nhughes

I should note, for those that care, that there is a vowel-challenged product out there called "TRNTBL" that is a wireless record player, and it includes support for streaming directly to Apple's AirPlay. It appears that they are shipping some units to some customers, but there are also complaints about orders that were never received. We'd like to check this product out to review (if it's legit), but I left it out of this article because I don't want to promote a company that can't ship to paying customers.

musicmandws said:

Out of Interest what is the audio to video synchronisation like with this software? I’ve found airplaying my iOS devices to a legacy Airport Express is fine but when I airplay audio from my MacBook Pro to it, the synchronisation is way off, as in several seconds. 

There is no syncing with Airfoil, unfortunately. You're looking at like a 2-3 second delay when using the app. It is meant for audio only.

When using a record player, if you're close to it, you can obviously hear the un-amplified audio and how far ahead of the streaming audio it is. And then, of course, stopping or starting the record has a delay as well. Not a big deal, though.

maestro64 said:

nhughes said:

maestro64 said:

Neil,

You are going to find everyway you can to get music to play on the Homepod, aren't you?

I spent $350 on this thing, I might as well.

Plus I'm tired of people saying how "locked down" the device is.

I like it locked down so I can tease the android friends and say see what it could be like but you will never know. 

I plan to buy a second once Airplay 2 happens. I am planning on building a new home and was planning in wall (hidden) speaker and wired into a system which allows airplay everywhere, I may need to rethink this idea. 

There are apps that allow AirPlay output on Android. They could install on their device and stream (though they wouldn't be able to handle initial setup). People forget AirPlay has existed for a long time (it used to be AirTunes), and it has been hacked and reverse engineered to death. As the resident "World's Biggest AirPlay Fan," I feel compelled to spread the word.

Also, Airfoil rules.

maestro64 said:

Neil,

You are going to find everyway you can to get music to play on the Homepod, aren't you?

I spent $350 on this thing, I might as well.

Plus I'm tired of people saying how "locked down" the device is.

SpamSandwich said:

OK, never mind the review, other than The Crystal Method I’ve never heard of a single song or group mentioned in the article. Now I am curious.

Honestly, my first draft of this review didn't mention any songs at all, because frequently I find that it devolves into either a reviewer trying to show off their eclectic taste in music, or commenters complaining about said taste in music (see the YouTube comments on the comparison video Max did, or see comments here about how the review is poor because it focuses on my experience and point of view). My first inclination was to just avoid all of that, because it distracts from the review of the product itself.

Conversely, I wanted to test out music that I listen to regularly and is in heavy rotation. So I went mostly with stuff recently added to my library, under the "Recently Added" list of albums in Music, because that's where I spend most of my time listening. I figure that's the stuff that's fresh on my mind and in my ears, so it gives the best assessment of how I good (or bad) I think the songs sound.

In the end, obviously, I decided to give some examples where the sound stood out to me, just for the sake of transparency. And I also wanted to give examples of artist names where Siri was just way off base. You're the first person who brought it up, and for that I'm glad -- I'd say that suggests I achieved what I sought out to do (focus on the product itself).

That said, I'm open to suggestions on how to do this better in the future! This review draft went through a number of different iterations before we ended up with what you see here. I also don't like to make myself the centerpiece of the review, I try to be relatively anonymous in my writing, but in this case it felt appropriate. In the end, I try to let each review be its own "thing" depending on how the product itself makes me feel. Don't want to get too formulaic.