Thinking about HomePod

[jay (support)]

It is too expensive IMHO.

I almost ordered one and then stopped myself doing it.

I would need six of them to do what an Amazon Echo (Dot) currently gives me for home automation control at vastly cheaper price.
It is totally tied to Apple Music AFAICS, I am a Spotify user.

I agree. I don't need the fancy sound features since the rooms where that would be useful already have high-quality amp/speakers. The other rooms are small and I don't really need high-end sound. And I use Audible a lot for audio books and being able to easily control playback via Alexa is key. I don't believe that'll be available on the HomePod.

For me it makes sense to get one, I subscribe to Apple Music and the speaker allows me to play on demand their entire collection. We are constantly asking Alexa to play this or that from the prime library but Amazon's library is infinitesimal compared to Apple (and now that you can't upload your own library it's even worse) but we made due. We could use our distributed audio that we put together with Airfoil (you can read about my setup for that HERE) it's not as voice command friendly as I would like.

Besides all the fun factor it's a good speaker, certainly the hardware is top notch, and that's better than an Echo any day. It might not be up to the challenge of being as good as having an amp connected to really nice speakers and getting to it via Airplay but if I can do all of that in a single device then I'll take the simpler approach. My amps are all on some kind of HA device because have you ever seen how much power an amp draws? It's massive. Having my amps only power up on demand made a huge difference in kWh I used each month.

I'm very curious how people with existing whole house audio solutions--especially ones that use iTunes on your Indigo computer--plan to integrate HomePod. Mine is due Friday just like yours and I see the potential for it to "compete" with my current setup rather than integrate into it. Seems that if I only use it as another AirFoil speaker, that's losing a lot of HomePod's functionality.

On the other hand, at least initially, I don't think I'll be able to broadcast *from* HomePod to all my other AirPlay sources. Maybe that comes in AirPlay 2 when that's released, depending on whether all (I have 7 separate airFoil speakers) of those destinations will be AP 2 compatible. Sure wish Apple would tell us about that!

I'm Apple's best use case otherwise: Apple Music subscription, no spotify, etc.

Seems that if I only use it as another AirFoil speaker, that's losing a lot of HomePod's functionality.

Why? That's how I'll implement it. It's going to become my primary "voice" for Indigo as a result. You can still use every other aspect of HomePid and still have it hanging off your "legacy" whole house audio.

For me, I am a subscriber to Apple Music, so I'll be able to use that directly on the HomePod or in the iTunes on my indigo server and have it sent out to the HomePod via Airfoil. Either way makes me happy.

With the new HomeKit Bridge on the way, you may find that that opens up a lot more options for you since the audio controls will now be exposed and available for Indigo use.

Yay, a few days until HOMEPOD

I use Sonos for whole-house audio and have been exceptionally happy with that. I don't see myself using HomePod for music because my music library is ripped to a NAS device (I still buy CDs) and HomePod won't play those files.

I might change my tune (sorry) if Apple opens up voice control to software bridges and someone finds a nice way to integrate HomePod into Indigo; but until then, I think I'm out.

I use Sonos for whole-house audio and have been exceptionally happy with that

I've never made the dive into Sonos, so for me this is my Sonos.

I might change my tune (sorry) if Apple opens up voice control to software bridges and someone finds a nice way to integrate HomePod into Indigo

I take it you aren't a fan of Homebridge Buddy

I take it you aren't a fan of Homebridge Buddy

Ha ha! No offense intended. I thought that was still wasn't possible. We don't use voice control in our house, so I am woefully under informed when it comes to this stuff.

Ha ha! No offense intended. I thought that was still wasn't possible.

LOL, no offense taken . Homebridge Buddy is the way to talk to Siri and have it control Indigo. Technically it's Homebridge and Homebridge-Indigo, but HBB is the plugin that facilitates the entire thing.

Seems that if I only use it as another AirFoil speaker, that's losing a lot of HomePod's functionality.

Why? That's how I'll implement it. It's going to become my primary "voice" for Indigo as a result. You can still use every other aspect of HomePid and still have it hanging off your "legacy" whole house audio.

For me, I am a subscriber to Apple Music, so I'll be able to use that directly on the HomePod or in the iTunes on my indigo server and have it sent out to the HomePod via Airfoil. Either way makes me happy.

With the new HomeKit Bridge on the way, you may find that that opens up a lot more options for you since the audio controls will now be exposed and available for Indigo use.

Part of my curiosity is because I don't know those Airplay details, but here's what I imagine: Using HomePod as just another speaker, it should integrate fine. But when I ask HomePod to do something, that doesn't necessarily feed back into Indigo, and doesn't necessarily change what's going on with the other speakers--even if I want it to.

But when I ask HomePod to do something, that doesn't necessarily feed back into Indigo, and doesn't necessarily change what's going on with the other speakers--even if I want it to.

That's probably partly true. If you, for instance, tell the HomePod "Hey Siri, play classical music" and it plays then there's no way to relay that to other speakers - yet (that's coming with Airplay 2 which is coming in the next couple of months). But, if you "Hey Siri, turn on the lamp" that should still work fine because HomePod is HomeKit enabled talking to HBB which is "Indigo enabled". Now, on the other hand, if you have some HomeKit devices set up to play iTunes on your Indigo server then you could say "Hey Siri, turn on classical music" and have it play to all Airfoil attached devices. Did I miss the point?

Yup, I'm right with you.

Hey, fellow HomePod receivers tomorrow: If no one is home during the day tomorrow, don't forget to fill out the Pre-sign form and leave it at the door:

Check your Orders from Apple and click "Pre-sign for deliver" then post the form on your door. https://secure1.store.apple.com/shop/order/list?hist=90

The UPS guy asked "What did Apple release today?"

IMG_9768.JPG (81.49 KiB) Viewed 2560 times

Apparently it's pretty popular.

I have a very acoustically challenging room that I'm putting it in, and after three or four songs, I can already say the sound is amazing. I'm also sitting 20 feet away from it facing the other way and it's catching all my "hey siri"s. That's with the music going.

WHAT!?!?! JEALOUS!!! Mine won't be here for probably 2-3 more hours. Yea, from what I've read UPS is going to be busy delivering a number of these today.

After spending most of the day using HomePod "natively"--that is, letting it stream Apple Music on its own--I decided to experiment with it as a client of my Airfoil Pro setup.

It totally integrates perfectly. In fact, it works better than I would have thought! I did not anticipate that once HomePod acted as a client of my Indigo iTunes setup, that my telling it to pause would pause the Indigo iTunes house-wide. But it does! Skipping also works perfectly. No more "Turn on Track Skipper"!

I have just hit one oddity--after telling Siri to pause while acting as an iTunes client, I was unable to get it to resume the iTunes stream. When I checked the Home app after asking HomePod several times, Home said it was playing, but iTunes on my Indigo server was still paused.

Ha-- I just tried a work around. My Indigo iTunes server is called "Home Audio". I asked HomePod to "play Home Audio." and it worked. The iTunes server resumed the song I had paused. BUT HomePod also decided I meant some song from the Apple Music catalog and started playing that while my iTunes server kept on playing the previous song.