Christian SeligI assume the new HomePod wouldn’t be any better than the HomePod mini as a desktop speaker in terms of reducing the huge lag when pausing/playing?
I wish Apple took whatever tech they use in AirPods that enables transferring audio to them to be seamless, as well as instant pausing/playing and put that in an on-desk speaker instead of in-ear headphones
Daniel Kennett@christianselig That technology is "Bluetooth", and unfortunately the quality sacrifice is pretty extreme. It's fine for AirPods, but on a big speaker like the HomePod it'd sound like garbage.
Low latency just isn't a priority for a HomePod — it's needed on AirPods etc since you do audio/video calls on them.
@ikenndac Really? I Bluetooth to my car speakers and other speakers around the house and they sound great
@christianselig Yes, really. It’s _fine_, but it’s not _good_. Also in your car you’re fighting however many dB of road noise - anything detailed is lost anyway, so they’ll crank up the bass and call it a day.
@ikenndac Huh, maybe it’s subjective, even sitting still in the parking garage they sound a lot better than my OG HomePod
@christianselig How audio sounds is one of the most subjective things there _is_, yes.
@christianselig Visual example: crank up the saturation on a TV and people will say an extremely low bitrate stream looks awesome! There’s a lot less detail, but pretty colours!
@christianselig There are two sides to things like this: objective quality (how much of the original is lost to low-bitrate compression etc), and subjective quality (monkey brain like bass).
The objective quality of Bluetooth is low, since it has a low bitrate and a decent amount of detail is lost. But it can still _sound_ good, because the receiver has a sick sub and cranks up the bass or whatever. But a higher level of the former will always improve the latter, all else equal.
@ikenndac Cant Bluetooth do 256 kbps AAC bitrate? How is that not high enough quality, that’s exactly what you get when you download a song from iTunes and right around what most streaming services offer
@christianselig The latency on AAC Bluetooth is pretty high, and I’d be surprised if your car supported it (it might, though). Low-latency Bluetooth is what I said sounded crappy - you trade quality for latency for calls and etc.
@ikenndac the AirPods Max support 256 kbps over Bluetooth and pause/play instantly so it’s clearly possible and something Apple knows how to do
@christianselig Yup! It’s largely a solved problem if both ends can communicate the pause/resume commands to one another - you can kinda sidestep any stream latency. Like I said originally, that seems to not be a priority on the HomePod.
@christianselig I listen to Bluetooth headphones every day, I never said they weren’t good _enough_. Those same headphones sound noticeably better when I plug in an audio cable, though!
@ikenndac Sure, but if Apple defaults their music to 256 kbps (and what would be streamed over AirPlay to their nicest HomePod), that tends to indicate it's a sweet spot for most listeners, and something Bluetooth can deliver. I'm just saying I don't think Bluetooth is this low quality format from 2009 that you're making it out to be, Apple has shown it to be incredibly capable and could make a killer speaker with it.
@christianselig Yeah, I have no idea why they don’t let you use it as a Bluetooth speaker if you want.
@christianselig And with Aux in, it’d actually be a useful computer speaker.