By Sam R

Google has implemented a new technology into their smart home speakers. No, I am not talking about their Google Assistant, I am talking about Google Smart Sound technology. As the name implies it is a technology that makes the sound of the speaker better in your room and with the songs you are playing. This technology sets it apart from the Amazon Echo line of speakers and makes the sound better than it would be without the technology.

Is equalization adjustment for rooms necessary?

One of the most important things about a speaker sounding good is the room it is placed in. The furniture, the construction of the room and the materials in it are all-important to how a speaker sounds. In most cases, this is more important than the speaker itself is. You cannot make a bad sounding speaker sound better necessarily but any speaker can sound good in one room and not so good in another. Therefore, room acoustics matter when you are tuning your speakers for your home.

Unless you are an audio engineer, and even if you are, this is not an easy process. What the google home speaker does is listen to a calibrated music file or audio file, it knows what it is supposed to measure from its microphones when it is playing, but when it is different, it can adjust the equalization of the speaker to match a target that is known to sound good.

So when you first turn on the speaker, the system does this and sets the speaker equalization for that speaker. This is called Room Tuning.

Tuning a speaker for a room is important and without it a good speaker can sound bad. This is why the same speaker sounds good in your friend’s house and not so good in your home.

What else effects sound quality?

The next thing that effects sound quality is the type of music that is being played. Rock music is different from Jazz music and they are both different to Classical or Crooners music. So the equalizer to make sure these types of music sound as good as possible should be different with each type of music.

Most phones that have an audio player built in allow you to pick an EQ for each song if you want, but this is manual and tedious. Google has taken this step out of your hands and made it automatic and easy.

Google Smart Sound Technology explained

This is where Google’s Smart Sound Technology comes in. It automatically adjusts for the speaker in the room and it automatically adjusts the EQ again depending on the type of music it is playing.

This is a great use of DSP technology to improve the sound quality of a small speaker. Even the Google Home Max is small when you compare it to a large professional loudspeaker. Thus, by using DSP you can improve the sound of the small speaker. Many companies do this and some even do it to adjust for room acoustics but the cost of the speaker is very high and the technology is complicated. Google has done a good job making it easy. It just happens if you enable it in the app.

Conclusion

This technology makes the MadeByGoogle Smart Home Speakers better than Sonos or Amazon Echo or other small Bluetooth speakers. Google engineers did a good job implementing this technology and had the foresight to see it as important.

If you want, Smart Home Speakers that sound great than you cannot do better than the technology included in the MadeByGoogle Home Speakers. This technology is only available in the Google Home Speaker and the Google Home Max Speaker. The Google Home Mini does not have this technology built into it. Since Google Home Mini is their lowest cost and smallest speaker, I do not see this an issue.

I highly recommend you purchase a Google Home or Google Home Max for your Google Assisted Smart Home and enjoy the music that will be rockin’ your home soon after.