Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “We made an Apple home theatre. It was bad”.
The one technology compromise I will not tolerate is bad TV speakers. You hear what this sounds like. You can’t live this way now the traditional solution would be to get a home theater setup with all the amplifiers and speaker wires that come with it. No that’s too complicated. There’S got to be something that looks nice and fits within. My Apple lifestyle enter the new home pod. It’S got everything you’d expect from a high-end, smart speaker, stereo, pairing, spatial, audio support with Dolby Atmos, and you can even wirelessly connect it to your Apple TV to support a home theater setup, but at six hundred dollars for a pair can we make a non-apple setup.
That’S even remotely comparable or better, while spending less given how widely praised the first gen home pods. Were. We expected this to be a challenge. What we didn’t expect were the results in many ways. The new homepod is like its predecessor, a higher priced higher quality option for those wanting a series. Smart speaker, it has a few notable changes, though Apple has added a sensor to measure the speaker’s internal conditions to optimize sound and a second sensor to measure room temperature and humidity.
They also updated the Aging 2014 iPhone chip with something more appropriate and cut the launch price by fifty dollars. At the same time, though, that uh price cut does come with a bit of a compromise, namely two less tweeters and mics and slower Wi-Fi. These might not be issues, though Apple, believes that the Better Sound Processing should deliver a similar experience.
So the first gen home pods and the slower Wi-Fi doesn’t really matter on a smart speaker to get the homepod up and running is pretty straightforward, plug the speakers in follow. The setup prompts on your iPhone and hey they’re ready now, if you want to use them for a home theater, though, you’ll also need an Apple TV, 4K from 2021 or later, that’s the only way to get audio from inputs plugged into your TV through your home. Pods, how do people do this? I did it all.
This will bring the total spin up to 730, assuming you don’t already own one, but when you consider how feature Rich this setup is, it is a fairly compelling value proposition you get. Airplay prompts to move your music from your phone to the speakers, a full, remote and keyboard on your iOS device and an intercom across your home. It just works at least that’s what I would say if it all just works. Sadly, though, it doesn’t not quite the first unwelcome surprise with these is that they don’t sound as good as I was expecting now.
They do fare better in certain scenarios like movies when paired in Stereo. They present a far wider Sound Stage than what you get from most compact sound bars. This is great for Action.
Films like Rogue one, where that sound stage and remarkably deep bass, offer a more immersive experience than you might expect from anything. This small yeah strangely, while Atmos is supported and works on most Services, Netflix won’t output in greater than 5.1. It works equally well for video games, since ER support allows you to hook up something like a PS5 to your TV and get fully immersed in games like War Thunder the sponsor for this video War Thunder is a free-to-play online military vehicle combat game on a wide Variety of platforms, including a PS5 or even Mac OS, which is great since it also supports cross play. It also features over 2 000 vehicles from the 1910s to today and over 100 major battlefields to explore since World War II looks great, sounds great and you know what else is great: the free bonus premium vehicle you get by signing up at the link below now. Music uh that leaves more to be desired.
Atmos playback works here, but I don’t know, like my experience on the airpods atmos makes things sound distant and echoey and the only way you’re going to get the sounds of instruments floating around. You is, if you stick your head right in between the home pods. This is definitely an experience.
Turning Atmos off, though, improves things yep that does sound better, though it doesn’t fix everything, but too often music simply sounds like it’s being played back incorrectly. It’S very opinionated and songs, just sound different, even some of the rough drafts I’m making in garagebands sounded foreign. This is surprising, as the first gen homepod was well regarded for its audio quality, and so I was looking forward to this new one.
Now, though, I’m just confused other reviewers are saying that this sounds just as good as its predecessor, but I don’t agree listening to a wide variety of songs. This is just better. Its frequency response is, more even across the board, presenting a consistently balanced playback in a way that the second gen doesn’t so they sound different eh yeah. They do sound different.
Is that something you can test for us, because it’s kind of weird that they sound this way yeah sure I can test it while Sam is running those tests, let’s focus back on the living room setup, because the homepods aren’t the only smart speaker option out there. This is our Amazon, home theater setup, with two Echo Studios and a Fire TV 4K Max their highest end options. The setup I would initially choose the Fire TV interface is very busy with ad sprinkled all over the place, McDonald’s ads. This remote feels flimsy. I don’t trust Amazon and the Apple music app isn’t available, so playback is only through Alexa. Also, I hate the Celexa app look at this underscores. As for the speakers, they like the homepods support automatic room, tunings spatial audio and ARC Audio from your TV Through the Fire TV stick, unlike the homepods, they have physical buttons instead of capacitive, as well as inputs for Bluetooth and a combo 3.5 millimeter slash optical Port. They also lack AirPlay, but support Spotify connect bad for me, but may be great for you.
However, they cost 460 dollars three hundred dollars less than the homepod setup and to see if I could hear the price difference, I was subjected to a blind test. The moment they all arrived, starting with movies, we played a clip from Wolf, walkers on Apple TV plus, and it turns out, I prefer the homepods. We also did a music test with songs playing in plain old stereo with the tunes I selected. It was the echo Studios that caught my ear and then you go to two.
I feel the sounds of The Echoes for music. No, you prefer the homepods for movies. So it appears that, despite my misgivings of Amazon, the echo Studios aren’t that bad.
At the very least, the quality is more in line with their price point than the home pods are with theirs. So why don’t I like the home pods, let’s see what Sam has to say, foreign so um? Does it sound different yeah? It does sound different and also measure is different. These are some rough measurements of the second gen home pods compared to the first gen. These are from our tests. Inadmittedly, not perfect conditions, but even so, some of the differences are apparent.
This is what Sam found Peaks and lows in the mid to Upper mid range, which simply aren’t present in the first gen homepod. You want your frequency response to be smooth. So when you have a bump and a dip like that around two to four kilohertz, that really can’t be good, and you don’t have that in the first gen you have it in the second gen. They change the sound of the homepod depending on the program you’re playing.
So if it’s a podcast or a music, they change it and also tested that. So I tested pink noise, which I did for testing. I tested music and also podcast and again you’re. Getting the same bump and dip with all of those programs, so you think this two to four kilohertz dip is more of a hardware thing.
I don’t know what it is, but it is something that is that it shows up in all of the measurements that I did, and it really can’t be good. You can also see that the second gen has an sized high end work for some music and is generally a good thing for movies, but for certain songs it can make the vocals border on shrill. This combined with the surprisingly deep bass means parts of the mid-range can sound as though they’re relatively absent, so that does explain a little bit why we’re kind of not bowled over by the sound, probably yeah, okay, fair enough, I mean that’s a reasonable explanation: huh! Okay! Well, at least I’m not going insane, they do genuinely sound disappointing, especially compared to the better sounding first gen. It’S too bad, as I was really expecting more from these.
If you’ve already got an older model nice. But what if I don’t need a smart speaker at all to have a smart home feeder? The problem with these speakers is that they’re reliant on the computer glued inside. So what about simply buying a dumb speaker and then plugging a smart solution into it? These are the edifier S2000 Mark III’s they’re sold in a stereo pair for 50, less than a pair of Home pods like the homepods they’re, a simple two cable solution and don’t require an external amp.
Yes, there are huge, very speaker looking and not white, but for that you’ll get the loudest and clearest speakers. We’Ve tried for this video Simply put they’re. The only speakers which didn’t make me feel as though I was missing parts of the music. I love there’s. No clever audio tuning or software trickery here you got to do that yourself because they come with four preset eqs. We recommend, starting with the dynamic one and a treblem bass knob on the back to further dial in your sound. It also has two RCA inputs, one Optical input and Bluetooth, it’ll hook up to any smartphone or TV without needing a streaming box. However, there is no Wi-Fi, but don’t worry, because I have a solution for that. You can make these smarter by using this. The Belkin sound form connect it’s a 100 AirPlay 2 receiver with its 3.5 millimeter or Optical output. You can add any old speakers or amplifier to your multi-room AirPlay setup. At this point, all you’re really missing is Siri, which it appears is the only hold out feature remaining for the homepod. Only reason I can see why someone would elect to use a homepod for their TV setup is because they like the way they look. You don’t want obvious, boring blocky speakers cramping their interior style, because if you don’t care about appearances, you can get better quality, more flexibility and Longevity for Less from other companies. And if you just want a smart assistant, then the significantly cheaper, homepod mini will do everything that its larger sibling can too much like the original homepod. This tries to be the speaker that gets the average person interested in better quality audio and in turn, interested in handing more money over to Apple. But this smart speaker has decided to focus more on the smart and less on the speaker.
While still repeating the same mistake as its predecessor, it’s too expensive for what you’re getting on top of that, it isn’t much simpler than non-apple Solutions. In fact, its Simplicity is sometimes limiting, as the only sound adjustment you have is a reduced bass toggle. If you really want a series, smart speaker and the mini – isn’t bold enough for you, then hey you have an option, but otherwise it’s easy to recommend that you look elsewhere. Thanks for hearing this Mac address out, if you like, an opinionated sound, give this video a like, and I’m curious Below in the comments, if you would even consider using smart speakers for your home theater living room setup.
If so, what would you do and if not also, what would you do? .