Hello, Stereo Paired HomePods

Jason Snell, for Six Colours:

Once that was done, I was free to play music in stereo from two HomePods. The volume is impressive—one HomePod did an okay job of filling my living room, but two HomePods can do it with no trouble. Stereo separation was clear, as I ran through a bunch of aggressive stereo mixes (The Beatles!), live albums (“Peter Gabriel Plays Live”—take that, “Hell Freezes Over”), and a collection of other tracks I’m familiar with. It all sounded good.

At the current price the HomePod is awfully pricey to be deployed in a stereo pair—for half price you can pair two Sonos One speakers—but it does sound very good. And in proper stereo, something that one HomePod—for all Apple’s talk of creating a “3-D sound field”—could not achieve alone.

I’m actually tempted to get one more HomePod myself, despite Siri being next to useless for anything but controlling music playback. I’d also happily welcome a 5.1 wireless home theatre system for Apple TV or perhaps a soundbar — they could show off their computational audio advances in the latter.