[Zenvota]

do you now if i can find a graph to get it very flat or do i need to trust my ears?

https://cdn.head-fi.org/a/10004662.png

I also like to listen to frequency sweeps with and without ooyh and sometimes you can adjust your own hrtf a bit

 

[edwardsean]

I should probably use PM3 since that is the flattest ive got. I also use IE800. Do i use equalizerAPO for that? Oratory has presets,but they arent flat, they are like harman curve i guess.

Gonna try the OOYH tonight.. Hope its worth the money.. Love binaural/spatial effects as long its not coloring the sound to much or sound very artificial(enhanched bass+reverb its pretty common in bad effects loke early sfi creative aurvana effects).

Hey! Well, since the usual suspects are here, @Zenvota, @phoenixdogfan, I thought I'd join in. I also love OOYH and have been a user from the start. Just a tip to orient you:

Don't think of OOYH having a sound of its own. It will all come down to the individual preset (speaker system, room). The presets vary–wildly–in every way, e.g., frequency response, room size, coloration, etc. etc. The presets are far, far from neutral.

That is why the guys are telling you to get your own system EQ neutral. You can use Sonarworks or EQ to Harman Curve, just whatever sounds as flat as possible to you. That way you will minimize negative interactions and have some consistency to judge the presets. If your current system, e.g., flatters bass, or excites the high end, or attenuates/boosts mids, etc., this may "improve" certain presets in some areas and intensify problems in others–at random. A relatively flat system will render a "blank canvas" to allow each preset to color the sound as it will, and it will.

Because there is such a variance between presets you have to take your time go through each one. Some will immediately sound way off: harsh, boomy, "phasey," metallic, etc. This means there is a fundamental mismatch between that capture and your HRTF/system. You can move on. If they all sound "off," artificial, then either 1) none of the captures are close enough to work with your HRTF, 2) it's a psychoacoustic problem.

There is a lot of mental adjustment that comes with OOYH which is why a lot of people write if off without giving it a legitimate effort. You have to make psychoacoustic adjustments to the way you listen every time you make a major change in your setup. You have to spend some time with a new headphone, DAC, amp, and to a lesser degree, cables, before you can assess it properly. Now, all of sudden, there are two radical changes that need to be made. Firstly, you are still listening through headphones but you are getting the sound of a live speaker system. That will cause a big shift in how you hear and judge all the sonic elements coming your way. Secondly, each preset brings a completely different setup: speaker, amps, configuration, room, etc.

So, you have to give your head some time to get "out of itself."

Best of luck!

 

[phoenixdogfan]

So you're saying if I have the A8, I can make those kind of Presets and save them?

You can't have an A8 anymore, b/c Smyth no longer makes it (unless you want to buy used), but you can buy the much more conplex and ambitious A16 Realiser which will now render 24 channel Atmos, and hopefully DTS-X and Auro 3D (though that will have to wait for an update.)

 

[AppleheadMay]

You can't have an A8 anymore, b/c Smyth no longer makes it (unless you want to buy used), but you can buy the much more conplex and ambitious A16 Realiser which will now render 24 channel Atmos, and hopefully DTS-X and Auro 3D (though that will have to wait for an update.)

And by the time you receive your A16 it will come with Auro 5D pre-installed.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

And by the time you receive your A16 it will come with Auro 5D pre-installed.

I know when mine is coming--September 9th

 

[AppleheadMay]

I know when mine is coming--September 9th

You're one of the Kickstarters then? I'm one of the early pre-orders, October 31 2016.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

You're one of the Kickstarters then? I'm one of the early pre-orders, October 31 2016.

No I bought it in January at retail. Had to sell a kid, but what the heck. It arrived in January, froze repeatedly and was totally unresponsive to remote commands, so it was sent to Bangor on January 28th. Uk customs would not release it for a month, by then they ran out of the old boards, so they upgraded everyone who had not received theirs to the 24 channel board, and I waited several months for them to accomplish that. They sent it back via UPS in July. Ups lost it for a month and wound up returning it to Bangor instead of sending to me even after they billed me and I paid incoming custom duty. Smyth retested the unit and sent it out September 1 via DHL, and it's due to arrive at my front door on September 9th, hopefully in perfect working order with the latest firmware already installed.

 

[AppleheadMay]

No I bought it in January at retail. Had to sell a kid, but what the heck. It arrived in January, froze repeatedly and was totally unresponsive to remote commands, so it was sent to Bangor on January 28th. Uk customs would not release it for a month, by then they ran out of the old boards, so they upgraded everyone who had not received theirs to the 24 channel board, and I waited several months for them to accomplish that. They sent it back via UPS in July. Ups lost it for a month and wound up returning it to Bangor instead of sending to me even after they billed me and I paid incoming custom duty. Smyth retested the unit and sent it out September 1 via DHL, and it's due to arrive at my front door on September 9th, hopefully in perfect working order with the latest firmware already installed.

You haven’t been lucky either with Smyth, even while paying over 4k.
Personally, I find it pretty bad practice and manners they start selling units at full price, then doing paid upgrades while not bothering to fulfill pre-orders paid over 4 years ago.
I’m not in a hurry anymore though because without a HDMI 2.1 board the thing is pretty much obsolete for me.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and when I get it in a year or so it will have an up to date HDMI board.

 

[Zenvota]

 

[phoenixdogfan]

You haven’t been lucky either with Smyth, even while paying over 4k.
Personally, I find it pretty bad practice and manners they start selling units at full price, then doing paid upgrades while not bothering to fulfill pre-orders paid over 4 years ago.
I’m not in a hurry anymore though because without a HDMI 2.1 board the thing is pretty much obsolete for me.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and when I get it in a year or so it will have an up to date HDMI board.

Why not just use an HDMI splitter, and send the audio leg to the A16 and the video to the monitor? Or don't they make those at a reasonable price? Or is it a copyright licensing issue?

 

[AppleheadMay]

Why not just use an HDMI splitter, and send the audio leg to the A16 and the video to the monitor? Or don't they make those at a reasonable price? Or is it a copyright licensing issue?

There are different solutions but none let you put 4 devices (like I have) into the Realiser and pass through the video at 4k/120/4:4:4 with VRR etc.. , using it as an AV receiver for headphones, which it was intended to be.
You could use splitters but your success rate will vary, I used a $1600 2-piece system and sent it back because I had all kinds of problems, then tried a $130 thingie that worked albeit getting a lot of handshake problems which means unplugging the cables a lot. That was a long time ago and I haven't found any that are HDMI 2.1 compatible yet.
You could use an AV receiver with HDMI 2.1 input, some models have a second HDMI out that passes through surround sound, others pass through stereo only on the second output. Currently I think there are only models available with 1 HDMI 2.1 port. Useless as well.
You could plug everything into the TV and use the eARC out to the Realiser but that leaves you with only 3 inputs. Would have to test how that would work and if the handshaking is ok.
So all in all if you need to use problematic workarounds to use new gear then it's outdated.

 

[AppleheadMay]

Here's where they get their HDMI boards from: http://www.mds.com/products/hdmivideo/5th-gen-hdmi/
Currently they have no HDMI 2.1 boards yet but as far as I was informed once they do the board in the Realiser would be user replaceable.
It's confirmed by Snyth in the comment section of their Kickstarter page.

 

[edwardsean]

No I bought it in January at retail. Had to sell a kid, but what the heck. It arrived in January, froze repeatedly and was totally unresponsive to remote commands, so it was sent to Bangor on January 28th. Uk customs would not release it for a month, by then they ran out of the old boards, so they upgraded everyone who had not received theirs to the 24 channel board, and I waited several months for them to accomplish that. They sent it back via UPS in July. Ups lost it for a month and wound up returning it to Bangor instead of sending to me even after they billed me and I paid incoming custom duty. Smyth retested the unit and sent it out September 1 via DHL, and it's due to arrive at my front door on September 9th, hopefully in perfect working order with the latest firmware already installed.

O man, sorry you had to go through all that, but I'm happy for you that the new A16 is close to being delivered.

I'm one of the early preorders too, and I don't even see my unit on the horizon. The only thing that has kept me peaceable is OOYH.

Curiously enough if I did get my A16 anywhere near when I was supposed to, I wouldn't have overhauled my system. I would've been spending all my time capturing speaker rooms and optimizing the A16. As it is, I got a Chord DAVE and spent the price of the DAVE over again on building a new system around it.

Each step of the way OOYH never got shown up as a bottleneck to fidelity. Instead it just kept revealing more and more of its quality. I thought I would have to get the A16 to get this level of convincing speaker virtualization. However, OOYH has proven itself as a serious tool that has a place in top flight systems.

 

[W1ll1eTheP1mp]

Hey! Well, since the usual suspects are here, @Zenvota, @phoenixdogfan, I thought I'd join in. I also love OOYH and have been a user from the start. Just a tip to orient you:

Don't think of OOYH having a sound of its own. It will all come down to the individual preset (speaker system, room). The presets vary–wildly–in every way, e.g., frequency response, room size, coloration, etc. etc. The presets are far, far from neutral.

That is why the guys are telling you to get your own system EQ neutral. You can use Sonarworks or EQ to Harman Curve, just whatever sounds as flat as possible to you. That way you will minimize negative interactions and have some consistency to judge the presets. If your current system, e.g., flatters bass, or excites the high end, or attenuates/boosts mids, etc., this may "improve" certain presets in some areas and intensify problems in others–at random. A relatively flat system will render a "blank canvas" to allow each preset to color the sound as it will, and it will.

Because there is such a variance between presets you have to take your time go through each one. Some will immediately sound way off: harsh, boomy, "phasey," metallic, etc. This means there is a fundamental mismatch between that capture and your HRTF/system. You can move on. If they all sound "off," artificial, then either 1) none of the captures are close enough to work with your HRTF, 2) it's a psychoacoustic problem.

There is a lot of mental adjustment that comes with OOYH which is why a lot of people write if off without giving it a legitimate effort. You have to make psychoacoustic adjustments to the way you listen every time you make a major change in your setup. You have to spend some time with a new headphone, DAC, amp, and to a lesser degree, cables, before you can assess it properly. Now, all of sudden, there are two radical changes that need to be made. Firstly, you are still listening through headphones but you are getting the sound of a live speaker system. That will cause a big shift in how you hear and judge all the sonic elements coming your way. Secondly, each preset brings a completely different setup: speaker, amps, configuration, room, etc.

So, you have to give your head some time to get "out of itself."

Best of luck!

Hmm thanks alot. Ive already eq'ed all my gear to harman. What gear do i need except pc and headphones/IEM? I dont have a speaker system at all.. Ive got a BT speaker i use when im on mountaintrips in the tent. Thats it! Haha.. Ive signed out for the download 2 times at OOYH, but havent got the confirmation mail yet. So i dont know the full price for it. What is the full price? Is HeSuVi kinda the same but free?without the speaker presets?

I really like the few binaural recordings ive got, but they are so incredible hard to find! As Digital(only know about nativedsd.com,but quite expensive) i only know about a few. I really would like to hear f.ex GY!BE, Gogo Penguin and Nils Frahm and rest of erased records binaurally. My kind of music. Since they havent released any binaurally as i know of i have to try to simulate it.

If i had enough cash i would have bought myself a realizer a16 or something. But thats not possible for me. So u i have to make it work the budget way

 

[castleofargh]

Hmm thanks alot. Ive already eq'ed all my gear to harman. What gear do i need except pc and headphones/IEM? I dont have a speaker system at all.. Ive got a BT speaker i use when im on mountaintrips in the tent. Thats it! Haha.. Ive signed out for the download 2 times at OOYH, but havent got the confirmation mail yet. So i dont know the full price for it. What is the full price? Is HeSuVi kinda the same but free?without the speaker presets?

I really like the few binaural recordings ive got, but they are so incredible hard to find! As Digital(only know about nativedsd.com,but quite expensive) i only know about a few. I really would like to hear f.ex GY!BE, Gogo Penguin and Nils Frahm and rest of erased records binaurally. My kind of music. Since they havent released any binaurally as i know of i have to try to simulate it.

If i had enough cash i would have bought myself a realizer a16 or something. But thats not possible for me. So u i have to make it work the budget way

The concept of flat headphone is either arbitrary(graphs) or a personal quest(because of HRTF, past experiences...). With anything related to binaural, crossfeed, speaker simulation, I would suggest to start with EQing mono. Whatever idea you have for this can help, but Mr Griesinger explains the concept pretty well here:

Basically, when you listen to mono, your brain doesn't get many of the audio cues that help with spatial interpretation. Instead all you have is some correlation between frequency response and elevation(because of the shape of the outer ear). So it's a situation where you can expect a pretty direct relation between the EQ and your impressions.

If you get that right, even if you don't get the impression of distance(that's listener dependent and a few people will just never feel like something is in front of them when their eyes don't see it), at least you'll hopefully have a more accurate sens of elevation for sounds in front of you. And as most sounds will be in front of you or slightly on the sides, this might be enough for the entire playback experience to improve.
The flaw is that it's not easy to do, at all.


Now about binaural records, some are done with a random pair of mics and some distance between them, and some are done with a given dummy head(so the dummy head's HRTF is baked in the record). as a result, binaural records from different origins may give very different subjective results for you.
Another note about binaural, OOYH is not made for that! It's a speaker simulation, so typical albums should be played with it(albums made with and for speakers). For binaural stuff, EQ mono however you can, and just play them without OOYH. That should be the way.