So desperate to hawk the product by the sound quality, the Tame Apple Press has even taken to printing a review on Reddit where an Apple Fanboy Fouzan Alam makes the ridiculous claim that the Apple HomePod has the same sound quality as a $999 KEF X300A. Alam, who works as a technical support bod, has found himself catapulted to the heights of fame as his review is everywhere.  This is presumably because it is full of nice audiophile sounding words which make the mono-speaker sound good. 

Consumer Reports has blown the lid on this stupidity and say that the Apple rivals, the Sonos One and Google Home Max, sound better. The publication is expected to share their full test results in the next few weeks.

The report reads: “The HomePod’s bass was a bit boomy and overemphasized. And the midrange tones were somewhat hazy, meaning that some of the nuance in vocals, guitars, and horns was lost: These elements of the music couldn’t be heard as distinctly as in more highly rated speakers. Treble sounds, like cymbals, were underemphasized.”

However to each their own, as there are some who might consider boomy bass to be a bad thing, while there are some who might prefer having a more flat/neutral sound.  Siri will also not let you turn up the volume so you can take the speakers to a sound level where you can hear how terrible it is. 

However, all this is testing a single speaker which cannot, other than in Apple marketing hype create a soundstage. Since the 1980s it has been a tool of sharp hifi salespeople to claim that smaller speakers can control the same amount of base as bigger versions – yet they never could.

Welcome to another example of Apple leading the way in lowering the standards of the world.  It is not the first time. Steve Jobs once said an Apple Boom box sounded better than his six-figure Wilson Audio speakers so we guess that sound quality is yet another thing to go down the loo.