[musicday]

Smyth better hurries. You will get similar results with a 150 US Dollar Creative dongle this summer.
https://www.techhive.com/article/3246194/ces/creative-super-x-fi-headphone-audio-holography.html

Is interesting, but we all believe in Smyth Research. Now if they can improve it and deliver it in time will be amazing, and with their parents no other company can touch it in terms of surround sound reproduction.
If you read about many still use A8 since 2009 and are massively impressed with it.

 

[Sanctuary]

Oh look, yet another "app" that you need a phone to use. No thanks.

Also, if you listened to what they said in the video, using the inner ear mic measurements gave presumably similar results as to what the A8/A16 can do (sort of), but that's not what they are actually going to be selling. This just looks like a pseudo upgrade to the X7 or Dolby Headphone, not a legitimate realiser alternative. They are claiming that it will come within "85%" of what was heard using the mics, so expect it to realistcially be closer to 65% - 75%, which is only slightly better than Dolby Headphone. It also doesn't seem like you would actually be able to record a personalized speaker setup either.

And what's the deal with calling the way we actually hear sound regularly as "holography"? Just a stupid marketing buzzword that isn't even needed. Humans have binaural hearing. That's what allows us to pinpoint sounds around us...

Besides that, holography has nothing to do with sound at all, and we don't hear with our eyes.

 

[illram]

Yeah the most interesting part of it is their claim to personalize measurements using a picture of your ear and your face rather than an in-ear mic, and that was not demo'd. That's a huge huge difference. Who knows if that works. Certainly not that reviewer! That essentially makes the demo irrelevant for anything other than Creative also has the technical know how to make a customized VSS DSP. Which we already knew.

Also I am confused how they plan to get Atmos out of a USB dongle? I thought USB could not do Atmos? E.g. I thought I read in this thread that we will be needing HDMI to get more than 7.1. Also mentioned as an aside in the review: they did not use a dongle either, they had something in a plexiglass enclosure.

Still very early days for that. Not that I think it isn't exciting, I welcome more advances in this particular field particularly from a "big" player like Creative. But I will be happily using my Realiser while this is maybe on Kickstarter next year and then released, maybe, who knows how long after that....

 

[castleofargh]

pioneer techs aren't there to put an end to evolution. they're here to open the door to many improvements, alternatives, reduce the costs to make it available to most...
taking pictures to make a 3D model is something I've seen some years back for games where people could use their own faces as their character's avatar. the first time I saw this, there was still a dude to edit typical messy mesh on some tricky areas, before sending it to the game, but time passes and techs improve(apple's face recognition). so making a 3D model of the outer ear doesn't seem like a distant dream to me. then "all" there is to do, if have huge processing ability, or a pretty big catalog of pre-calculated models of ears to provide the correct close enough compensation. as for everything else, it's up to the manufacturer to decide when to go full custom and when to simplify a model to make things more practical.
I remember reading some work done on predicting HRTF based on more or less simplified models, starting with a simple ball with the proper size. that was already good enough to have several improvements over a universal average. and they also were working on making a scan of the head with pictures where, if my brain isn't full of crap, they were still getting variations from actual in ear measurements, but those variations were pretty consistent(like, a little too bright). which is a great thing because it means it can also be compensated if only partially.

I doubt a little cheap toy right now is going to solve it all for us, but it might be a cool middle ground with several simplifications until cellphones start getting real massive calculating power.

so far I've been disappointed by all the surround/3D/head tracking solutions I've tried(didn't try them all off course), but at the same time I'm always cheering for them because it means that someone, somewhere, actually cares to try and solve the nonsense that is headphone+albums mastered on and for speakers. all those products are just paving the way to actual hifi. IMO

 

[sander99]

Smyth better hurries. You will get similar results with a 150 US Dollar Creative dongle this summer.
https://www.techhive.com/article/3246194/ces/creative-super-x-fi-headphone-audio-holography.html

I have mixed feelings about this, I assume I am not the only one. Should I hope this new x-fi thing isn't too good so we didn't waste our money or should I hope it works wonders and be happy that this technology comes within everyone's reach?
Well, I guess it won't support 2 users, 16 virtual speakers, dts X!, auro 3D, 16 discrete analog (or PCM via USB) inputs (16 channel ADC!) for whatever you want to put in, have 2 quality DACs and headphone amps (or one balanced headphone amp), be usable as a 16 channel processor preamp with 32 band PEQ for each channel, future possibility for more advanced room correction,16 analog outputs (16 channel DAC!), do illusonic upmixing. And I don't see headtracking mentioned(?). And there is the 85% thing.
And will it have the dsp power to do all it does in satisfying quality?

But small and portable for on the go is nice.

Maybe in the future the photo-method for aquiring HRTF functions (after some improvement) can be used to create A16 PRIRs as well.

It also doesn't seem like you would actually be able to record a personalized speaker setup either.

The modeling-from-a-photo concept is more suitable to combine with modeling the room and speakers as well (this then could be theoretical ideal speakers in a theoretical ideal room, whatever those would be; probably for different type of recordings different types of rooms and speakers). The Smyth PRIR measurement method is more suited for capturing a real existing room with real speakers. If the photo method can be improved it has the potential to help "constructing" ideal PRIRs I think. Isolated HRTF measurements (measuring pure HRTF - without reflexions and reverberations - for a number of angles) could also be used to construct ideal PRIRs, but such measurements must be made in an anechoic chamber so that would be a lot less practical than the photo method. (Reflexions and reverberations now make it difficult or impossible to seperate the personal HRTF part and the room-speaker part of a measured PRIR).

 

[Richter Di]

Just in case you like stay updated on the topic: https://us.creative.com/sxfi/

 

[Sordel]

I have mixed feelings about this, I assume I am not the only one. Should I hope this new x-fi thing isn't too good so we didn't waste our money or should I hope it works wonders and be happy that this technology comes within everyone's reach?
Well, I guess it won't support 2 users, 16 virtual speakers, dts X!, auro 3D, 16 discrete analog (or PCM via USB) inputs (16 channel ADC!) for whatever you want to put in, have 2 quality DACs and headphone amps (or one balanced headphone amp), be usable as a 16 channel processor preamp with 32 band PEQ for each channel, future possibility for more advanced room correction,16 analog outputs (16 channel DAC!), do illusonic upmixing. And I don't see headtracking mentioned(?). And there is the 85% thing.
And will it have the dsp power to do all it does in satisfying quality?

But small and portable for on the go is nice.

The dongle for me is no rival at all to the A16. You're carrying a phone ... your phone is feeding both power and a digital signal (presumably) to the dongle, which has therefore to do be a DAC and headphone amp ... and it's that small and only costs $150? Nah, that's not happening. It would make more sense if the app was doing everything in the phone and there was no dongle at all: then you'd have quite a practical system where you could be using an iPad as the front end, outputting to a proper headphone amp. Then we could be talking about a $30 and everyone would want it. Or it could be a fuller outboard DAC & headphone amp, but we all know that this would be more than $150 and I wouldn't necessarily trust Creative to design & manufacture it.

The 85% thing is significant: most of us spend big money for an upgrade of less than a fifth. But the Creative people are suggesting that their system using ear photos is only 85% of their system with in-ear mics. We don't know whether their system is better or worse than the Smyth system (and I'm more than happy to bet the price of the A16 that the Smyth system is better). So even if the Creative system came in an ideal form factor there's no reason to believe right now that it is anything other than an inferior product at a lower price. That's not to say it isn't worth having, just that it doesn't threaten what Smyth are doing in producing an over-engineered product for the enthusiast market.

 

[raband]

Does the Creative do head tracking?

 

[Sanctuary]

so far I've been disappointed by all the surround/3D/head tracking solutions I've tried(didn't try them all off course), but at the same time I'm always cheering for them because it means that someone, somewhere, actually cares to try and solve the nonsense that is headphone+albums mastered on and for speakers. all those products are just paving the way to actual hifi. IMO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A3D



They've been able to do quite a bit more than they have been for a while now. It's easier to milk incremental iterations of an inferior tech however. For gaming anyway. Although if Aureal Semiconductor was still around, they more than likely would have found a solution similar to Atmos by now for other audio sources.

 

[musicday]

Hopefully soon we will get another update in the Realiser A16. It will be amazing to receive it all not longer them may.
Also i can't deny that other companies are not trying hard to come with headphone surround sound as best as possible, but i am only interested in A16.
I have heard lots and lots of gear at various prices but nothing impressed me as the Realiser.
Realiser A16 is the real deal in this field.

 

[SergioPOE]

I ended up writing James Smyth about the remaining balance and he sent me a Paypal payment request, but I wonder if he would've sent me anything before the deadline (which is supposedly in two days) if I hadn't prompted him. If you paid the $700 down payment and you haven't gotten a request to pay the balance, you might want to send him an email.

 

[musicday]

I ended up writing James Smyth about the remaining balance and he sent me a Paypal payment request, but I wonder if he would've sent me anything before the deadline (which is supposedly in two days) if I hadn't prompted him. If you paid the $700 down payment and you haven't gotten a request to pay the balance, you might want to send him an email.

If you don't mind asking, how much did you have to pay in total?

 

[SergioPOE]

If you don't mind asking, how much did you have to pay in total?

$1999 + $60 shipping + 20% VAT since I'm in Europe, so 2466. Fortunately some of that was offset by the high EUR/USD exchange rate

 

[raband]

How many people do we think are on the list?

 

[musicday]

$1999 + $60 shipping + 20% VAT since I'm in Europe, so 2466. Fortunately some of that was offset by the high EUR/USD exchange rate

Gracias amigo, not many will tell the amount.
Probably in UK we will pay slightly more, because of the weak .