Steve Jobs, rolling again. Mr Ives, detail!!
Market opportunity for acoustic coasters, Townshend? Fullers?
Got a homepod recently.
Not using it to listen to music as such, but for the Siri ability.
As of now Iāve got it to control Roon by voice - but only 4 commands as of now - play, pause, volume up and volume down.
Nice to be able to say āHey Siri, turn on Roonā
Canāt select any music yet, need to play with it a lot more for that.
Should be able to do just about anything with voice that can be done via a http request using the API
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Iāve got a pair pf Phantoms too. Iāve got Siri able to control the volume of the Phantoms entirely by voice. e.g. āHey Siri, set Phantom to 50ā sets it to 50% volume.
Using Homebridge.
Glad to hear it. Kodoās Mondo Head rocks on Dhalquists but I donāt have that record. That the little puppy can render Kodo without embarrassment is a significant accomplishment given the dynamics and wide bandwidth of Kodoās sound. (No cymbals though).
I did hear a review of the HomePod in which it was playing classical music. It was quite good and the reviewer had learned Siri command language. Siri was a perfect lady. It is good to know Home Pod is Roon-Ready. Iāve been playing Roon Radio to my iPad for bedtime music when my local NPR affiliate was not my taste.
I have two HomePods now and am ready for stereo. I see Airplay 2 is back on the betas so should be before June or so.
I also like the recent software update which made the HomePod not so bass heavy.
I use one in the living rom and one in the bedroom grouped via Roon.
I bought a HomePod about 2 weeks ago on the strength of a couple of YouTube reviews and the kind comments here. It was impressive in the audition at the Apple Store hall. The little thing was natural in the mid-range. Getting it home, the current voicing is very close to my Dhalquists. Maybe not quite as much deep bass energy but extended cymbals and natural mid-range. Itās been competent on everything I played. The Apple Music that was OK in the store sucked in the lounge. With the upgrade, Apple Music glare was reduced. Tidal standard sounds good and Tidal Premium hangs with my local lossless tracks.
I saw it pop up as an audio endpoint in my iPhone audio menu so I had a go with it for a speaker phone in my study. The sound was clear and the echo tamed for my caller. Very nice not to have to wear headphones for our quarterly check-in. Now 2 killer apps for a HomePod. My financial advisor put one on his birthday list.
I keep trawling Tidal for out of print recordings from my college days. Finding some rare Britten, Bernstein, Ives, etc. Most of the things Iāve trawled for are out of print. Found BS&T āChild is the Fatherā¦ā, the 2 Super Session disks, and some others. Roon can play these on the stereo. But Iāve been playing them for bed-time music.
Just an update, after a while with the HomePod Iām decidedly less impressed. Itās an incredible engineering feat no doubt but the lack of Spotify, Chromecast or any other streaming protocol except the antiquated Airplay made it untenable.
On top of that it would do some really weird things with music, where the bass track would end up out of sync with the rest of the piece, making the whole thing become disjointed.
I also decided to audition the B&O A6 and M5 - both of which (at a much higher price though) blow the HomePod out the water and offer Bluetooth, Spotify, Airplay and a few other streaming protocols.
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Thatās fascinating. Did you build the plugin yourself?
In a side by side test I actually preferred my Sonos One over the Homepod, so the Homepod went back.
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I was reading an article yesterday about falling sales of the homepod and how Apple were having to cut back on production. Reasons cited were the ālocked inā nature of the device and its high price compared with cheaper and more versatile products. Lack of Blutooth (to play music, it does have Bluetooth apparently) was a major oversight and was no doubt driven by the desire to lock users into the Apple eco-system. The Amazon Echo devices are the best sellers apparently (no figures given), presumably because they have Bluetooth and can be used by anyone with any phone to play music.
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