“I’m an old-fashioned music listener and prefer to put on a record than go through the rigamarole of setting up a wireless speaker,” Jasper Hamill writes for Metro UK. But I’m starting to think that I might finally change my wicked old ways after trying out a pair of stereo Apple HomePods.”
“In my review of the HomePod, I said that anyone who can afford the £329 price tag should rush out and buy one because you’re really not going to get a better sounding wireless speaker at anywhere near the price,” Hamill writes. “Today I’m going to go a bit further and recommend you get the credit card out and buy two because linking two HomePods makes for a strikingly different experience.”
“The sound boost you get from two stereo speakers is also quite astonishing, with the huge, shuddering sub-bass boosted to room-shaking volumes and beautiful high or mids singing out clear and undistorted,” Hamill writes. “A pair of HomePods really does come close to matching the sound quality of a ‘real’ system costing thousands of pounds.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One HomePod sounds great, but two HomePods sound absolutely gorgeous!
For millions of people, this is going to be a HomePod Christmas!
SEE ALSO:
How to group HomePod and Sonos speakers for multi-speaker surround sound – July 27, 2018
Yes, two Apple HomePods really are better than one – July 19, 2018
iMore reviews Apple’s HomePod: Retina for your ears – June 18, 2018
Can a pair of Apple’s HomePods take on a surround sound theater system? – June 18, 2018
David Pogue reviews Apple HomePod with stereo and multi-room capabilities: ‘Ooh, man’ – June 13, 2018
HomePod stereo pairing took a frustratingly long time to arrive, but it was worth the wait – May 30, 2018
Strategy Analytics: Apple shipped 600,000 HomePods in Q1 for 6% share of smart speaker market – May 17, 2018
The Inquirer reviews Apple’s HomePod: ‘Looks great, sounds fantastic; Siri needs work’ – April 6, 2018
I want another Apple HomePod for sure, maybe two more – March 20, 2018
Sound quality shootout: Apple HomePod vs. two Sonos Ones – March 16, 2018
Apple HomePod: The audiophile perspective plus 8 1/2 hours of measurements; HomePod is 100% an audiophile-grade speaker – February 12, 2018
Apple’s HomePod is actually a steal at $349 – January 26, 2018
Digital Trends previews Apple’s HomePod: Impressive sound coupled with strong privacy – January 26, 2018
Hands on with Apple’s HomePod: Attractive, ultra-high-quality speaker, an excellent Siri ambassador – January 26, 2018
Apple’s HomePod, the iPod for your home – January 25, 2018
One hour with Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker – January 25, 2018
Yep, have two in my office. Very satisfying experience.
Now, please Apple, let us stream uncompressed Apple Music to it so we can truly make them sound great.
My wish list before I get one is
1. A battery so I can take it with me when I’m in the garden or away from a power source.
2. A usb out port so I can charge my device while using it.
3. Ability to connect to it via Bluetooth so if a friend wants to use his Android phone he can.
Well , you can always dream.
Apple is pushing to get you on their subscription so they designed a speaker that does only that. They hyped sound quality, which is an easy win in an era of rubbish plastic speakers. There are so many better audio systems out there, however, which can fill larger rooms unlike homepod and which have decent bass below Apple’s optimistic rating.
I truly wonder why anyone, even die hard fanboys, keeps avoiding doing direct comparisons with $600-800 systems, which are in the range of stereo homepod price. Apple must have paid all the computer rags to gush about how much better the Apple can sounds than an Amazon talking speaker, but look how few acoustic experts actually measured and compared the homepod to real audio speakers. When you do, you quickly realize that Apple charges way too much for a handicapped design.
Go visit Yamaha or B&W or any other reputable audio company that isn’t trying foremost to push subscriptions. Then you will get a versatile product that will perform great with anything you want to plug in and will last, unlike Apple’s increasingly fickle planned-obsolete dongleware products.
Have you auditioned these speakers in a stereo pair? I’m 65 yrs old and an audiophile from “way back”. I know what good audio sounds like.
I have a HomePod stereo pair and I concur with all the positive comments printed about such a system. Sorry you feel that there are substantially better systems at their price point but I would disagree. Their mid range fidelity is perfect. And the base output (which was somewhat sonically muted with only a single HomePod – although distortion free – is a totally different experience when a pair of HomePods are used.
IMO, HomePods are the best sounding stereo streaming speakers available and can not be bettered by conventional speakers in their price range.
At 65 years old, your hearing has already begun its inevitable decline. So if they are good for you, fine. Enjoy. That doesn’t change the fact that they are artificially limited to be just an Apple Music appliance, dependent on the quality of your music files (Apple sells/rents only compressed music) and also wifi (which Apple discontinued making).
I appreciate your concern over my hearing. I have a vinyl record that tests hearing ability (well, it was originally intended to test the quality of speaker systems but I just put on my excellent headphones for an aural test) and my hearing is still good to 16,.5 Hz. Normal hearing – well exceptional hearing – goes up to 20K Hz. Trust me, my hearing is quite good.
And for your assumption that an Apple system can only stream compressed audio files to a HomePod stereo system is patently false. Have you ever heard of AirPlay 2 and a CD-ROM drive or any audio device that has an I/O ability to input to a Mac computer and then using macOS’s ability to output that sound source via AirPlay 2 to the HomePods? I thought not.
“In my review of the HomePod, I said that anyone who can afford the £329 price tag should rush out and buy one because you’re really not going to get a better sounding wireless speaker at anywhere near the price,” Hamill writes.
Abject nonsense.
I have a Rotel CD player, Audio Research pre amp, and a set of Cary 300B SE Signature monoblock tube amps so I know very good sound when I hear it. A Bose Wave SoundTouch system sounds AMAZING for it’s tiny size. It’s cheaper than two HomePods, sounds better (my opinion but it is damn close even if you prefer the HomePod), and is far more versatile than the HomePod. My wife listens to the radio, my kids their CD’s, while I stream Apple Music.
This article is pure fan boy propaganda. My regular listening is downstairs with my $7000 system. But I often listen upstairs on the Bose, and I enjoy it a LOT. The bass, from such tiny speakers, is utterly amazing.