
Apple HomePod – The Audiophile Perspective and Measurements - lqueenan
https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/7wwtqy/apple_homepod_the_audiophile_perspective/
======
mrob
>I'm an EDM guy and demand a certain performance to 20hz, which homepod lacks.

I've checked a lot of dance music and never found anything with meaningful
20Hz content. It's extremely rare for "deep bass" to be lower than 40Hz. The
only genre I can think of that often has very deep bass is pipe organ music.

EDIT: Movie soundtracks also commonly have <40Hz content for sound effects.

~~~
52-6F-62
I always understood ~20Hz to be relegated more for inaudible movie effects
like you mentioned. Usually contributing to the feeling of dread, fear, and
anxiety in horror movies, etc.

It’s news to me that one might need 20Hz for purely an audio track, especially
in the home. I would understand at a concert or something but to demand it
from a single small self-contained unit like that sounds like looking for love
in all the wrong places.

~~~
EADGBE
Ah yes, the subwoofer rattling sound. Dreadful indeed. Can kinda take me out
of it.

I wonder if the "undertone series" for a bass hits this, since a low E on a
4-string already is at the ~40hz range. Definitely something that's felt, more
than heard, as you mention.

------
geoffreyy
I am a bit surprised, having received mine last Friday, I was very
disappointed by the sound quality but even more with the actual features
themselves. Of course this is highly subjective but I will keep my two Sonos
Play:1 stereo and return the HomePod. I just wish Sonos Play:1 had a line-in
or/and bluetooth connectivity...

~~~
eridius
It sounds to me like you're comparing the solo HomePod against a stereo setup?

------
oflannabhra
I'm no audiophile, and I don't plan on getting a HomePod, but the interesting
tidbits to me were the following:

>Apple uses Balanced Mode Radiators (BMRs) instead of industry typical
tweeters. They have a response range of ~250Hz-20kHz, whereas typical tweeters
have a range of 2kHz-20kHz. Here is gif of a BMR compared to other speaker
technologies [1]

>Apple applies Equal-loundness contours[2] to equalize absolute energies of
loudness to _perceived_ loudness by the human ear. That is, the dB of sounds
in the 2KHz-5KHz is decreased by several decibels, because the human ear is
more sensitive to them.

>They recommend putting the HomePod on a small stand (5 in), because even the
room correction processing Apple is using is unable to compensate for echoes
that originate so close.

>There is apparently some agreement within this community, at least, that if
Apple made a HomePod Plus with a larger subwoofer to allow reproducing sounds
down to 18Hz, they would essentially beat the entire high-end audio market.

[1] -
[https://gfycat.com/BiodegradableNiftyKoala](https://gfycat.com/BiodegradableNiftyKoala)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-
loudness_contour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour)

~~~
colanderman
> That is, the dB of sounds in the 2KHz-5KHz is decreased by several decibels,
> because the human ear is more sensitive to them.

I would expect recorded material to already account for this. Does anyone know
why Apple finds it needed to further apply sound shaping to recorded sound?

(That is, I would expect audiophile-grade equipment to best mimic the monitors
on which most recordings are mixed, which _presumably_ is a flat loudness
curve.)

~~~
butisaidsudo
You'd think so, but recordings are usually mixed to sound good out in the wide
world. The most famous mixing monitors are famous for sounding
awful.([https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-
ns10-story](https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story)) The
thinking there is if you can make the song sound good on those monitors, it'll
sound good anywhere.

A lot of songs are mixed with less bass than ideal, because the engineer knows
that everyone and their grandma has that bass boost button permanently down on
their stereo. Or people are using beats headphones that crank the low end.

The ideal mix also changes over time. Part of that is fashion. Every period
has its own ideal sound. But another part is the equipment the average
listener has.

Ever have a beater car with a terrible stereo? Music from the 60s will still
sound great because it was mixed to sound good on transistor radios. You can
hear the bass guitar even though there's no low end on your setup. Anyone who
had a K car in the 90s has a love for CCR. That's a fact.

In previous decades music was mixed to sound good on wood encased speakers,
which have their own resonance characteristics. For modern music, you assume
plastic. You also have to assume that a large portion of listeners are going
to be using apple earbuds, or some other cheap earbud.

When working on a mix, you usually have a few different speakers to choose
from in the studio. But the final test is always how it sounds in a car.

~~~
colanderman
I agree with everything you said, but were Apple compensating for that, I'd
expect them to use a curve weighted to crappy studio monitors/Beats
headphones/etc.

A couple other commenters noted that perception-weighted curves vary with
total SPL; louder sounds sound different. I had never thought about that
before but that makes sense to me, that Apple would apply a dynamic adjustment
that studios _can 't_.

~~~
butisaidsudo
Oh, that's an excellent point too! Bass boost and loudness buttons on stereos
are meant to give you a way to make music sound the same at a lower volume,
but most people just set it and forget it.

With fully digital players, I guess there's no reason to not have dynamic EQs
that adjust along with the volume. I'd think you'd see this more often, but I
guess even basic EQs aren't available most of the time, so it's just not a
feature that most people would care about.

------
herodotus
What surprises me most are the rave reviews in the absence of stereo (coming
later), which I always thought was de rigueur for audiophiles. I look forward
to those future reviews.

~~~
falcolas
I'm a bit surprised as well, but I've also recently realized how few songs
actually benefit from having stereo mixes, given they're almost all added in
post processing. It matters even less for a room-wide speaker, when the
listener is not at a fixed point.

That said, stereo _can_ matter, but only when the recording itself was done in
stereo. Proper stereoscopic recording is pretty cool to listen to with
headphones.

All my opinion, of course.

~~~
givinguflac
Personally I disagree on the stereo not really mattering due to post-
production. Proper stereo imaging can really do wonders with vocals being dead
center, for example.

------
S_A_P
For those looking to add some deep bass to their home listening, there are
really good options available these days. The availability of high power class
D amplification means that you can (relatively) cheaply provide room shaking
bass to a level that was prohibitively expensive even a decade ago. parts-
express.com(and others as well Ive no interest in plugging their site) offers
a large range of high quality subwoofer drivers in the 1-300 dollar range,
they offer pre-made cabinets, but you can really save if you build your own
MDF cabinet. The subwoofer plate amplifiers run ~250 bucks for 3-500 watts
rms. It definitely can make movie night at home more fun.

------
hudo
Even measurements on the paper looks great when we talk about how it actually
sounds, this review explains it the best
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=uzbTRMIFL-4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=uzbTRMIFL-4)

That's the difference with "mainstream" companies (sony, panasonic,
...,apple?) and hifi one (rotel, nad, marantz, ...): sony will probably send
the amp/speaker to production after it looks ok in measurements, while hifi
companies always listen after measurement, tweak, measure again, listen, ...
you get the point.

~~~
glhaynes
Sorry, can't watch the video at the moment, but: if anything, the hifi
companies are tweaking for an "incorrect" response, then, right? Which it
seems at best might sound "better" for one type of music but it seems like
would thus have to sound worse for others. If not, it seems like all editing
stations ought to have an EQ that applies the universally-superior-sounding
shape to all output. (Of course this assumes speakers aim for flatness…)

Edit: this other thread on this same post is already discussing this topic -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360296)

------
smackfu
Is it better to test audio products with a meter or with double blind humans?

~~~
mastax
I've been convinced by a knowledgeable person[1] that measurements are the
only useful way to measure performance. To paraphrase poorly: subjective
reviews are useless since they are limited by the reviewers subjective
perception, their ability to turn that perception into words, and your ability
to turn those words into a concrete idea about how something sounds. Since
there is no part of a speaker's performance that cannot be precisely measured,
the best course of action is to learn how each measurement affects your
perception and what qualities you like in a speaker. Then you can fairly
accurately evaluate if you would like a speaker with just a few graphs.

(Of course this is completely impractical for almost everyone, but I'm talking
about some platonic ideal of audiophile)

1: [http://zaphaudio.com/](http://zaphaudio.com/)

~~~
tomxor
Have a look at this:
[http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/FindingCG.html](http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/FindingCG.html)
It applies mainly to amps, but when you learn about amps you start to realise
that loud-speakers are really all part of the same big circuit.

With amps, specs only take you so far, once you get above the absolutely dirt
cheap crap it doesn't really help. Using THD as one example, above 1% might
indicate something wrong with the amp design... bellow doesn't really make any
difference because these are just tested with sine waves (do you listen to
pure sine waves? no), very low might even indicate that the design has been
compromised just to get good paper specs.

Headphones and speakers can be similar, frequency range doesn't really tell
you anything unless they are severely limited and thus it only really helps
sift though crap.

You are correct about reviews though, it really depends on who is reviewing
it, and 99.99% of the people out there have hardly anthing worth comparing
what they are reviewing it to. If i've never had a pencil before, and I get a
pencil and it's all crumbly I will be like "It's frickin amazin, it makes
marks on paper", but that doesn't really help anyone else trying to make an
informed decision. Additionally, even if you start going through audiophile
forums and vet authors for their background knowledge, _even then_ you have
the aspect of personal taste, musicality etc.

So yeah... if you want good audio, your fucked :) the only way is to try. And
try not to go crazy. But not buying stuff with any integrated digital nonsense
is a good starting point.

------
reiichiroh
So basically all this intangible nonsense makes it sound like the second
coming of the Bose WaveRadio. Er, no pun intended.

------
sidibe
Great marketing to let an obvious fan (check his history) who loves writing
get an early look at your product.

~~~
sambeau
He was very open & clear I thought:

 _" I also paid full price for this HomePod, with my own money. I paid for all
the equipment to measure it with, and I own every speaker in featured in this
review."_

This is very clear too:

 _" Neither KEF, nor Apple is paying me to write this review, nor have they
ever paid me in the past."_

This wasn't necessary, in my opinion, but again is very open:

 _" At the same time, I’m a huge apple fan. Basically, all the technology I
own is apple-related. I don't mind being in their ecosystem, and it’s my
responsibility to tell you this."_

~~~
antisocial
"He was very open & clear I thought:"

It could be just to make the review feel more authentic, and also both
advertisers and audience are getting smarter.

This is not a statement about this particular reviewer, just my thoughts.

~~~
mcphage
Why stop there, though? Maybe he’s lying about having paid his own money for
it. Maybe he’s lying about the measurements. Maybe his entire user account is
a fake persona. Where do you draw the line?

------
tomxor
There is no way i'm believing this thing actually sounds good unless Apple are
using some tech that is not a normal transducer based loud-speaker...

First off: This guy is talking about "measurements" not perceptible quality,
and anyone who has reasonable experience in audio quality will know that amp
specs and measurements have almost zero correlation to audible sound quality
and musicality (THD anyone).

Second: An all in one active load-speaker this small, singular and low powered
will never sound "good" compared to the same money spent on actual audio (a
basic integrated amp and some bookshelf speaker).

These types of devices are always a bag of compromise for audio quality, in
the form of "everything must be small" (speaker diaphragms and drivers suffer
because you need both large and small ones to comfortably reproduce the
frequency spectrum without seriously fucking with the audio signal), battery
powered (D-class amps), and finally mono for some bizarre reason, because who
cares about sound anyway.

~~~
lobster_johnson
The HomePod is wired, not battery-powered. I don't think you've looked at it
very closely.

Having purchased the HomePod, it's noticeably better than the bookshelf
speakers I own (AudioEngine A2+ and Odyssey LES).

It also sounds as good as my Vizio soundbar/subwoofer combo, though I've not
compared it at high volume or with movies.

It is, not unexpectedly, vastly better than my battery-powered BeoPlay P2
Bluetooth speaker.

I'm very impressed.

~~~
tomxor
Battery powered or not it will be low powered... there is no class-A amp in
that little thing unless it's being cooled by liquid nitrogen, it will be
Class-D.

I've no doubt many people will be impressed, it's all relative. But if you
actually care about audio you could have bought a lot more for you $300 or
whatever it is, but then people don't buy these types of things for audio,
they buy them for integration.

The fact that you are comparing it to a "soundbar" shows that you probably
haven't heard much better. (i'm not trying to be nasty, it's just true of most
consumers, we are not living in the HiFi age anymore).

~~~
lobster_johnson
What $349 speaker will beat the HomePod and provide the same features?
Omnidirectionality and built-in AirPlay have to be considered. The HomePod is
a single speaker that can fill a room with no additional amp, receiver or
subwoofer.

Comparing the HomePod to a class A amplifier is nonsensical. Nobody is
pretending it's competing with that segment.

~~~
tomxor
> What $349 speaker will beat the HomePod and provide the same features?

None, I'm not considering those features, only audio quality.

> Comparing the HomePod to a class A amplifier is nonsensical. Nobody is
> pretending it's competing with that segment.

The author is implicitly:

> The HomePod is 100% an Audiophile grade Speaker

Your absolutely right, it is nonsensical, it's _physically_ in a different
class all together. The author has gotten out his spectrum analyser or
whatever and measured a relatively flat frequency response of a sine-wave and
concludes... this is good audio: Except, "No" says every amplifier and speaker
designer ever.

~~~
sk5t
You are aware that "class A" and "audiophile" are not synonymous, yes?

I've got one or two respectable 2-channel audio systems around the house
(although I remain solidly in the "cables matter almost not at all + the room
matters a lot" camp) and am willing to consider that Apple may have produced a
very nice-sounding active speaker for $350 a pop if they decided to. Consider
how much more manufacturing scale and tech reach Apple has, compared to, say,
Dynaudio or a boutique room correction software shop. Give it a fair shake
before remounting the audiophile high horse.

~~~
tomxor
> You are aware that "class A" and "audiophile" are not synonymous, yes?

Yes, it was just an argumentative counter example to the Class-D amp that will
inevitably be used by this item.

