>I'm an EDM guy and demand a certain performance to 20hz, which homepod lacks.<p>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.<p>EDIT: Movie soundtracks also commonly have <40Hz content for sound effects.
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...
I'm no audiophile, and I don't plan on getting a HomePod, but the interesting tidbits to me were the following:<p>>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]<p>>Apple applies Equal-loundness contours[2] to equalize absolute energies of loudness to <i>perceived</i> 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.<p>>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.<p>>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.<p>[1] - <a href="https://gfycat.com/BiodegradableNiftyKoala" rel="nofollow">https://gfycat.com/BiodegradableNiftyKoala</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour</a>
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.
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.
Even measurements on the paper looks great when we talk about how it actually sounds, this review explains it the best <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=uzbTRMIFL-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=12&v=uzbTRMIFL-4</a><p>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.
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...<p>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).<p>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).<p>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.