Apple's new 1 liter speaker: 10mm xmax woofer, 8 amps, 7 tweeters w/horn, 6 mics

[tktran]

Well, I’m not expecting a review as critical as I’d want eg. a speaker designer. The best one I’ve seen is from Arstechnica, which is a tech site that I frequent.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...-and-thats-it/

These writers are generally very critical of the big boys (Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon etc) and this review is no different.

[ScenesFromAHat]

CR didn't include measurements, only subjective feelings. I get not trusting the random dude on reddit, and you shouldn't, but at least he gave measurements and provided very, very detailed information about how he got said measurements.

Subjective feelings like "This speaker sounded better to our ears in a dedicated listening environment" isn't useful when trying to make an accurate, unbiased comparison between different products that are defined by sound quality. Sound quality is a rare thing that can be objectively measured.

Whether or not YOUR ears enjoy "ruler flat" response is a separate matter. Some people love the sound of B&W, yet their freq responses are literally all over the map. Those types of frequency responses (with massive peaks and troughs throughout the audible spectrum) are defined as objectively poor quality in terms of sound reproduction, but that doesn't mean people can't or don't enjoy that sound "signature".

Audio magazines pitching "warmth, clarity, spatial depth" with nothing more than how great their favorite jazz tracks sound is how we got into a world full of snake oil. With no baseline, and with everyone's ears being different, coupled with many people finding different tonalities enjoyable, measurements and data are how we find baselines.

"I can hear the artist's palm rubbing against the guitar in this pair of speakers, but in THIS pair, I can hear the individual pores secreting sweat as the musician's trembling hands begin his majestic solo. sooooo muchhhhhh warmthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

[JohnBooty]

Consumer Reports has put out a preliminary report on the Home Pod.

CR is sometimes excellent, but they also have a long, laughable history of utterly absurd reviews wherein they evaluate products by using them in way completely unrelated to their intended use case.

One of these days, they'll probably review a screwdriver and give it a bad rating because it's a terrible hammer.

I remember in one of their car roundups, probably 15-20 years ago, they rated a Corvette ZR1 as "extremely poor" because it had little trunk space and got poor gas mileage. Acceleration, top speed, and handling were not part of their test criteria. They ranked cars like the Corolla much higher. Now, for grocery shopping? Yeah, the Corolla probably is a better car. But that's not the intended use case of a Corvette, just like blistering track performance is not the intended use case of a stock Corolla.

Yet CR doesn't care how absurd they sometimes are. They have their rigid criteria and that's all that matters. That's why I prefer Wirecutter these days. I don't always agree with their conclusions but I don't see them making utter fools of themselves like CR sometimes does.

When it comes to audio performance (excluding "smart" features) literally the entire focus of the HomePod more or less boils down to:

1. Off-axis performance (because there really is no "axis")
2. Real-time room correction that requires zero effort from the user

So, of course, Consumer Reports reviewed the HomePod exactly like it was a regular loudspeaker, in an anechoic/quasi-anechoic setting in a heavily treated room. Because they're Consumer Reports, and that's what they do. Thus, they completely defeated the benefits of the HomePod's room correction and, well, it's no mystery that the HomePod would be bested by larger speakers in a situation like that ::forehead smack::

If you're planning on doing some armchair listening from the sweet spot in an acoustically treated room, thereby negating all of the HomePod's tricks... then yes, the HomePod is probably the worst $350 you can spend. In that situation I doubt it would even compete with $129 Andrew Jones BS-22s from Pioneer, and the Overnight Sensations and C-Notes kits would really mop the floor with it.

Precisely. The target demo for this speaker is anyone who doesn't care about any aspect of their life/privacy being open source for Apple/Google/Whomever (perfect for Apple, since most Apple users absolutely DONT care as long as they have the newest and latest).

Don't forget it's very possible that Apple has relationships with other parties to share whatever information that glean from these devices. Facebook does the same thing. Never mind that there are probably hackers out there who can compromise it within *minutes*.

Now that would be an actually useful thing for Consumer Reports to investigate. Apple claims that the HomePod does not send data back to the mothership until it hears the "Hey Siri" trigger phrase. Amazon and Google have made similar claims about their products.

It would not be hard to test those manufacturer claims by setting up a proxy server and observing the network traffic. (Luckily, lots of folks have already done that. If I ever own a smart speaker, I will too)

Does Consumer Reports perform a useful service like that? No, of course not. It's obviously more important for them to evaluate a HomePod exactly as if it was a monkey coffin speaker from the 1970s.

Because they're Consumer Reports, and reality can go take a hike.

[Wushuliu]

And like Amazon's Echo and Google's Home, it is listening to everything you say, and sending that to a giant computer farm which may or may not be recording everything you say, but is undoubtedly analyzing.

Precisely. The target demo for this speaker is anyone who doesn't care about any aspect of their life/privacy being open source for Apple/Google/Whomever (perfect for Apple, since most Apple users absolutely DONT care as long as they have the newest and latest).

Don't forget it's very possible that Apple has relationships with other parties to share whatever information that glean from these devices. Facebook does the same thing. Never mind that there are probably hackers out there who can compromise it within *minutes*.

[---k---]

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/...e_perspective/

Someone did some testing already.

I looked at his testing. His conclusions don't match what I see in his graphs. I don't trust it. Accurate in room testing is hard. Testing this beast is even harder.

Consumer Reports has put out a preliminary report on the Home Pod. I only don't trust CR for high-end audio reviews, but for consumer products and comparitive testing, I think they'll be pretty accurate. They said:

https://www.consumerreports.org/smart-speakers/apple-homepod-early-test-results/

"And our testers found that the Apple's speaker does deliver very good audio performance, though it's not the best-sounding wireless speaker in our ratings - or even the best sounding smart speaker."

"But the Snos One and the Google Home Max also received Very Good ratings - and their sound quality scores were slightly higher."

"The HomePod's bass was a bit boomy and overemphisized. And the midrange tones were somewhat hazy, meaning that some of the nuance in vocals, guitars, and horns was lost..." Treble sounds, like cymbals, were underemphasized."

"The bottom line? Overall the sound of the HomePod was a bit muddy compared with what the Sonos One and Google Home Max delivered."


The bar has been so lowered for what good audio is. I'm not sure more people, including myself, know how to judge a speaker sound quality (smily face eq is best right?). Amazing technology. Especially some of the room positioning eq I've heard about. But, I think the Apple-hype train is also runing full speed.

[JohnBooty]

I feel some may be missing what I feel is the true importance of the HomePod.

Apple has managed to get some pretty impressive results from a tiny speaker by smart application of fairly serious computing power. It's obvious that a speaker of this sort can't beat a good set of stereo speakers if you're sitting in the sweet spot. However, outside of the sweet spot, the HomePod turns in some impressive results because essentially the entire room is the "sweet spot."

Even if you'd rather gnaw your own arm off than buy anything made by Apple, this redefines "state of the art."

Imagine this level of room awareness applied to a larger speaker, with... let's say a 3-way design in a 5L enclosure, with a 5.5" long-throw woofer, and separate midrange and tweeter drivers. Imagine it coming from somebody other than Apple, if the word "Apple" makes you gnash your teeth.

That's pretty exciting to imagine, and that is the reason for intense interest in the HomePod from a lot of audiophiles. Even if you're not buying one (I'm not) it could pave the way for some truly amazing stuff.

[tktran]

Bluetooth/is aptX a more open
Line-input is most open
My TV (2016 OLED) and projector (2017 LCD) and Windows 10 supports Miracast.

The only things I have that does Airplay seamlessly is Apple devices (yes, we have the whole gamut of iDevices here at home)
I hate vendor lock-in, which is what Apple does very well.

[dcibel]

Yes, bluetooth speakers are more for background noise, like a portable radio for those who lived in the 90's. Many bluetooth speakers place the high frequency drivers at opposite ends of the box for "stereo".

[westrock2000]

It sounds like this thing is really techno-awesome, but doesn't anyone care about stereo anymore?

As with most bluetooth type speakers (which this would be closest related to), these are meant more for ambient music while a person moves around and goes about their business. "Stereo" is only enjoyed when you sit down in one exact position and sit and listen. I don't think this being marketed as that. This is work around the house all day and still listen to really good sounding music in the background.

[ScenesFromAHat]

Yeah it's not open by any means, but super easy to reverse engineer and toss on a raspberry pi or similar. I'm building a set of 3 self contained preamp/amp/streaming boxes consisting of a minidsp, raspberry pi for Airplay and an IcePower stereo module at the moment. I'm making a dual 125 watt at 4-ohm version and a dual 250-watt at 4 ohm version, as well as a dual 500 watt monoblock version.

So, the box will have the option of analog stereo inputs or Airplay streaming. Planning on using a Schiit or other external DAC since I don't want to bother with an internal DAC in the box.

Since I'm in the Apple ecosystem, should be a pretty nice solution.

Point being, Airplay isn't as open as other standards, but also the code for implementing it into DIY solutions is already all over the net, and the streaming quality is way up there. The only downside is that it slings from your phone/computer to the airplay receiver, instead of using something like Spotify connect, which uses your phone as a remote and streams from Spotify servers directly to the end-device.

The advantage of Spotify's way is that you're free to do other stuff with your phone once you start the stream. The downside is you need an internet connection and the quality isn't as high as Airplay.

Airplay has a quality advantage and works over an ad-hoc network if you're just streaming local content, so that's a big bonus. Downside: your source device has to be in range and not turned off while streaming. And, of course, Apple ecosystem. But, like JohnBooty mentioned, there are solutions for windows computers as sources. Less so for Android.

[dcibel]

AirPlay is a more or less open standard.

Less.

[JohnBooty]

The main irritation is that currently, you’’re locked into Apple’s own Apple Music streaming service (will Spotify, Tidal, other 3rd party access be allowed)

Apple Music is only required if you want to use it as a voice-controlled audio player.

I'd be shocked if Apple doesn't roll out voice control for other applications in the future.

If you don't need/want voice control, you can simply stream audio to it via AirPlay (which uses lossless 44.1khz 16bit audio) from any application. AirPlay is a more or less open standard.

MacOS, and iOS can stream audio from any application to AirPlay, so people already already using Spotify, Tidal, or whatever on those platforms already have everything they need.

On Windows, iTunes can talk to Airplay speakers. With the addition of an inexpensive bit of software (Airfoil, and I believe there are cheaper competitors) any application can stream over AirPlay. Similar solutions exist for Android.

[tktran]

A friend of my wife’s was over last weekend, and mentioned how her husband bought one. When i overheard, I casually mentioned “how does it sound?”

““It’’s a beautiful machine””


A. I’’ve never heard women talk to each other about speakers before
B The WAF of this thing is clearly a winner.


Clearly the sound and look of this thing a success, as far as a 1L speaker is concerned. The main irritation is that currently, you’’re locked into Apple’s own Apple Music streaming service (will Spotify, Tidal, other 3rd party access be allowed)

[bcodemz]

It sounds like this thing is really techno-awesome, but doesn't anyone care about stereo anymore? Wouldn't you need two of these to get stereo sound?
Is that how it works, or is stereo just not an option with these?

I got one of those tiny Google home assistant things for Christmas and while it's not on the level of this Apple device, it's got great voice clarity for it's tiny size, they're really packing a lot of tech into these small packages!

TomZ

There's definitely a stereo option. If you buy 2, it'll be set up as a stereo pair. (EDIT my bad seems like there's no stereo option, which is very weird) They are sold in singles partially so the price doesn't discourage average Joe's. Chances are, most people start with one, and then get a second one. I remember talking to a dealer once and he told me he has a 90% customer return rate with Sonos (and he loves it, of course). Good idea to reel people in bit by bit.

If you liked the little Google Home, you'll be in for a shock when you hear these. The Sonos Play 1 is noticeably better than the Google Home, and the Play 1 does not sound KEF level good.

Hi Brian, bring it with you to the next event you attend so others can check it out, it looks interesting and I'm curious how good it really is.

That's a great idea! I'll be sure to bring it.

[neildavis]

It sounds like this thing is really techno-awesome, but doesn't anyone care about stereo anymore? Wouldn't you need two of these to get stereo sound?
Is that how it works, or is stereo just not an option with these?
TomZ

That's a good question, because most of the other WiFi speaker brands offer stereo pairing and multi-room capability. According to this article, stereo pairing and multi-room are coming later, but those capabilities are not part of the launch configuration.