaker designed to play 256kbps music is an "audiophile grade speaker", considering that sound quality is similar to the Google Home Max and the Sonos Play:3 / Play:5 speakers.
It appears most of these so called "blind comparison tests" are barely appropriate for the most basic 2 way speakers, and certainly not useful for testing any speaker with an advanced hardware and software architecture like that of the HomePod.
Two ears are all you need to determine how good it sounds. Some say great, some say not so much. And every one of those is totally valid.
But if what you're advocating is a proper TECHNICAL test Apple already explained how best to do it: Much the same way other speaker systems are developed and tested. Even gave you pictures.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/02/06/apple-takes-media-on-tour-of-audio-lab-in-run-up-to-homepod-launch
Might as well have been a beauty pageant.
The nice thing is, that just like it took DX0mark almost a year to figure how to test smartphones with computational imagining and multiple lenses, it will likely take another year or so for some entity to figure out a test suite for the HomePod, and various comparable devices that are today barely on the drawing board.
It doesn't really matter all that much in the scheme of things, but it's just intellectually lazy not to at least attempt to understand the different speaker architectures.
There's a comment on Mondaynote that gives a better case than I for this from poster Viewroyal;
https://mondaynote.com/the-trouble-with-homepod-reviews-585075add9d2
https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/24/homepod-flac-support/
https://www.soundguys.com/apples-homepod-will-support-lossless-flac-files-15845/
https://www.imore.com/how-homepod-works-apple-music-itunes-match-icloud-music-library-airplay-and-flac-files
2) It would also be disingenuous to say that it supports FLAC, even over AirPlay, if it's only able to take a FLAC (or ALAC) encoded file from the source device and then transcode it on the fly to a lossy format for AirPlay which would remove any of the benefit of using a lossless codec. I don't know if this is what is happening but the HomePod Tech Specs clearly have a citation that indicate that it could happen and certainly creates more questions than it answers.
3) Personally, I'd think that using Apple's official documentation is better starting point than secondary sources. That first link to 9to5mac has so jaw-dropping errors that if it said water was wet I'd have to verify that data. Case in point, "For those unaware, FLAC is a lossless format, meaning there is no compression whatsoever."
So the problem isn't the testing IMO. It's that you and some number of others here are looking for something scientific and machine measurable to dismiss what someone heard with their own two ears, especially so if it wasn't a favorable experience. You're making the "Android smartphone" mistake you ridicule them for of promoting specs over user experience. You don't need a six page notated, graphed and footnoted PDF trade-paper to tell you that you like your iPhone do you? Yet you want one to flail around in front of those that say the HomePod doesn't sound all that good to them and they prefer "B" instead. Good luck with that.
I know I've used this as an explanation a few times recently but I don't like olives. I just don't. You may think of them as a favorite delicacy, or at least an essential element for a pizza. It would be waste of your time to use nutritional charts, health studies, taste tests and bowls of olives lined up on a table and rated by those that love them to convince me that what I can sense for myself is flawed and proven wrong by scientific testing. Pleasing sound is subjective, just as smell and taste are. Your scientific test to prove I'm wrong about what I think sounds best does not exist.
I haven't stated in a single post that listening tests aren't valid, nor have I made mention of anything about the listeners, their positions within the physical test space, nor even the listener's hearing deficits. Heck, if you want to get a bunch of old construction workers together to do an audio test? Don't let me stand in the way. I haven't as well stated the need for a technical or scientific test requiring any kind of test facility, nor any specific test equipment. So you surmise incorrectly about what I am looking for.
However, when the entities running these tests seem unable or unwilling to accommodate a different speaker architecture into the tests, and the HomePod is certainly that architecture, instead falling back on test procedures that are minimally useful for basic 2 way speakers, then sure, I and others see fit to comment. With that, David Pogue and CR have both been on the end of a lot of questions and complaints, and David has done the best of responding to these, but still comes up short.
So I await better test procedures, which I stated earlier, will probably arrive when the competition has such devices on the market.
Funny how that works.
It isn't prescience to think that these speakers, including the HomePod, are going to become very desirable ad hoc speaker setups for teens and college age kids, most of whom don't want to screw around with optimizing conventional bookshelf speakers within generally small rooms.
I've also noted some time ago that it wouldn't be difficult to add the software in these such that they could target an audio sensor location, ie, smartphone, to set the physical "sweet spot" of the speaker, however asymmetric it is from the physical centerline of the speaker.
EDIT: I wanted to add that I am not currently looking to buy any speaker of any kind, but if I was, and I was to choose a HomePod, I would wait until most of the software/Siri fixes are onboard. I'm not really keen on buying HomePod with the promise of "great features to come later!". My mileage varies from others.
...and FWIW while the HomePod and HomeMax are designed for varying use-cases, one 360 and one front-firing, both attempt to adapt sound to the listening space and both monitor the "woofer" using one on-board microphone to adjust the low-end in real-time as needed to minimize distortion. They actually have quite a bit in common which is why you're now seeing more live listener tests finding the sound they produce also very comparable. Sometimes the HomePod gets the vote and sometimes the Home Max, or "other". Just more proof that specs don't tell tell those teens and college-age kid you mentioned what will "sound the best" for them.
I don't see any benefit to this test you want to see, nor have you been able to come up with one yourself so far. Apple seems quite content to trust the audio pros and their proven testing procedures, modeling their own after it. Yet you think Apple should have done something differently during the development and testing instead of rely on audio professionals and the science and physics behind them?
The HomePod's tweeters, seven, are spaced evenly around it to project sound in all directions; hence why sticking the HomePod in close proximity to other speakers, in the case of CR and David Pogue, reduces its ability to provide optimization of it's tweeters to the room. Surely not a big deal, but kind of defeats the purpose of buying a device with seven tweeters if you reduce the benefit of even a few of them. This has nothing to do with the scientific tests that Apple performs in it's lab or other audio professionals; only with these side by side test procedures.
So yeah, your front facing HomeMax, having no ambient beam forming ability, isn't actually like a HomePod at all when it comes to the tweeters, or microphones, for that matter, but still you made the effort to demonstrate how "equivalent" that they are, failing in my opinion.
I'll leave it at that.
Why is it beyond belief that the HomeMax and Sonos CAN just as good or better to some listeners, while the HomePod will sound better to some others. If anything David Pogue did everyone a favor by proving that there really are other smart-speaker options that really do sound pretty good, maybe as good or even better than the HomePod for some, if you don't want to go all in with Apple. Viable options are a good thing aren't they?
Anyway we've both probably worn out our welcome in this thread so I'm done with it.
After HomePod: Speakers should be centrally located in a room so that you scurry along walls and huddle in any corner.
Let us know when nightclubs replace all their equipment with a single giant tower in the center of the dance floor so everyone can dance around it. Hell, even at concerts where the stage is centrally located there are speakers in the back and to the sides. Do you really think that a single, centrally located music box is how dance clubs or even HECs are going to be set up now because of the HomePod? Apple doesn't even think that since they 1) demonstrated it against a wall and 2) talked about using two in unison for surround sound.
Have I not been speaking of this since the great med student audiophile test. Yes.
Did Apple have it against the wall or in proximity to the wall? How far away was it? There's a substantial difference when you are speaking of beam forming between two tweeters spaced 51 degree apart.
I only stated that objects in close proximity to any of the tweeters would potentially have an adverse impact. The so-called speaker test was an example; the other speakers were within four to five inches of the sides of the HomePod, potentially blocking output of a couple of the tweeters. Sure, algorithms will resolve this the best that they can, but why would anyone want to arbitrarily decrease performance? Would you look shocked if someone placed a couple of beers in front of your tiny little 2 way speaker, blocking the output? I'm thinking probably, but you think it is all fine to do that with the HomePod; really shows a basic lack of awareness of the workings of beam forming.
The more space, the better the beam forming for the direct and ambient sound. The woofer is not even an issue.
I am impressed with how incurious so many of you so called audiophile's are; almost afraid of upsetting the status quo.
Considering that I have been posting about this concern since the great med student audiophile test, why am I not surprised that you have just now figured that out?
Perhaps if you were less concerned with winning an argument, and more curious, you might have a broader understanding of the bigger picture of computational audio?
Nah.
To restate point another way that is more succinct and hopefully comes across as more nuetral: the HomePod is the first time I can recall ever seeing people talk about centrifugal audio, as opposed to the common centripetal audio, for lack of better terms.
PS: I don’t think I’ve ever described myself as an audiophile, nor would I consider myself one. I only know what I believe sounds better or worse during a listening a test. If that makes me a audiophile then those slides the optometrist puts in front of your eyes and asks you better or worse for clarity would make a photophile, and I guess if you asked me to judge if a child is older or younger than another one I guess that would make me a… wait a minute.
A speaker that can output over a 360 degree arc and beam form up to 7 individual tweeters based on the ambient sounds that 6 microphones pickup, and that the A8 SOC processes.
Not the same as a two way speaker, and not the same as the HomeMax, which has more limited direct beam forming, with no ambient beam forming.