stillhart said:

Oh and the Smyth Realizer is flat out amazing.  I could have SWORN there was an invisible speaker on the wall 5 feet in front of me and when I turned my head, it stayed there.  It was so realistic that it weirded me out; I had this weird cognitive dissonance between what I was hearing and what I was seeing.  I had to take off the headphones for a second to make sure there wasn't actually a speaker like under the table or something that I didn't notice.  It was mind blowing.  
 
This tech in gaming would be such a competitive advantage.  Imagine hearing something from the side and turning your head just a little to zero in on the sound, instead of turning your character in game.  If you guess wrong, you don't lose those valuable fractions of a second to turn back the other way.  Not to mention just the improvement in overall immersion.
 
The problem, of course, is the price.  I had a very long, very interesting discussion with the VP of Smyth all about how gamers would pay good money for a cheaper, version of the tech.  I won't go into all the details of the discussion but he was very interested and asked me to contact him after the show.
 
I also had a very similar discussion with Jason Stoddard about the need for something in between the $100 Mixamp and the $3000 Smyth.  He was also very intrigued.  He told me that he talks to people all day and gets lots of ideas thrown at him, but this one really intrigued him.  He also requested that I contact him later to discuss it further.
 
Side note on the Smyth (before @AxelCloris comes in and says it):  Axel didn't hear it the same way I did.  The Realizer has to be calibrated to your specific head.  They used a saved preset for the demo, with the caveat that it won't sound nearly as good as getting it customized (tho it will still sound better than DH, etc).  Axel says he heard the speaker but it was right in front of his face.  I heard it 5 feet in front of me in a big open room.  This will be one of the challenges I'm going to be discussing with them.
 
Mad, have you heard it?

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nawilson9 said:

  I'm looking into getting a new pair of headphones for gaming, mainly CS:GO but FPS's in general, and I'm pretty sure I have it narrowed down to either the AD700X or AD900X. I initially considered the Q701's and K612's but decided against them for two reasons. The first being that I was put off by peoples complaints about the comfort of the Q701's headband. The second reason was that I do not own a portable amp, only a pro audio interface, and so I want the ability to drive the headphones adequately with my interface when I'm home and my laptop when I'm on the go. Now, the primary reason I'm considering the the AD900x's is because they =2661&graphID[]=3061&graphID[]=2931&scale=30]have a bit more bass. I understand that this can decrease the positioning ability of them as a result but I'm wondering if anyone could roughly quantify how much? If you clicked the link I added, you'll see that I added the Q701 graph to it as well. The reason for this was that the Q701's also have fantastic positional audio and yet their bass is even higher than the AD900x's. I understand that you can't directly make conclusions about sound stage and positioning knowing that, but it had me wondering how much of a difference there would actually be between the AD700X and AD900X. Basically, the primary purpose of these headphones would be competitive gaming, but it'd be nice if they didn't suck for everything else.

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namelesspfg said:

  I really need to log in here more often. Probably haven't dived in for my wallet's sake, it's not looking too good lately.
 
 
I've considered the Smyth Realiser the ideal to strive for when it comes to speaker simulation systems, but I haven't been in the position to audition one, let alone outright buy one. Maybe I'll consider it when I can afford to go whole hog with Stax again and keep it...
 
If they can bring down the cost significantly, that'll help. I just want to be sure they keep the HDMI input, that's kinda critical if I'm going to get proper surround sound out of my Wii U.
 
In other news, I found out that the tech behind Aureal A3D still lives on outside of Creative's hands...just not for gaming applications.
 
Maybe someone can talk them into licensing it out as an audio middleware plugin, much as AstoundSound exists for FMOD and Wwise. We need more options in this market.

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change is good said:

Streaming some ng+ Bloodborne while I have nothing else to do this Easter Sunday...

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