I agree with your overall point, but you are selling Smyth short. If the promised online exchange for room measurements delivers, A16 users will be able to have a library of virtual listening rooms.
...
I also have some doubts about how well using a photo will work for a lot of people.
...
There may be a reason that Creative was not demoing that feature at CES!
In other words, I'll believe it when I hear it. I've heard the A-16 and I believe.
Thank you for considering my overall point, and putting your own out there! I also heard the A16 and all of Creative’s HRTF’s so far, and I agree the A16 is a level above. I’ve always said in the gaming threads, the reason I liked Sennheiser Binaural, Mad Lust Envy liked Dolby Headphone, and another guy preferred Creative CMSS-3D, was because we all had different head and ear shapes. Smyth’s biggest strength on paper is it’s personalization.
In person though, I was most impressed with the transformative qualities of the Realizer, and it really opened my eyes to just how much a DSP could do. I had just recently come from a demo in the Stax room, but the Stax on the A16 totally transformed to sound like the speakers they were using. “Mad Max” sounded REALLY GOOD, and I think “out of your head” and “nice/rich/clear” sounding is more impressive with movies than surround... I really want to play a game with the A16, because movies are generally just focused in front of you with the occasional surround “effect.” I do think the Realizer will do a great job of being widely compatible, too, which is no small thing.
Back to the home theater problem though, even with 16 speaker positions, a Realizer will still be trying to recreate a room that’s trying to recreate something more transparent. IMO, the Realizer is the pinnacle of what Dolby Headphone and most proprietary surround DSPs built-in to receivers (like Yamaha or Sony) were trying to do, to the point where the Realizer + Headphone (HD 800 for me, maybe an HD 820 soon) can actually sound better than any speaker setup I could have at home, but it still can’t take full advantage of object oriented sound. A home theater is essentially a filter, even if you have an Exchange site with tons of filters those won’t become transparent to match a movie or game scene. It can still make music seem to come from speakers though.
With object-oriented audio of the past and object oriented audio in VR experiences and Dolby Atmos (et al) of the present and future, the opportunities for improvement is not what math goes into an HRTF to sound realistic, the challenges are just personalized responses and better DAC/amp hardware. You mentioned before the outer AND inner ear shape and that effect on surround... well I have two things for you to consider:
1.) How does the Smyth compensate for “inner ear architecture?”
I posit that it doesn’t, and doesn’t have to. We’re not trying to make a dummy head hear things the exact same way you do, the goal is to make your ears hear the environment the same way your ears hear the effect.
2.) How much has to be personalized to make a convincing recreation of a tone and surround effect?
I posit that each crease and bend of an ear is NOT a variable, that your ear shape remains a constant whether listening en plein air or inside a circumaural earcup. For surround to work, the variables, what needs to be personalized, is just what has happened to the sound just before it reaches your ears, or another way of looking at it is recreating what is outside of a headphone earcup. The specific shape of your nose and face effect < the shape of your shoulders < the distance and perhaps angle between the sides of your head. The acoustic absorbing abilities of your skin fits somewhere in there too. Those are much less detailed figures than an exact 3D model of your ear impression.
Creative’s solution is pretty smart (and I haven’t looked into THX’s much yet). Again, I think smartphone pictures and good software are plenty to get the necessary personalized measurements. The photos won’t be enough to quantify one headphone so they can re-tune it to make it sound like a specific speaker brand or make it truely flat... but that’s why Creative is making a headphone database where you can download a profile for specific headphones. I imagine that will be kind of like what Sonarworks is doing. Creative tends to not be flexible to allow better detailed DACs and Amps though (X7 and their soundcards with processed Optical out are the exception), which help with separation and distinguishing distance, and I’ve never seen them offer head tracking.
The puzzle pieces are an understanding of HRTF, personalized head-shape measurements, head/movement tracking, reverb and occlusion, angle of origin, and neutralizing headphones. Also, signal chain fidelity and price. Smyth’s solution masters a few of those pieces, is very good at most of the rest of those pieces, takes a halfway position about signal chain by trying to use fairly decent components but leaving digital outputs to optionally bypass the DAC/amp and leave that up to specialized discrete components, and has the highest price commensurate with being currently (but if it’s not out yet, is it current?) the best sounding solution.
I would not be surprised if Creative or someone else doesn’t release an extremely competitive option before Smyth finally starts shipping some A16’s.
