Optimizing Siri on HomePod in Far‑Field Settings

&gt; <i>Directional noises generated by household appliances such as a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer, and microwave</i><p>From what my friends with HomePods tell me, the HomePod is amazingly good at hearing people — even with lots of background noise. Interestingly, Apple&#x27;s problem may cease being &quot;can the HomePod hear the user?&quot; and become &quot;How loudly do we have the HomePod respond so that the human can hear the response while a vaccum cleaner is running?&quot;.<p>This is a novel problem because people generally can&#x27;t have conversations with vaccums running, for example.

I was testing a HomePod as a conference speakerphone in a large open office environment - where we often have all hands - and it did extremely well - clearly picking up individuals that were quite far from the actual device and that were speaking at a normal volume. I would love Apple to enable some sort of &quot;Office Mode&quot; for the HomePod similar to what they&#x27;ve done with the Apple TV (given the name doubt it will happen anytime soon) - maybe something they could work on with Cisco on? It performed better than the Jabra Speak 810 which is almost twice the cost. Has anyone else experienced this or used it in an office environment?

A few of my friends have Google Home and I found it very interesting they have to shout louder at the device when the music is louder, I&#x27;ve never had a problem with the HomePod hearing me, even if I whisper and music is playing. I have a HomePod in the livingroom about 15 feet from the bathroom and it can always hear me in the morning. I also find it&#x27;s good at knowing what HomePod in my house to react on, and handing the request off to the HomePod if my iPhone picks up. My only complaint is that if my iPhone is upside down Hey Siri stops working on the HomePod.

&quot;Unlike Siri on iPhone, which operates close to the user’s mouth,&quot;<p>I wish they wouldn&#x27;t make this assumption. Siri would be much more useful sitting on my kitchen counter or coffee table. I now use the Echo for timers, music, weather, movie times, random questions, ...

For a related (but less complicated) project, see Mozilla&#x27;s RNNoise project, which uses neural networks to better tune classical signal processing algorithms to reduce noise in recorded speech: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people.xiph.org&#x2F;~jm&#x2F;demo&#x2F;rnnoise&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;people.xiph.org&#x2F;~jm&#x2F;demo&#x2F;rnnoise&#x2F;</a>

Does anybody else wonder how advanced audio surveillance tech is, if commercial off the shelf consumer products are _this good_ at eavesdropping?<p>Has anyone ever tried putting a HomePod at the focus of a large parabolic (audio) reflector, and pointing it at their neighbours windows or people across the park?

In my experience they over-optimized, with homepod now responding to &quot;hey Sara&quot; instead of Siri. Drives my partner nuts.

At some point in the future, I&#x27;d rather wear a BT headset most of the time in some inconspicuous manner and use that for notifications and requests. The device and headset could know if I&#x27;m focused and wait until I come up for air for lower priority notifications. I would always have a mic handy for vocal requests.<p>The last stop before true integration where I just have to think my request...