[lobster_johnson]

What $349 speaker will beat the HomePod and provide the same features? Omnidirectionality and built-in AirPlay have to be considered. The HomePod is a single speaker that can fill a room with no additional amp, receiver or subwoofer.

Comparing the HomePod to a class A amplifier is nonsensical. Nobody is pretending it's competing with that segment.

[tomxor]

> What $349 speaker will beat the HomePod and provide the same features?

None, I'm not considering those features, only audio quality.

> Comparing the HomePod to a class A amplifier is nonsensical. Nobody is pretending it's competing with that segment.

The author is implicitly:

> The HomePod is 100% an Audiophile grade Speaker

Your absolutely right, it is nonsensical, it's _physically_ in a different class all together. The author has gotten out his spectrum analyser or whatever and measured a relatively flat frequency response of a sine-wave and concludes... this is good audio: Except, "No" says every amplifier and speaker designer ever.

[sk5t]

You are aware that "class A" and "audiophile" are not synonymous, yes?

I've got one or two respectable 2-channel audio systems around the house (although I remain solidly in the "cables matter almost not at all + the room matters a lot" camp) and am willing to consider that Apple may have produced a very nice-sounding active speaker for $350 a pop if they decided to. Consider how much more manufacturing scale and tech reach Apple has, compared to, say, Dynaudio or a boutique room correction software shop. Give it a fair shake before remounting the audiophile high horse.

[tomxor]

> You are aware that "class A" and "audiophile" are not synonymous, yes?

Yes, it was just an argumentative counter example to the Class-D amp that will inevitably be used by this item.

[dkonofalski]

It is an audiophile grade speaker. For the class of device it is, it's the highest quality, best sounding speaker for the price. If you want a wireless speaker (whatever your reasons for wanting it), the HomePod is the best one, hands down.

[tomxor]

That's like saying a £5 pair of headphones is "audiophile grade" for the price. While it doesn't have a strict definition it definitely doesn't mean good for the price.

[dkonofalski]

No it's not. You're misconstruing my statement to make a cheap semantic point. An "audiophile" grade product is the product that best reproduces sound for that class of device. If we were talking about headphones, then a $5 or £5 headphone wouldn't be audiophile grade because the components to accurately reproduce the audio can't even be found for that price, much less the whole package. In this case, we're talking about a class of product - wireless smart speakers. If there were enough of them on the market, we may be able to separate these into budget, consumer, and professional. The point is that the HomePod offers the best sound reproduction in its class.

[macintux]

I’m sure you’ll offer a list of the thousands of amplifier and speaker designers who feel it’s not good audio?

[tomxor]

Why thank you mr rhetorical... If you are interested go have a look for yourself i'm not a walking audio system design book. In fact, I challenge you to find the inverse instead - empirical proof that the amp specs the author is measuring actually correlate to better sound quality.

[macintux]

I’m satisfied that a significant number of audiophiles have said that they feel the HomePod produces good audio. The numbers seem to back that up.

[tomxor]

We live in an age of lo-fi hi-bling, high consumer numbers from people who consider themselves experts in audio quality because they have a soundbar and a subwoofer don't really count for much.

I don't expect you to be convinced by me, but maybe one day you will experience some nice audio on a good system and then have a personal baseline to understand why calling something this small "audiophile quality" seems silly.

[macintux]

To me, the key is that Apple has created something with astounding sound quality for its size. And flexibility. And price point.

If they scale it up it could very well be truly spectacular.