Long awaited Smyth SVS Realiser NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE - Page 4

I suppose you could make an artificial head that is normalized and make a setting for it.

Isn't that essentially what Dolby headphone is?

I'm all over this like ugly on ape! I've been following the SVS system since Day 1 (or very soon thereafter) and was the first one in the room last year in Ft. Lauderdale for a demo. This technology is truly remarkable as it seems to recreate the room environment in an utterly perfect manner. You can't help but to get a sh!t eating grin and just keep shaking your head repeatedly in disbelief. I've been on the waiting list for some time and hope that my name is somewhere up near the top. I've just fired off an email indicating that I'm ready when they are, whenever my number comes up!

Of all of my audio/video revelations, the SVS Realizer rates right up there in my top 5 personal "ahhh" moments (in no particular order):

1. Hearing a pair of balanced HD650s through a Singlepower SDS-XLR and then comparing a single ended pair of HD650s through the same amp while playing the same music at the same volume level and finding it impossible to believe I was listening to the same amp. The joy of balanced! "I've gotta go this route, and now!"

2. Hearing an all MBL reference line 2 channel audio system for the first time at THE Show in New York in April 2004 and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that I would one day own that same system and the never feel a need to upgrade again. The joy of finding your sound signature! "This system must have been designed just for me!"

3. Doing an in store demo at Sound Advice in Florida with the D-Box motion controller system, and "feeling" as though I was riding the horse that I was seeing on the screen, or as though I was driving the race car as it hit the apex of the corner and started pulling some serious G's. "I need to add motion to my audio and video!"

4. Seeing BluRay done "right" for the first time and wondering how what I was watching could possibly have been the same movie I'd watched a dozen times or more on DVD. "Time for a PS3. I'll enjoy movies even more now!"

5. Doing the SVS demo and knowing immediately that all of those great things I had read about the Smyth system and technology were more true than I could have imagined! Need to get one of these as soon as they're available, program it to replicate my MBL system, and use it with any/all headphone and amp combinations to make them markedly more realistic to the point that I'll no longer consider headphone listening to be a compromise for speaker listening! "How much? It doesn't matter. Sign me up!"

That list doesn't even count my vinyl rediscovery! The difference between listening to a "Smyth'ed" headphone system as opposed to a non-Smyth'ed headphone system is much more significant than the difference between the analog versus digital front end representation of your favorite albums. The Raalizer adds that same sense of warmth, palpability and dimensionality to your favorite music as does vinyl, but to an even greater degree than do the smooth grooves of a flawlessly executed 200 gram remastering job of an otherwise botched and overly compressed mid-80's digitized blunder of a recording. It makes the listening experience so qualitatively different that you cannot even begin to quantify its effect. It makes no sense to do so. You simply know that you're finally hearing what sounds "right" to your ears.

Ok, I'll stop now.... I'm obviously excited. This stuff is not only real, but revolutionary in terms of its ability to transform your headphone listening experiences, thus taking you to higher levels of "oneness" with the music. Or at least that's what it does for me.

Congrats to the Smyth brothers!

Nice post.

I just sent another email to Lorr to get an update on availability. He told me to wait a month about a month ago when I first put my name on the list.

except for the head tracking which realy puts the sound outside your head in real space vs the best binaural or other processing that doesn't track head position in real space&time - resulting in your brain rejecting the spatial information when your head moves and the "image" turns with you - giving the usual "between you ears" headphone spacialization

I was also at the florida meet and heard the SVS system demo - SVS vs binaural, Dobly Stereo or Crossfeed is closer to the difference between stereo(or good multichannel) and mono loudspeaker sound

5. Doing the SVS demo and knowing immediately that all of those great things I had read about the Smyth system and technology were more true than I could have imagined! Need to get one of these as soon as they're available, program it to replicate my MBL system, and use it with any/all headphone and amp combinations to make them markedly more realistic to the point that I'll no longer consider headphone listening to be a compromise for speaker listening! "How much? It doesn't matter. Sign me up!

Yeah. All but the last bit is true for me too. Got the cash but need a fence. lol

**$^! The fence but I am married and yeah, I lose. I really wish it was $500 for some software or something easy. Too bad for now. I am certain a trickle down will eventually get me there in a few years in a receiver.

In this hobby (yea hobby) we over exaggerate quite a bit. Terms such as "night and day," and "completely different" are thrown out casually. I don't believe many of those terms to be true on audiophile boards.

Basically, if it was so different, say would a piano not sound like a piano? Would speech completely be undecipherable?

I make the assertion that completely different from one preset to the other is not accurate. Yea, not optimal, but not so different that you would have NO idea what is going on.

I recognize this is a very niche product, and those of us who get it will optimize the system. Why else would you pay so much?

But to say it doesn't come with a preset because it has a "night and day" difference from the next (average) user is a load. For two different users to have the optimal experience, you have to optimize the set up, but I really doubt it will have such a difference that I may think that I am watching Star Trek when, in fact, Lord of the Rings is playing.

FWIW, I'm going to get one of these when they are more plentiful, not necessarily cheaper.

In the WSR article, Stephen Smyth states: "we decided to ensure that our systems ship with what we call generic room responses, to give you some type of experience prior to initiating a personalized measurement."

So it will come with presets (unless they changed their minds), but those presets will not be as good as your own personalized measurement.

That is awesome!

Of course one (and I) would expect a complete personalized package to be best in any circumstance.

To tell you the truth, I'm easily lost on technical details, and thus am not even remotely close to being the right person to be answering these sorts of questions.

But I am convinced (subjectively, as you've correctly pointed out) that fully balanced headphone amps will take your headphone listening experience a long way further than single ended amps/phones possibly can. It's not at all subtle, IMO.

Having said that, many people feel that certain headphones respond better than others when they are recabled to balanced, and that the HD650s in particular respond especially well. Thus, the demo that I did with the HD650s that blew me away (as well as about a dozen people who were there that day) might have been "as good as it gets" in terms of the relative advantages that balanced can provide over single ended.

I'm not expecting all of my headphones to improve in equal measure, and thus am carefully selecting those which will get recabled to balanced and those that will remain single ended. If money was no object, I'd get 15-20 pairs of headphones recabled! But for now, I'll start with 2-3 and take it from there. Recabling is an expensive road to go down!

who grins whilst eating ****?