Tech that...
A ROUND-UP OF THE LATEST NEWS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD
TWO PODS ARE BETTER THAN ONE
WHAT’S better than an Apple Homepod for listening to music? Well, a new IOS update has brought extra features to the Homepod meaning there is something much better – two Homepods.
When Apple revealed its Siripowered home speaker last year it said two excellent features would come later.
That didn’t matter much when the devices actually started shipping earlier this year – they were sensational anyway. The audio quality was up there with the best and left you feeling you were listening to your favourite sounds for the first time all over again.
The sound separation, the authoritative bass, and the tight integration between Apple Music and Siri (thanks to which Siri became a musicologist with seemingly bottomless knowledge) made it a compelling device, even if the price was on the high side.
An IOS upgrade has just brought those two missing features to the Homepod (RRP £319), and made it a whole lot more useful if you have more than one of them.
Airplay 2 brings the ability to play music simultaneously on more than one Homepod – so you can have the same music playing in more than one room in the house (useful if you have a party).
More impressive is the ability to link up a couple of Homepods in the same room and have them operate as a stereo pair.
If one Homepod was impressive enough, two might just be the ultimate sound system.
Set-up is simple, and Homepod’s smart spatial awareness, in which it actually reads the room using internal microphone and maximises its output to match the physical conditions, means the audio is considerably better – more expansive and immersive – than it is with one Homepod.
Even the limited audio sources are beginning to broaden out – as well as Apple Music and Apple’s own radio station Beats 1, you can also listen to Gold, Radio X, Classic FM, Capital Xtra, Smooth, Heart 80s, Heart and Capital as well.
If and when Apple gets the BBC on board with radio connectivity, the Homepod will pretty quickly become the only smart speaker you’ll ever need. It’s pretty close to that, even now.