12/4/2023 0 Comments Google home max stores![]() This row of LEDs beneath the Google Home Max’s cloth grille provide a visual cue that the speaker is listening for your command. We’ll have to wait a few weeks to see if Apple’s HomePod can knock the Google Home Max off its sonic perch, but we already know that that speaker won’t support multi-room audio-at least not right out of the box. If I didn’t have the Play:5 to compare it to, I’d have little or no criticism of the Max’s musical performance-especially for the price tag, which is $100 lower than that of Sonos’ flagship speaker. ![]() TruePlay is extremely effective, but I can’t evaluate Google’s tech because there’s no way to perform a before-and-after test when the tuning is going on all the time.Ĭompared to the Sonos One-the only true smart speaker in Sonos’ stable-or any other smart speaker, for that matter, the Max is a sonic superstar. Sonos says its iOS device requirement is due to the wild diversity of microphones in the Android world-there’s not one standard component that the company can depend upon (and most of its speakers don’t have on-board mics). Sonos speakers have a similar feature, called TruePlay, but it’s dependent upon your having an iOS device and a willingness to spend a few minutes walking around the room with it while the speaker plays test tones. The speaker uses its onboard microphones to evaluate the environment it’s playing in and will tune itself accordingly. You can manually boost or cut the Max’s bass and treble levels plus or minus 6dB, but Google says the Home Max’s audio performance will automatically improve over time. And when I switched to Tower of Power’s decidedly more upbeat “What is Hip?” from the band’s eponymous self-titled album from 1973, the Max again couldn’t match the Play:5’s bass performance, failing to bring Stephen “Doc” Kupka’s bari sax to the fore, and delivering Mic Gillette’s and Greg Adams’ exhilarating trumpet work with just a wee bit less energy. Bass played through the Play:5 resonated in my chest in a way the Max couldn’t match. The Sonos Play:5 is just a bit larger than the Google Home Max and it sounds slightly better, but it also costs $100 more than Google’s speaker.īut when I performed an A/B comparison to the aforementioned Sonos Play:5, the Max was outclassed at both ends of the frequency spectrum. The vocals-especially the tight harmonies of the female backup singers-exhibited a thoroughly enjoyable presence, too. The laconic bass line that opens the track sounded satisfyingly fat, and the drummer’s rimshots cut through with authority. Listening to Steely Dan’s “Babylon Sisters” from the group’s Gaucho release, streamed via Tidal Hi-Fi in my home theater, I was impressed with the Max’s musicality.
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