An audiophile review:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/7wwtqy/apple_homepod_the_audiophile_perspective/

If accurate, Apple seems to have done a remarkable job, achieving omnidirectional sound and flat frequency response in a small, relatively inexpensive product.

I'd love to see Axiom test the Homepod to see where its limitations lie. But perhaps a major advance, using highly sophisticated active management to achieve transparent sound at low size and cost.

I looked at a teardown. The 4" woofer motor looks massive. The driver looks well-thought out as well.

I haven't had time to read the review you posted but I remember reading that the active sound management is transparent to the user. The pod is always listening and adjusting its filter coefficients. No matter how good this thing sounds, I'm not letting it into my home since its always listening.

Any idea what the spec'd SPL is? Is it stereo?

(Disclaimer: I work at Apple, but was not involved with the HomePod hardware in any way.)

Since Apple gave employees a 50% discount on HomePod during the first 60 days after release, I jumped on it. I’ve had mine since Friday. That reddit review has been seen internally and people are quite happy with independent verification. Apple has had an anechoic chamber for a while — used in the past to make their hardware quieter, but they used it to test and refine be HomePod. The product has been under development for about 6 years.

I’m quite happy with mine, and can’t wait until they get the stereo pair feature working. While one sounds great, two would really be something.

Mojo, you can disable the always listening feature. Then you have to touch and hold the top to activate the Siri.

Also, Apple never sends any audio data to its servers unless you’ve triggered the device with the activation phrase “Hey Siri” or have touched the top to activate Siri. Even then, personally identifiable data is scrubbed and never stored — raw waveforms are never stored anywhere, only interpreted words.

Here's a video of someone taking it apart to look at its guts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArH41WyUt28

Thanks. How much SPL are you getting out of the pod?

At max volume, I measured a Pink Martini track 1m from the speaker just now at about 85-88dB (C-weighted, slow). This is in my living/dining/kitchen “great room”, roughly 20’ x 32’ x 8’.

How does the HomePod sound compared to Axioms? I'm curious just how far Apple has come using active technology instead of size and cost to get transparent sound and omnidirectIonality. The cost difference between two HomePods and an Axiom LFR system is enormous of course.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40530175/acoustics-tests-show-apples-homepod-audio-claims-are-legit

Per pmbuko's testing, the SPL from the pod comes nowhere close to the LFRs. Also remember the pod is a single channel device; not stereo. Now a good question is when stereo is supported from dual pods, could that stereo image result in "stereo everywhere"?

Stereo everywhere, a.k.a headphones? You'd still need to between the two sources for anything close to a proper image, but perhaps the sweet spot will be larger than expected.

Compared to my primary system, M22 + EP500, the HomePod can't really compete. Think of the HomePod as a very high-quality small omnipolar speaker with a true 360° sound field. Although the sound coming from such a small device is deceptively large thanks to the beam-forming ability of the tweeters and the highly controlled woofer, there's simply no substitute for a stereo image that's only possible by physically separating the left and right channels. I still love my M22s and they'll continue to be my go-to for active listening.

Even if I do get a second HomePod and fall in love with their stereo imaging capability, I would not stop using my Axioms. They can play more audio sources, thanks to my receiver.

One other thing. To achieve a worthy stereo image in a bounded environment like a room, Apple will have to adjust the pod's off-axis response to fall off smoothly yet exponentially. Apple will have to designate a "front" to the pod.

"If it’s in free space, sound will be dispersed equally around the speaker, but if it’s close to a back wall the HomePod will actively split out some of the more ambient elements of your music and bounce them off the rear surface while projecting the vocals and more direct sounds straight into the room."

Read more at https://www.whathifi.com/apple/homepod/review#14Ajr6HVQVVwpWji.99"

Jean-Louis Gassée on HomePod reviews:

https://mondaynote.com/the-trouble-with-homepod-reviews-585075add9d2