Apple has acknowledged that the HomePod’s silicone base can leave behind a white ring on some oiled wooden surfaces, of the kind often found in high-end furniture, after various reviews remarked on the issue.
Apple has come under the usual barrage of fire, but in this case, it seems silicone and wood don’t mix, especially when vibration damping in involved.
Sonos One speakers also leave marks on wood:
Guess what? Sonos One speakers also damage wood. https://t.co/lvPBa58hGk pic.twitter.com/3OSnTZmdDW
— Caitlin McGarry (@Caitlin_McGarry) February 15, 2018
MacDailyNews Take: As Dave Mark writes for The Loop, “This, clearly, is the nature of the beast… Put something solid under the speaker to prevent the ring in the first place.”
Regardless, Apple obviously should have explained what could happen, not hastily published a support document after the HomePod rings began appearing online.
If you’re experiencing HomePod rings on wood, check out Bonavida’s Leather Coasters ($16.95 via Amazon) which, at 4-inches in diameter, are the perfect size for HomePod’s silicone base.
SEE ALSO:
Apple on HomePod furniture rings: You’re placing it wrong – February 15, 2018
In 1985, I had an Apple Imagewriter Printer. It’s feet left square marks on the surface of my oak computer desk. I was not happy. It’s been more than 30 years. Hasn’t Apple learned yet?
Physics and chemistry are kind of bitch, too bad apple can’t fix those to make customers happy all the time huh?
I’m going to ignore your sarcasm and respond to you as if you are serious. Yes, it definitely *is* too bad. After all, I have other items in my home that don’t leave marks on wood furniture. So, I don’t see why Apple cannot use similar materials.
Two words: vibration damping.
And leaving a ring is the only way to dampen vibrations? Try again.
I sense a good vibrations business opportunity – the “Homepod Coaster.”
Good one Peter. It could be right up there with the rubber bumper signal booster! 😉
…as in the ring is the result of the vibration interaction with the oil.
Which is why a porous fabric made ring or cushion can dampen vibrations which does not require silicone at all. It’s breathable.
Oh, and by the way… silicone is a hydrophobic surface, oil can be contained within it, and thus leech out, or it can wet it from the natural oils in the table and be drawn out.
Apple probably wouldn’t be held to such a high standard if they didn’t go out of their way to deify Jony’s designs and overhype the most useless aspects of their work. I still cringe when thinking back to Jony bragging how thin the edge of an Imac screen was. It’s a desktop computer for goodness sake. Who cares????!?!?!??!
Okay Einstein… P=F/A
Make contact A big P gets small. Watch what plasticizers you use, and how high a level and they don’t leech out. Or Choose a breathable material, felt comes to mind…
I forgive technical mistakes more than agenda driven design, but they should fix it, and no “Sonos does it too” is not a fix, it’s an unnecessary defense of a bad design decision.
Did you actually put any thought into that idea?
With felt the speaker would be moving around from the vibrations. How about Teflon doofus?
Felt or some other fabric dumbass. There are breathable, non-slip fabrics you know. Or have you not seen felt-like paddings on things that don’t move around?
Oh, look, the bottom of my Surface Keyboard actually ha something like what I’m describing. How hard can it be? Even MS thought of it!
… you use a Surface tablet, lol. Well that sure explains a lot about your idiotic postings. But it does go well with that “L” on your forehead.
I have 10 personal computers. One of the a trash can he score Mac. No douche like an Apple douche….
Let’s put a scarlet D on yours.
Funny that when Apple can’t make its own mistakes it repeats the mistakes of others.
Jesus Fcking Christ! Give this issues a rest already. Put a neoprene mouse pad under the gosh dang thing ALREADY. MOVE OOOOOOON!!! NEXT.
Why not design a device with neoprene?
Why put that cheap speaker on nice furniture?
Why don’t you go outside DavGreg… and… go play hide and go Fck yourself.? Y
our kind “IS” the problem. More whine with your cheez?
You would not know innovative tech if it smacked you in the face with a 2×4. If you even know what a 2×4 is… you ignorant tech slut.
Wait ’till you see the glasses!
Just wondering, and this is for the audiophiles, but I prefer to have my speakers suspended. Comments from the audiophiles?
i’m hardly an audiophile (although i do live with an amazing audio engineer), but i do this, too. more to keep the sound from traveling thru the walls of my room into his recording studio. how are you suspending yours?
I’ve used several methods (chains, bungie cord with carabiners) and most importantly screw in hooks to a foundational piece of the structure, not always easy to do.
I’ve screwed into the speaker cabinet itself (we are talking big heavy suckers and yes ARS I would not be interested in that) but I’ve had it give way and crash. The speaker survived, but my head having been right where it crashed just moments before made me move to cradling the speakers. It’s a bit more of a pain to set up but I prefer this.
I’ve just always preferred speaker sounds coming from above. Probably just a personal preference.
A lot of HiFi enthusiasts like to use speaker stands which are secured to the floor. Some sort of rigid mounting between the stand and the structure is often used ( screws or spikes ). If you wish to secure loudspeakers to your wall, a sturdy wall mounted support might be the best solution for you. However I’m not aware of any commercially available wall mounts for cylindrical speakers such as HomePod.
Here in the UK, the walls of my house are solid, really solid. The outer walls are 550mm thick and built of stone. The dividing walls are either made of heavyweight concrete blocks or of stone. As a result, anything screwed to my walls is never going to resonate. I have no first hand experience of mounting loudspeakers on timber stud and plasterboard walls, which would not be anywhere near so rigid.
Many enthusiasts favour putting three small ( pea sized ) blobs of Blu-Tack between the speaker and the stand. Partly to hold the speaker in place and partly to provide a little bit of vibration damping. It’s not something which I have tried, but it might be something to consider putting under a HomePod.
I don’t know whether chemicals from Blu-Tack might leach out onto wooden surfaces. They certainly do onto bare plaster or paper. I remember the horrified refusal when a senior colleague of mine once suggested to a famous violinist that he proposed to carefully Blu-Tack a tiny microphone to the wooden body of his irreplaceable violin.
The way that reference monitor speakers are mounted in many high-end recording studios is to have the front of the speaker mounted flush with the front surface of a specially built concrete soffit which is angled between the wall and ceiling. The reason is to, eliminate cancellation effects coming from the wall behind the speaker, minimise edge diffraction effects and to improve the efficiency at low frequencies. Most of those factors are intended to be addressed by the digital signal processing within HomePod.
Always love reading your posts alanaudio. You’ve got some great info, some of which I have followed before, but I’ve focused my answer on suspended speakers, and when I suspend them it is usually from the ceiling, and yes the structure has to be very solid.
During my university days I used to use large styrofoam boxes used for glacial acetic or hydrochloric acid as speaker stands. They were great for absorbing and dampening vibrations.
Your points are well taken, anyone who enjoys good sound should take a good look at position and securing speakers. Again to me the higher the speaker the better.
Thanks again for that great post, I especially enjoyed the blue tack or white sticky tack comments. There must be a greasy/ fatty substance in the material because they do stain surfaces over time. I’ve used that stuff enough to realize that.
Always a pleasure, have a great one.
Make a note one day we should compare notes as to what music we like.
Don’t buy a Homepod. It is not audiophile grade.
That’s “fact” is based on??
Opinion – like every review you can read.
perhaps this is an issue with parenting. as for me, i was properly beaten as a child. i learned to put nothing (NOTHING!!) on any furniture without a coaster… my grandma was very strict with this rule, and it has survived in my life long after her passing…
if you spend all this money on nice furniture, i kinda think the onus is on you to protect it. i see that MDN has suggested the $17 option, but the reality is, you could swipe a coaster from your local dive bar and it would serve the exact same purpose. that said, i happen to have a bunch of coasters in my possession (i’m a bartender), and if you mail me $17, i’ll send you TWO coasters. mention MDN, and i’ll throw in an extra one for free!
(-:
a small yoga foam block is an inexpensive and handy way to both slightly elevate the speaker and protect the wood surface.
http://amzn.to/2Hj6qoN
That’s an ugly and inelegant solution. Maybe you need to work for Apple.
Yes, on must protect their furniture, but is it obvious to anyone that it can leave a ring? This is not a drink or a bowl of soup you’re putting down
First do no harm…
Apple design, it just works to mar your finishes.
Apple’s HomePod rings are simply better than the Sonos One rings.
You’d have thought that with all the extra time Apple had to “get it right” that they might have noticed this. On the other hand, there’s probably not a lot of natural wood in Apple’s design studios, so they may not have known of this issue ahead of production. They just need to issue a mea culpa and include appropriate coasters in the box.
Maybe they should have had the base in the shape of the Apple Logo. Branded by Apple.
A friend works at Ft. Myer, MD. She was outraged that the HomePod left a ring, so Trump increased the Pentagon’s budget to cover all emergencies, big and small.