I like to play with audio gear. And I\u2019ve been searching for a good setup in the office in our home where I sit in front of my computer most of the time. It\u2019s basically the smallest room in the house. A small bedroom that I use as my man cave.<\/p>\n
My last good audio system was comprised of a basic $500 stereo receiver and a $1,500 pair of speakers. That sounded very nice.<\/p>\n
After getting married, my needs changed. I no longer needed a $2,000 sound system to listen to Fox News. So I gave away my speakers and downgraded to a Polk Audio soundbar. Actually, the Polk soundbar doesn\u2019t sound half bad. But it\u2019s in the bedroom with one of our TVs. We use a Yamaha soundbar in the living room with our other TV. (the Polk sounds better)<\/p>\n
So then I\u2019m left with the dilemma\u2026 what to use for audio in my man cave?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve played with a number of solutions. I tried a set of highly-rated studio monitors. I also tried a highly-rated 2.1 setup. More recently I settled on a pair of Apple HomePods. They were pretty good. The HomePod is relatively new from Apple. It\u2019s a \u201csmart\u201d speaker. We use them to control our lights and things. But they also sound really good. As a matter of fact, their quality sound is what sets them apart from other smart speakers.<\/p>\n
Two of these were pretty good. But we recently traded in our smart phones and ended up stuck with a couple of Apple Store gift cards as a result. Not what we were hoping. So I was trying to think of what we could possibly use these gift cards for and boom. I have it!<\/p>\n
I thought, why not add two more HomePods to the man cave mix? So I did. And I configured them as a second stereo pair. I keep up on the forums and things and I haven\u2019t heard of anyone who has been crazy enough to put four of these together in a small room. However they sound pretty awesome.<\/p>\n
I have them configured as two stereo pairs. One front, one rear. My seating position is roughly in the middle. One big selling point of these speakers is their omnidirectionality. They have seven main drivers that point out in all directions. And they have smart beam-forming tech that tunes the output to the room characteristics.<\/p>\n
Tonight I gave this setup the Metallica black album test. And wow. This actually doesn\u2019t seem that far from the quality of the old audio setup that I used to have with the two 90lb speakers.<\/p>\n
The real thing about this is\u2026 these speakers are \u201comni-directional\u201d. Meaning no matter where you are, you are in front of them. This makes for an \u201cimmersive\u201d experience. Which is something that all audio buffs are after. With four of these bad boys I am basically surrounded with omni-directional sound.<\/p>\n
My ears are still ringing. Seriously.<\/p>\n
The reality is, the Apple HomePod totally scales. Get one if you like good sound. Add a second one if you want really good sound. And if you\u2019re totally nuts, add two more.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I like to play with audio gear. And I\u2019ve been searching for a good setup in the office in our home where I sit in front of my computer most of the time. It\u2019s basically the smallest room in the house. A small bedroom that I use as my man cave. My last good audio … Continue reading “Audio nirvana”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moondog.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}