Apple’s spatial cinema
The launch of HomePods 2 marks another step in Apple’s championing of Spatial Audio, and extends it to a potentially easy delivery of TV and movie sound in spatial stereo. If you plonk two HomePod 2s either side of your TV, as shown above, and add an AppleTV 4K media player, you can use Apple’s Home app to combine the system into a stereo AV system. With the latest AppleTV 4K having HDMI eARC, the HomePods will also play TV audio coming back down the HDMI cable.
Needless to say, the new speakers are also loaded with Apple innovation. There are four microphones in each speaker which work with the processing of an Apple S7 chip to perform automatic room sensing (which can’t be turned off), tuning the output of the drivers in each speaker, which comprise one high-excursion woofer (this has a separate internal mike for bass EQ) and a beamforming array of five tweeters firing down and out just above the speaker base.
These are also smart speakers, using Siri to respond, and with a larger top touch surface than the original; this can be used to change volume and control playback. Through Siri or the Home app you can pair Apple speakers and have multiroom playback, and there’s a handy and fun Intercom facility which can extend beyond the home to send messages to or from iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, CarPlay, and AirPods. The HomePod 2s also integrate with Apple’s smart-home capabilities, allowing voice control of networked smarts. If you’re away, a HomePod 2 can listen for smoke or security alarms, and let you know. We currently have two HomePod 2s and an AppleTV 4K with eARC under trial; we’ve held the review back because of early issues with our network — but meanwhile you can read the verdict from our UK colleagues at What Hi-Fi? using the
QR code here. The Apple HomePod 2s are $479 a piece, which is pleasingly less than the originals.
Info: apple.com/au
We recently gave pretty much an all-out rave review to Revival Audio’s Atalante 3 standmount speaker. It was big and bold, and the larger Atalante 5 even more so. We were delighted, we said, that this new French company had not followed the masses in making slim tower designs.
At the same time Tim Wallis of Audio Marketing told us that part of the brand’s attraction was that it didn’t have endless models and colour skews.
So how to react to the news that the second pair of releases from Revival appear to be a conventional tower floorstander, the Sprint 4, and a standmount, the Sprint 3, each available in three finishes: Blonde Oak, Walnut and Matte Black?
Well, doubtless they will succeed in getting the French company’s interesting proprietary tech into more homes, being both more compact. They remain “designed and engineered in France”, but these are not marked as “assembled” in France like the Atalantes. (Audio Marketing confirms these new models are made in China.)
But they still have the company’s 28mm soft-dome tweeter with its ARID (Anti-Reflection Inner Dome) tech and RASC coating, seemingingly straight out of the pricier Atalantes. The bass units may also be straight out of the Atalante 3, being Revival’s own seven-inch BSC (Basalt
Sandwich Construction) woofers. And the
‘ELYTRON’ baffle design is entirely new here, developed from hundreds of hours of simulation and listening, says the company, the asymmetric shape working as a waveguide while also reducing the impact of diffraction from the MDF cabinet.
So even if they look less exciting, maybe they’ll sound just as thrilling! Pricing is certainly lower, at $3200 for the floorstanders, $1750 for the standmounts. More info: www.audiomarketing.com.au
Devialet has unveiled its first-ever portable speaker, looking just as you might expect, though it doesn’t get full ‘Phantom’ status — instead the French company describes the new Devialet ‘Mania’ portable as “an ode to the Phantom”.
The 2.3kg Mania is fronted by a spherical polished ring surrounded by water-repellent woven fabric which allows it a degree of splash-proofing (IPX4), while it packs a condensed version of the firm’s proprietary audio technologies, here four fullrange aluminium drivers working with two woofers in a ‘push’ configuration, all within the compact 19×18×14cm (give or take a stylish curve) enclosure. The amplification within is quoted at an unspecified 38W Class-D for each of the two woofers, and 25W Class-D for each full-range speaker. If that seems low by Devialet standards, that’s because the Mania can operate on its internal 3200mAh battery, which yields some 10 hours playback from only three hours charging, thanks to its use of USB-C’s Power Delivery fast-charging protocol. A Devialet Mania Station is available for auto-charging as a $140 option — or it comes included with the blinged-up ‘Opéra de Paris’ edition which has some parts finished in 24-karat gold over the standard light grey or deep black versions. Many of Devialet’s technologies are here — including SAM (Speaker Active Matching) to adapt the sound signal to the specific drivers, and ASC (Active Stereo Calibration), which uses four microphones in the Mania to detect the speaker’s position and activate an appropriate stereo mode. In the centre of a room it should adopt a 360-degree stereo mode, but if the Mania detects a wall nearby it will enter ‘oriented stereo mode’, with the two full-range speakers at the front distributing directional stereo while the rears deliver enhancement to widen the soundstage.
The Mania has Alexa built in, so can be commanded by voice once networking and Alexa are activated, and will gain the imminent Amazon Multi-Room Music feature (Amazon MRM), offering the possibility to create a speaker group with Devialet Mania and other Alexa-enabled devices. With this and the same Devialet control app as the Phantom and Dione, you may never need to touch your Mania to control it, only to grab its handle and pop it in the supplied cloth bag to carry it around. There’s Bluetooth for when you’re out and about (version 5.0, though the codecs aren’t specified), but Wi-Fi at home will enable Spotify Connect and AirPlay 2.
Price is predictably high for a portable speaker (though Devialet is hardly alone in this space) at $1400, or $1700 for the ‘Opéra de Paris’ bling edition which includes the charging station.
More information: devialet.com/en-au