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02/10/2018

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Neal E. Cammy

What Apple has attempted to do is to remake the “hi fi” experience, which was the way we listened to music in the past. People have given up hi fidelity sound for convenience. Even if you wanted to play your music through a traditional “stereo system, you needed a big receiver and expensive speakers. If one or two Homepods can deliver better sound than $1000+ systems, with simpler setup, that’s a game changer. Apple is not competing with Amazon Echos, but with the Denon’s, Bose and Klipsch’s of the world.

Joe Casanu

Yours is the first I’ve read that has begun to explain why we need to rethink our common definition of “stereo,” e.g., 3D reference. Would you care to elaborate more? That’s a major evolution. Thanks

Joseph

The great thing about it is spatial awareness, the sweet spot follows you, not the other way around, which just isn’t possible with traditional speakers. Just a small correction A8 comes from the iPhone 6.

Glenn C

Nice piece. Thank you for posting. However - sorry - pet peeve: it's->its needs to be corrected in at least four places.

Bob Varipapa

Would you share the playlist on Apple Music?

steve crandall

On a playlist.. very little of it is from Apple Music.. mostly CDs, DAT tapes and lossless files.

Richard Koo

Your list of music is great. Yours and mine overlap quite a bit. The only thing I would add is that home pod does jazz very well. The first thing I played on the home pod is the Apple Jazz station. It was astounding. Jazz trio sounds so intimate, detailed and alive. I was amazed. I also found that newer recordings tend to sound better than older ones. Anything recorded after 2000 in my library sounds great. It does not mean recordings from before 2000 don't sound good; I just have not tried many of them. I thought my Beatles were a bit dull.

AlG

Do you find the lack of treble and bass adjustments to be a problem? For many who use hearing aids or are somewhat hard of hearing the normal balance is off and needs adjustment in many situations.

steve crandall

|Do you find the lack of treble and bass adjustments to be a problem? For many who use hearing aids or are somewhat hard of hearing the |normal balance is off and needs adjustment in many situations.

I do. Hopefully they'll add that in a future software release. As noted I find they're too bass heavy for the type of music I listen to. It would be nice if they opened it up for IOS developers. Most people could get by with three adjustments, but someone more critical or someone with hearing loss would need finer gradations.

Dom Ruiz

What do you mean by the interface being wrong for classical music? I'm not sure I follow what the genre of the music has to do with Siri. Do you mean HomePod has more trouble hearing you when classical music is playing, as opposed to other genres of music?

steve crandall

|What do you mean by the interface being wrong for classical music? I'm not sure I follow what the genre of the music has to do with Siri. Do |you mean HomePod has more trouble hearing you when classical music is playing, as opposed to other genres of music?

The scheme for identifying classical pieces is complex. iTunes and the Siri interface fails. There are often many performances by many artists of a particular piece. The piece itself is sometimes identified by key and often by a numbering scheme of a cataloger or by opus number. Sometimes an artist may have recorded a particular piece many times in his/her career. Pieces usually have several movements and are played as a whole rather than by movement. I suspect the database for iTunes is inflexible. If it is flexible Apple should hire a musicologist and do something useful. The same for others.

Robert

The handling of classical music catalogs has always been an issue. Perhaps a flaw with the tag format every music app uses. Plex is a bit fungible but still is it a performer, an organization, a composer or the composition, OR is it the particular recording!

Thanks for your review.

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