[Fox1977]

"Smyth Unrealized", you're sounding like Trump, trying to sell some catchy game of words to express your frustration...
I, like many other buyers here, am also frustrated by delays but "start shopping for class action attorneys" seems extreme, in my opinion. Yes, they had given an ESTIMATED shipping date for may-june 2017 and yes, they very likely knew that they were giving a way too optimistic date and therefore purposely gave it not to scare potential buyers who might have not have jumped in had they known they'd have to wait more than a year and a half to get their A16. And this is wrong, and you have every right to be pissed about that.
Clearly, there is a problem with their communication, even though they are doing a bit of efforts lately to give a monthly update. And so far, they have avoided giving a shipping date for a while, which adds to the frustration. Yet, A16 is not a vaporware and we WILL get it eventually. When ? We can hope for april or may. The Smyth are not coming from nowhere, they have been selling the A8 for more than 10 years, so there is pretty much no risk that we lose our money. No need to get lawyers. If they had to pay for a lawsuit, they'd have then no money left to complete the A16... It's not a rich company.

 

[Evshrug]

One of the problems is that the Kickstarter initial videos show the product as already working, then a year later you find out that at best the reactions of listeners was based on some model running on a PC and the product shots were concept art. The Smyth isn’t bad from that point of view (though let's be blunt: it wasn't good); the Ossic video was basically sci-fi.

I do not understand your negativity towards @TedTimmis.
"Welcome to HeadFi. Sorry about your wallet."

For my part, I feel with TedTimmis. For me a delivery date is a promise.
If I broke such a promise in the company setting I was in until 2012, this would always have had consequences.
Having companies in our industry not respecting their promises is for me a big disappointment. A year of not delivering a product is in my opinion too long. As I said before. If they would have asked me if I want my A16 in May 2017 as it was presented in Paris, or if I want a better one somewhere in 2018, I would have choosen May 2017. For me this is a question of communication.

@TedTimmis
“Welcome to Head-Fi, Sorry about your wallet” has a different connotation here than usual, haha. Usually, that phrase was more of a “Hey, welcome to joining us on the journey for the holy grail!” I really do “feel you,” and I’ve been waiting hungrily for even longer and at this point wondering how the Smyth’s ever thought they would meet the Kickstarter delivery estimate... but you’ll catch more bees with honey than pouring vinegar (or smelling salts) over the other people in the same boat as you Believe me, we are very aware that the launch is delayed with no new commitment to a set deadline or even updated delivery estimate. I want a Realizer much more than I want a lawsuit.

@Sordel
I’ve got good news for you, at least. As someone else said, Smyth already had a commercial product in the A8, and this A16 is an update to that rather than a mayfly company that opened it’s doors on Kickstarter. And, like @Richter Di, I’ve also seen a working prototype in-person, twice, with no Windows computer behind the scenes doing the heavy lifting, so it’s a real product and I really do believe they are working on it with intent to release, someday.

Short history, some people complained that the HDMI passthough wouldn’t carry HDR, and Smyth announced that the motherboards with HDR passthrough didn’t exist yet, and opted to wait and integrate those boards into the first release of the A16, to keep it more future proof. Admirable enough, but I don’t know if that was enough to account for the whole delay. It almost seems like they had to start over from scratch... and I for one would agree with Richter that I would rather have received what was described and planned for in the Kickstarter somewhat close to the estimated month, and let someone else opt for a “version 2” that wouldn’t need a player like Oppo that offers dual-HDMI output.

I think these guys are brilliant, but I want them to step back from engineering for a minute and really figure out how much longer the logistics will take.

 

[Evshrug]

"Smyth Unrealized", you're sounding like Trump, trying to sell some catchy game of words to express your frustration...

I thought the exact same thing! Catchy words, idle threats, acting entitled...

 

[TedTimmis]

"Smyth Unrealized", you're sounding like Trump, trying to sell some catchy game of words to express your frustration...
I, like many other buyers here, am also frustrated by delays but "start shopping for class action attorneys" seems extreme, in my opinion. Yes, they had given an ESTIMATED shipping date for may-june 2017 and yes, they very likely knew that they were giving a way too optimistic date and therefore purposely gave it not to scare potential buyers who might have not have jumped in had they known they'd have to wait more than a year and a half to get their A16. And this is wrong, and you have every right to be pissed about that.
Clearly, there is a problem with their communication, even though they are doing a bit of efforts lately to give a monthly update. And so far, they have avoided giving a shipping date for a while, which adds to the frustration. Yet, A16 is not a vaporware and we WILL get it eventually. When ? We can hope for april or may. The Smyth are not coming from nowhere, they have been selling the A8 for more than 10 years, so there is pretty much no risk that we lose our money. No need to get lawyers. If they had to pay for a lawsuit, they'd have then no money left to complete the A16... It's not a rich company.

[Post modified by Mod]

Moreover, you enablers don’t seem to understand the difference between Kickstarter and an arms-length sale of a product. When Smyth Unrealized started taking pre-orders, it presented its product as one which was market ready; it was not. Sorry, you can’t handle the truth but there it is.

 

[sander99]

After they took our money, we’ve never heard from them. The only communications I’ve seen are rare Kickstarter posts.

Don't you receive an email with each kickstarter update? Then they probably forgot to put you on the mailing list. I had the same problem. Mail James Smyth and he will fix that.
I am also not happy with the delays and the lack of communication. But I'd rather get my A16 late then never. Bankrupting them with a lawsuit will not be helpfull. Then we probably will not get (all) our money back and no A16.
By the way: did you ask Smyth if you can cancel your order and get a refund? Maybe they will...

 

[jgazal]

Smyth Research (...) they've always been extremely transparent on what their processor does and doesn't (...)

That is true. Since day 0, way before the A8 launch and the positive reviews they had here, everyone could read their paper and clearly understand what the box was about: http://www.smyth-research.com/articles_files/SVSAES.pdf.

Smyth is addressing in the A16 many cons professionals and consumers complained about the A8 such as unfriendly user interface, connectivity and internal decoding. Read for intance Sound on Sound review:

The user interface feels antediluvian.
(...)
My biggest gripe about the Realiser has nothing to do with the sound, though: it's the clunkiness of the user interface. Using the small four-line LCD display and button-festooned remote control has all the appeal of programming bagpipe multisamples on an Akai S1000 with a broken data wheel! Creating a surround setup one speaker at a time seems mind-numbingly convoluted, while manually tweaking the 32-band HPEQ involves (no word of a lie) hundreds of button presses — a process made all the more soul-destroying when the Realiser occasionally seemed to forget my settings or shift them to neighbouring bands, eventually driving me to record them on paper! There are also buttons and menu entries that do nothing, which only adds to the impression of a job half finished, despite the stability and maturity of the underlying SVS algorithms.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/smyth-research-realiser-a8

Yes, it has been a year waiting. But just to have a parameter, the Sound on Sound review itself was postponed one year to properly test the technology:

So does it actually work?

The first question everyone asks me when I tell them about the Realiser is this: does it actually work? In other words, can SVS indistinguishably mimic the sound of my speakers? Well, let me be absolutely clear: no, it can't. I tried Beyerdynamic DT880 Pro, Sennheiser HD650, and Stax SR202 headphones, all seriously high-quality beasts. I bypassed all the Realiser's analogue output circuitry by driving a stand-alone headphone amp from its rear-panel optical S/PDIF output. I pushed the measurement techniques and post-sampling refinements as far as I could, with direct assistance from Smyth Research themselves. I connected my subwoofer to the Tactile outputs to add physical bass sensation. I squeezed my eyes shut, crossed my fingers, and believed with all my heart... but, try as I might, my well-worn reference CD never did sound exactly the same through the Realiser as through my own nearfields.

However, defining the Realiser in terms of what it can't do is, in my opinion, missing the point — because what the Realiser can do is astonishing! Despite never truly cloning the sampled speaker system, it does get startlingly close, and my first experience of its speaker-listening illusion left me, quite literally, open-mouthed. Even after extensive A/B comparisons, I still often felt moved to briefly lift a headphone earpiece in order to banish doubts about whether I was hearing my headphones or my speakers — and I lost count of the number of times I mistakenly tried to adjust the SVS headphone volume from my analogue monitor controller! Sound images are sharp and well-defined, panning decisions are trustworthy, and common headphone-mixing pitfalls such as misjudged effects levels and centre-versus-edge imbalances are easily avoided. In short, the Realiser acts very much like a real speaker system — albeit a slightly different speaker system than the one you sampled.

And the story is little different in surround. Despite my own limited experience in this field, sampling a 5.1 post-production system at SAE's Munich campus demonstrated that SVS's rear imaging was utterly uncanny, and panning around the different speakers felt very natural. On that basis, I'd personally expect no limitations to the system's usability for surround work beyond the hardware's I/O count.

A big concern many people have about headphone monitoring is the lack of physical bass sensation, but I was genuinely surprised at how little difference the use of the Tactile output actually made to my mixing decisions in the long term. Just hearing the low-frequency mix components within such a believably speaker-like context seems to clarify most low-frequency level and quality questions on its own somehow, and in no less reliable a manner than 95 percent of nearfield monitoring systems I've heard, given the strong influence of room resonances on real-world bass reproduction. Furthermore, the Realiser's nifty Direct Bass feature (see the 'Better Than The Real Thing?' box) can remove the effects of LF room modes from its emulation entirely, delivering low-end fidelity that's well beyond the capabilities of the speaker system you originally sampled!

So forget about treating the Realiser like some kind of audio photocopier. The most important question to my mind is whether you can produce release-quality work on the Realiser as quickly and reliably as on a similarly priced monitoring system comprised of physical speakers, mounting hardware and acoustic treatment. Hand on heart, I honestly think you can.

The last sentence has probably just propelled most readers' eyebrows into orbit, and some of you may already be dismissing me as a cloth-eared crank. Indeed, I would have expected an equally powerful knee-jerk reaction from an earlier self, which is why I ended up going rather overboard with the review process, vainly attempting to dissuade myself from such an inflammatory stance. I hogged the review unit for more than a year, sampling various different speaker systems including the Blue Sky 2.1 nearfield system and Avantone Mix Cube mid-range monitor which are both mainstays of my mixing rig. I took several mixes from start to finish using the Realiser exclusively, including the 'Mix Rescue' remixes in SOS March and April 2013. I used the SVS emulation of my own speakers as a reference during several complicated location recordings, such as the full-band dates featured in the October 2012 and April 2013 'Session Notes' columns.

But despite all that, I've been unable to escape the conclusion that the Realiser is at least as worthy a performer, in terms of both mixing power and mixing speed, as any similarly priced physical monitoring system. It can take a little time to acclimatise your ear to a given Preset, but it's an indicator of how good the SVS system is that this mental break-in period seems no longer than when switching to any new pair of speakers or an unfamiliar acoustic environment.

IMHO, while they wait for plastic parts (AFAIK it is the current bottleneck) they will spare no effort to improve the dedicated user interface to make it as friendly as possible. And they are also releasing a web based graphical user interface.

They are going to demo the Realiser A16 at SoCal Canjam, so I don’t think they are hiding.

I was not expecting such delay, but all the reasons they gave seem plausible to me until now.

Having said all that, what really caught my attention was that the BRIR personalisation functionality is still being developed and may not be completed before the Exchange site launch.

It seems to me that personalization without acoustical measurements may be much more difficult than previously expected. That is one of the reasons why I read with a grain of salt the claims from Creative. If they had their image based HRTF personalization ready, why not to demonstrate it now, instead of using the acoustical measurement approach that their product won’t have anyway? The lack of head tracking is one more reason...

 

[krismusic]

I paid for the Realiser so long ago that I've kind of forgotten about the money. It will be an interesting item to own but I doubt it will be life changing. I can wait.
I've had demos and met the Smyth team twice. You couldn't find a bunch more dedicated to their product. As others have said, Is a very small company but they do have a proven track record with the A8.
Kickstarter is not Amazon. You are investing in the company and hoping it will come good. I'm pretty sure it will.

 

[musicday]

I heard the Realiser A16 only once at CanJam London 2017 and that was enough for me to like it most from anything was there.
Apart from my Tera Player that amazes me each time i listen to it, the A16 that i heard only once impressed me so much that i had to own one.
And I am not easy to impress guy.

 

[TedTimmis]

I paid for the Realiser so long ago that I've kind of forgotten about the money. It will be an interesting item to own but I doubt it will be life changing. I can wait.
I've had demos and met the Smyth team twice. You couldn't find a bunch more dedicated to their product. As others have said, Is a very small company but they do have a proven track record with the A8.
Kickstarter is not Amazon. You are investing in the company and hoping it will come good. I'm pretty sure it will.

I haven’t forgotten about the money. In addition to the $1800 I spent for Smyth Unrealized, I paid $1800 for overpriced Sennheiser headphones based on the recommendation of Smyth Unrealized. If I had $3600 back in my pocket, I might have considered the Denon 8500H or the Unity Atom. These are real products made by grown-ups and engineers with business plans and deadlines, not a bunch of nutty professors who make grand promises and then disappear with your money.

 

[TedTimmis]

Don't you receive an email with each kickstarter update? Then they probably forgot to put you on the mailing list. I had the same problem. Mail James Smyth and he will fix that.
I am also not happy with the delays and the lack of communication. But I'd rather get my A16 late then never. Bankrupting them with a lawsuit will not be helpfull. Then we probably will not get (all) our money back and no A16.
By the way: did you ask Smyth if you can cancel your order and get a refund? Maybe they will...

You basically say we should give them more time. Fair enough. So, how much time, Mr. Sander, would you be willing to wait? Another year? Two years? Five Years? I would also be interested in hearing how much time others will wait. And if another year goes by with no product, what will you do?

 

[jgazal]

(...) When Smyth Unrealized started taking pre-orders, it presented its product as one which was market ready; it was not. Sorry, you can’t handle the truth but there it is.

Risks & Challenges
The Realiser A16 is still in development and certain functionality may change or be delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. However the design will allow owners to upgrade the A16 using firmware downloads and we will do our best to include any delayed features in these updates. The specification shown herein is accurate to the best of our knowledge but again this may change. The Realiser A16 engineering design is at the prototype stage, and moving it to production will incur risks. We will use off-shore manufacturing partners to:

1. Make and assemble all the PCBs
2. Make the extruded aluminium and 2U metal enclosures
3. Make all injection moulded plastic parts
4. Assemble and functionally test the hardware

Problems in any of these will cause delays in manufacturing the final product, and hence delay shipping to customers. In mitigation, we have successfully worked with all of our manufacturing partners on previous projects, and we will personally supervise key stages of the manufacturing at each site. Also, the manufacturer of key components of the design - the HDMI i/o board and codec decoding module, are manufactured in the USA by Momentum Data Systems, and we have an excellent working relationship with this company.

Our product must meet FCC, CE and other regulatory standards before shipping. Fundamental modifications may be required to the design of the circuits and PCBs, or certain electronic parts be added, replaced or removed from the design, to achieve compliance. At best this would cause delays in shipping; at worst it may require a complete re-design of the processor.

We are licensing audio decoding and processing algorithms directly from Dolby, DTS, Auro Technologies and Illusonics, and each licensing agreement or contract has different requirements that must be fulfilled before we are allowed to include their technology in our product. At the moment we have evaluation licences from Dolby, DTS and Illusonics, and these must be converted or upgraded to the full manufacturer's license before we ship any products. While we do not expect any significant problems, if any of these companies decide not to license their technology to us, we will not be able to include it in the final product. Also, prior to shipping, each of these companies must test our product to confirm that their technology has been implemented correctly, and this evaluation may also cause delays in shipping. Again we do not expect this testing to be problematic since the codec board we purchase from Momentum Data Systems will come with code already pre-certified by Dolby, DTS and Auro Technologies.

I haven’t forgotten about the money. In addition to the $1800 I spent for Smyth Unrealized, I paid $1800 for overpriced Sennheiser headphones based on the recommendation of Smyth Unrealized. If I had $3600 back in my pocket, I might have considered the Denon 8500H or the Unity Atom. These are real products made by grown-ups and engineers, not a bunch of nutty professors who make grand promises and then disappear with your money.

About us
Smyth Research, with laboratories in Bangor, Northern Ireland UK, was founded in 2004. The company engages in research and development related to hearing and sound reproduction in three dimensions. Our present work is focused on virtual sound reconstruction of real sound fields. The potential of headphones in this application has never been fully realised, untill now.

Stephen Smyth, Ph.D. is the inventor of the Realiser and the SVS technology it employs. He is the founder and chief officer of Smyth Research. In addition to expertise in digital audio signal processing, he has a strong entrepreneurial background, and has a proven record of taking inventions from the laboratory through to commercial success.

In 1988, he founded and ran Audio Processing Technology Ltd in order to market the apt-X100 coding algorithm developed during his post graduate research. This algorithm was subsequently chosen by Digital Theater Systems (DTS) for their cinema audio playback system that premiered with Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park.

After leaving APT in 1994, he founded AlgoRhythmic Technology Ltd in order to develop new coding technologies. He was the principal inventor of the Coherent Acoustics algorithm and formed and headed a joint venture with DTS to commercialise the algorithm in the consumer market. In 1995 he joined DTS as Technical Director and successfully promoted the algorithm to the DVD standards consortium as an alternate optional standard.

In 2001 he left DTS and founded ILD Networks Ltd to develop low-delay audio codecs for wide-band speech communication.

In 2004 he founded Smyth Research LLC to promote and market the SVS algorithm, his latest invention.

Dr Smyth graduated Queens University, Belfast, in 1985, B.Sc. (1st class Hons) in Electrical & Electronic Engineering, and Ph.D. in 1990 (Electrical & Electronic Engineering). He has nine published patents in the field of audio coding.

Mike Smyth, Ph.D. is co-founder of Smyth Research and promotes SVS in the professional market within the framework of our core consumer licensing strategy.

His career began in academic research for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, at Chalk River Nuclear Labs, until joining APT in 1991 to research and develop new audio codecs and applications.

Whilst at APT he moved into technical sales, setting up and running the APT sales office in Los Angeles and establishing enduring relationships with DTS, Pacific Bell and other end-users of the apt-X codec. He was a co-inventor of the Coherent Acoustics algorithm, joined DTS in 1995, and was involved in the promotion and technical presentations of this algorithm to the DVD consortium. In 1997 he left DTS but continued working as a consultant.

In 2004 he co-founded Smyth Research LLC to promote and market the SVS algorithm.

Dr Smyth graduated B.Sc. (Hons) in Physics from Manchester University in 1983, and Ph.D. (Atomic Laser Physics) University of Glasgow in 1987. He has published five patents.

Steve Cheung handles all aspects of the consumer licensing process and the design, manufacture and marketing of all products. He is fluent in English, Mandarin and Cantonese.

Mr Cheung has a strong technical background, allied to managerial, marketing and licensing skills.

After graduating B.Sc. (Hons) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1984, University of Strathclyde, Mr Cheung joined Honeywell's Solid State Applications Centre, Motherwell, Scotland as a research engineer.

In 1987 he worked for Dowty Electronics Ltd, Newbury, a modem manufacturer, as an applications engineer supporting sales departments. He worked with the R&D team and their European clients, and had their modems certified/approved in Norway, Denmark and France.

In 1989 he joined Analog Devices Ltd, Newbury, as technical marketing engineer in their European marketing division to promote DSPs to the telecommunications equipment manufacturers worldwide.

He joined APT Ltd, Belfast, in 1991 as a sales and marketing manager, successfully promoted the apt-X100 audio data compression technology to manufacturers around the world in various applications such as Satellite communications, PC storage of audio files for Radio stations etc. Digital Theater Systems (DTS) was one of their key clients. In 1993 he became operations manager for the Belfast based company.

In 1996 he joined DTS as Licensing Director, involved in licensing Coherent Acoustics to A/V manufacturers worldwide. In 1997 he left DTS but continued working as a consultant.

Mr. Cheung joined Smyth Research LLC in 2004 to promote the SVS algorithm..

Lorr Kramer engages in a range of activities promoting and refining the company's products.

Mr Kramer worked at the JBL loudspeaker company for seven years in product development. He has held positions at Ashton-Tate (database and other software) and at global satellite operator Comsat.

As a partner, he managed Mathematical Systems Design, an engineering company providing digital signal processing solutions for radio-frequency spectrum analysis and professional audio applications.

He worked at DTS for twelve years, beginning as part of the small team assembled to launch DTS into the consumer market. As Vice President, Technology Strategy for DTS, he engaged in strategic planning, technical standards for the cinema industry, and company communications.

Mr Kramer joined Smyth Research LLC in 2008.

Takeo Asano is based in Tokyo and acts as liaison in all stages of the consumer licensing process. He is the distributor for Smyth Research in Japan, Korea and Taiwan for all professional and consumer products.

Mr Asano is an entrepreneur and has worked in the professional audio market his entire career, founding and running Japanese subsidiaries Studer Revox K.K. (1982-1985), Solid State Logic K.K. (1985 to present), APT K.K. (1992 to 2007) and a liaison office for DTS (1997-2003). In 1991 he received an export achievement award from Rt. Hon. Douglas Hurd M.P. for record sales by SSL in Japan.

In 1994 he also founded AT Communications K.K. to design and install satellite-based audio and data distribution systems in Japan for commercial users.

Mr Asano has a strong technical background, graduating first from Hokuriku Electronics College, Ishikawa, Japan in 1962. He has often been involved in the successful introduction of leading-edge technologies into the Japanese broadcasting and CE markets, and has built up strong relationships with key figures in these industries. He is also fluent in English and has experience in working with professional audio companies around the world.

http://www.smyth-research.com/aboutus.html

I have been waiting since 2009... (Long awaited Smyth SVS Realiser NOW AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE).

 

[sander99]

You basically say we should give them more time. Fair enough. So, how much time, Mr. Sander, would you be willing to wait? Another year? Two years? Five Years? I would also be interested in hearing how much time others will wait. And if another year goes by with no product, what will you do?

There is progress. I am convinced it will be a matter of months now, not years. If I am wrong I will be very disapointed and I don't know what I will do.
If it was another more common product, or if I hadn't heared the A16 myself maybe I would have tried to get my money back last December, if nessesary trying to use my PayPal buyers protection for that (possible until last December).
But I did hear the A16 in Munich, May 2017. And it was all I hoped and expected, and in fact what I have been thinking and dreaming about for decades (the general idea, I only heared about Smyth a couple of weeks before).
I want it, I had preferred to get it earlier of course, but for me it is worth the wait and some risk. If I had known in June what I know now I still would have ordered it. And if I could go back in time to the start of the Kickstarter campaign I would order 2 or 3 of them (knowing what I know now, including having heard the A16 myself).

 

[Sanctuary]

Short history, some people complained that the HDMI passthough wouldn’t carry HDR, and Smyth announced that the motherboards with HDR passthrough didn’t exist yet, and opted to wait and integrate those boards into the first release of the A16, to keep it more future proof.

I'm sooo sorry.

I haven’t forgotten about the money. In addition to the $1800 I spent for Smyth Unrealized, I paid $1800 for overpriced Sennheiser headphones based on the recommendation of Smyth Unrealized. If I had $3600 back in my pocket, I might have considered the Denon 8500H or the Unity Atom. These are real products made by grown-ups and engineers, not a bunch of nutty professors who make grand promises and then disappear with your money.

That's completely on you. I also purchased a pair of HD800s (for $999), but not soley based on what the Smyth team had to say. Sure, they demoed the A16 with them, but they also use other, less expensive headphones and said that in the end comfort should be one of the primary deciding factors. Quality of the headphone, soundstage and quickness are obviously also important, but you can get a pair of headphones for $500 that will be adequate in those areas. But hey, I mean at least you ended up buying some good headphones?

Hell, I've written plenty of cyncial stuff, but holy crap.

 

[Fox1977]

[Post modified by Mod]
Moreover, you enablers don’t seem to understand the difference between Kickstarter and an arms-length sale of a product. When Smyth Unrealized started taking pre-orders, it presented its product as one which was market ready; it was not. Sorry, you can’t handle the truth but there it is.

[Post modified by Mod]
You seem to place me in this Group 1 you call "The Enablers" (for whatever that means, my english may have some holes because i don't see the meaning in the context...) but you forgot to give a name to the Group 3 you place yourself into... i suggest "The Whiners"
The Smyth often use Sennheiser HD800 for their demos indeed and they said that it's mostly because they are comfortable. But they are not telling people to buy it. They made it clear that the A16, as well as the A8 before that, will work with any pair of decent headphones. I will wait to get my A16 and to experience my headphones with it first and then i may consider upgrading for a better pair.

would you be willing to wait? Another year? Two years? Five Years?

Are you not exagerating a tad ? Yes the A16 is late, but even though it goes slower than we'd like, the progress is real and the final product is announced to be demoed in a month. So, shipping should come rather soon after, let's say before the end of first semester (may 2018 sounds realistic to me)

 

[TedTimmis]

I'm sooo sorry.




That's completely on you. I also purchased a pair of HD800s (for $999), but not soley based on what the Smyth team had to say. Sure, they demoed the A16 with them, but they also use other, less expensive headphones and said that in the end comfort should be one of the primary deciding factors. Quality of the headphone, soundstage and quickness are obviously also important, but you can get a pair of headphones for $500 that will be adequate in those areas. But hey, I mean at least you ended up buying some good headphones?

Hell, I've written plenty of cyncial stuff, but holy ****.