7 ms·

I wound up in a screaming match with my Homepod recently. “Siri, play Beethoven” <plays a Beethoven-derived hiphop track> !!!

wincy 4y ago
Hahah yeah I said “Siri play classical music on Spotify” and siri said “I’m afraid I can’t do that” and then starting playing Sabaton (which is Power metal and the exact opposite of classical music). Then Siri had the gall to claim NO MUSIC WAS PLAYING as this super loud music was assaulting our eardrums. My wife thought my exasperated struggles were the funniest thing, it felt like HAL-9000 with the “I’m sorry I can’t do that Dave” moment.
- sofixa 4y ago
  > Hahah yeah I said “Siri play classical music on Spotify” and siri said “I’m afraid I can’t do that” and then starting playing Sabaton (which is Power metal and the exact opposite of classical music). As a Sabaton fan, I laughed out loud. Technically they have classic music sounding (roughly) songs, e.g. Christmas Truce, but yeah, that's a massive fail.
- strix_varius 4y ago
  I've had the exact same experience with Google Home. "Play music on dining room speaker." (dining room speaker starts blaring music at high volume) "Turn down dining room speaker." (No response) "HEY, GOOGLE. Stop music on dining room speaker." (dining room speaker music volume decreases) (from the dining room speaker) "Can't find dining room speaker." (dining room speaker volume increases, blaring music) I did follow the advice here to rename all my speakers lowercase, since google home's VOICE interface seems case-sensitive: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/jsadkp/i_understand_you_but_i_dont_understand_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/jsadkp/i_unders... And since the Google Home android app is, literally, the worst and least-reliable mobile application I've ever used, the voice interface is pretty much all I've got.
dxhdr 4y ago
Had the same experience at a friends house trying to get Alexa to play Bach. I gave up after a half dozen attempts. These products are just hilariously bad.
- cubefox 4y ago
  Names are a hard problem though. How would it know how "Bach" is pronounced? It seems you would need pretty advanced multimodal AI, some sort of GPT which is trained both on text and audio.
  - dxhdr 4y ago
    That's kind of my point, it's a product that doesn't work. It's a language interface that can't understand language. FWIW I tried many alternatives like "Bach classical music" etc to no avail.
    - dividedbyzero 4y ago
      How do you pronounce Bach?
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    “Bach” is a word like any other, and unambiguous in English pronunciation.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      > Bach” is a word like any other, and unambiguous in English pronunciation. There is another pronunciation if you want a holiday in New Zealand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_(New_Zealand) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_(New_Zealand)
      - bitwize 4y ago
        Reminds me of the doublewide that served as a motel suite I stayed at in Australia. It was dirt cheap and better than you might think -- very cozy.
jackvalentine 4y ago
I take your point but really like the mirth of a man who died 30 years before audio recordings being represented by a hip hop version of one of his pieces! He never recorded a canonical version of anything!
- rightbyte 4y ago
  He did lots of canonical midi-recordings on paper though.
  - RichardCA 4y ago
    Funny, my Android Auto playlist for "Bach" is actually Wendy Carlos, a CD rip of Switched-on Bach 2000, which she did on an early 90's Mac II using MIDI sequencing. In general I find that 80's and 90's era CD's ripped directly to FLAC still sound really good.
bryanrasmussen 4y ago
Soundtrack to that dog movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85A2rWA5O3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85A2rWA5O3o

wincy 4y ago

Hahah yeah I said “Siri play classical music on Spotify” and siri said “I’m afraid I can’t do that” and then starting playing Sabaton (which is Power metal and the exact opposite of classical music). Then Siri had the gall to claim NO MUSIC WAS PLAYING as this super loud music was assaulting our eardrums. My wife thought my exasperated struggles were the funniest thing, it felt like HAL-9000 with the “I’m sorry I can’t do that Dave” moment.

sofixa 4y ago
> Hahah yeah I said “Siri play classical music on Spotify” and siri said “I’m afraid I can’t do that” and then starting playing Sabaton (which is Power metal and the exact opposite of classical music). As a Sabaton fan, I laughed out loud. Technically they have classic music sounding (roughly) songs, e.g. Christmas Truce, but yeah, that's a massive fail.
strix_varius 4y ago
I've had the exact same experience with Google Home. "Play music on dining room speaker." (dining room speaker starts blaring music at high volume) "Turn down dining room speaker." (No response) "HEY, GOOGLE. Stop music on dining room speaker." (dining room speaker music volume decreases) (from the dining room speaker) "Can't find dining room speaker." (dining room speaker volume increases, blaring music) I did follow the advice here to rename all my speakers lowercase, since google home's VOICE interface seems case-sensitive: https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/jsadkp/i_understand_you_but_i_dont_understand_you/ https://www.reddit.com/r/googlehome/comments/jsadkp/i_unders... And since the Google Home android app is, literally, the worst and least-reliable mobile application I've ever used, the voice interface is pretty much all I've got.

dxhdr 4y ago

Had the same experience at a friends house trying to get Alexa to play Bach. I gave up after a half dozen attempts. These products are just hilariously bad.

cubefox 4y ago
Names are a hard problem though. How would it know how "Bach" is pronounced? It seems you would need pretty advanced multimodal AI, some sort of GPT which is trained both on text and audio.
- dxhdr 4y ago
  That's kind of my point, it's a product that doesn't work. It's a language interface that can't understand language. FWIW I tried many alternatives like "Bach classical music" etc to no avail.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    How do you pronounce Bach?
- khazhoux 4y ago
  “Bach” is a word like any other, and unambiguous in English pronunciation.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    > Bach” is a word like any other, and unambiguous in English pronunciation. There is another pronunciation if you want a holiday in New Zealand. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_(New_Zealand) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_(New_Zealand)
    - bitwize 4y ago
      Reminds me of the doublewide that served as a motel suite I stayed at in Australia. It was dirt cheap and better than you might think -- very cozy.

jackvalentine 4y ago

I take your point but really like the mirth of a man who died 30 years before audio recordings being represented by a hip hop version of one of his pieces! He never recorded a canonical version of anything!

rightbyte 4y ago
He did lots of canonical midi-recordings on paper though.
- RichardCA 4y ago
  Funny, my Android Auto playlist for "Bach" is actually Wendy Carlos, a CD rip of Switched-on Bach 2000, which she did on an early 90's Mac II using MIDI sequencing. In general I find that 80's and 90's era CD's ripped directly to FLAC still sound really good.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago

Soundtrack to that dog movie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85A2rWA5O3o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85A2rWA5O3o