I know nothing about psycho acoustics, but when I was doing the demo at CanJam, they played a sound from the front left speaker and when I switched to headphones my brain instructed my eyes to look at that speaker. You hear something and your brain needs to make sense of it. Few weeks ago I watched a Mobius review and as a test, the reviewer recommended placing speakers in front of you at the angle the Mobius speakers are setup. He said something about getting used to the VSS and that is takes a while. I'll try to look for it in my watch history.
One of the things I don't understand is the distance. If I watch a movie at home and we have around 4 meters between the sofa and the projector screen, doesn't it feel strange if the capture from another room has a further distance then what we have? Say that I would go to a movie theater and capture the sound there and bring that home to our living room. Would't it be interpreted by my ears as if it was fake and that the sound was coming from behind the wall in a space that doesn't exist? How does this then apply to the different setups we later will be able to buy from the shop?
I tried out OOYH this weekend but unfortunately I couldn't get the app to work on either of my macs. I tried the online demos instead with both Sennheiser HD 800 and my Sony in ear headphones. The sound was pretty convincing for me when it was behind me and more so with my left ear. But sound from the front didn't work very well at all for me. It just sounded like it was further out on the sides of my ears, not infront. Also when listening to the movie clips, I got the feeling of listening to a very muffled room, where it felt like I really heard the room rather than experience the movie vivid surround sound. This is also a concern of mine that the sound will feel fake from not being open enough to feel real, but rather muffled and closed and that you instead hear the room rather than the movie. What is your thoughts and experience around these things?
Indeed, i think it would be better to get a PRIR where the front speakers of the captured room are at a similar distance to the screen you'll actually be watching with the A16.
When i got a measurement done in Paris two years ago, the TV in the room i captured was nearly at the same distance than my TV in my living room (i think it was still a bit closer but it should be ok).
Taking a capture of a big room will sound a bit echoic and will be weird if you are watching in a much smaller room.
That's what i didn't like in many OOYH presets. Yet, there is one that fits me fine, that doesn't echoes and for which it works quite ok to my ears (Magical Speakers).
I think i read a while ago on the OOYH thread that Darin Fong has issues with the latest version of OSX, Mojave. He recommends for those who can to stay on High Sierra while he tries to fix the issue.
Like I already said, most people who are buying the A16 likely already have speakers. So buying the A16 doesn't do anything towards speaker manufacturers. Do you honestly believe that at $4000 this is going to be some massive explosion of sales that hurts the (already inflated) profit margins of speaker manufacturers?
It also doesn't matter if the A16 can emulate sixteen speakers when barely anyone is going to buy a full sixteen speaker setup anyway other than the really high end enthusiasts with loads of money to burn; who probably wouldn't have much need for the A16 since they could just build a sound proof studio in their house anyway. Furthermore, you can't easily travel with a full sixteen speaker setup. You can't even really "easily" travel with a five speaker theater setup either.
Indeed, i think it would be better to get a PRIR where the front speakers of the captured room are at a similar distance to the screen you'll actually be watching with the A16.
When i got a measurement done in Paris two years ago, the TV in the room i captured was nearly at the same distance than my TV in my living room (i think it was still a bit closer but it should be ok).
If I was a speaker company I think I would investigate the possibility of creating virtual setups using my speakers as a bases and then offering the files for sale.... There are many people who live in homes/condo/apartments where you can't put a full Atomos setup... those would be the target for the A16 and the custom virtual speaker files...
A couple of weeks ago I visited a friend in Houston that has a condo that over looks the Houston shipping channel..
His Condo is pretty high in the building and has a unobstructed view of 45 miles from his patio... We put on the Audeze Mobius 3D headphones and it was amazing looking out over the water with head tracking... we used the bluetooth wireless option with head tracking/3D.... it was as if the speakers where filling the entire sky and head tracking... amazing it was... Can't wait to get the A16 and try that out with full Atmos ...
There is still the option to record the output of the A16 as you input audio and it gets converted by the A16 into the 2 channel output... so as an example you could just take a A16 converted file and put it on your iphone and take it anywhere you want and just plug in a set of headphones.. you won't have head tracking but you get the rest of what the A16 puts out...
How would you like to be on a plane or bus and you have your headphones on and your playing back a virtual Magnaplanar Speaker Setup from your iphone...
I also was looking at a project the other day where a company is working on a 8K VR headset... its a ways off... but that too would be great watching a movie/concert with a virtual speaker setup via the A16 output files...
I don't see speaker companies doing anything but opposing this. They'll follow the same model record companies followed in opposing streaming music, but people buying something like thee A16 probably have a golden opportunity to fly under their radar b/c this is such a minuscule thing right now. Later on, when other companies catch on that this can be done, and start offering things that are just as good,cheaper, and far easier to use--alarm bells will start going off in both high end and mid fi companies in much the same way Napster triggered record companies. But until that happens, I'd advise any A16 owner to get as many high quality Prirs in as many channels and formats as he possibly can, that way he'll have all the good speakers, and be long out out of the battle royale when it finally arrives. And of course the virtual speaker companies will prevail, but not before many lawsuits and much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensues.
Once I was told part of music enthusiasts prefer the room free unprocessed headphones presentation and other fraction cannot handle wearing anything at all.
It takes two to tango and a family to watch movies. Usually is not easy to hug someone while wearing headphones.
Loudspeakers are, to a fair extent, just what the room let them to be.
What I find appealing is to measure a room with optimal bass response or the opportunity to improve, in the virtual realm, a room with suboptimal bass response. But not everybody appreciates accuracy.
Who can say that suddenly doubled the price of the A16 isn't a sort of 'speakers copy-protection' already? @jgazal:
1) I think families are out of this story. Families are satisfied with the sound of the speakers inside of a TV set. I didn't even buy a second head tracker or second headphones.
2) In my experience especially the fans of 'good bass response' tend to overdo the bass significantly. Sometimes I can hear bass and bass drum coming from the other side of town.
It contributes a lot I am afraid to say. By far, the best scenario is to make prir from one’s HT system and thus have the speakers in place when using the realiser. That is the reason why demos from smyth brothers blow people out of their socks. It’s unfortunate that people who demoed the realiser last week end in shanghai had no clue whatsoever what this product is about...
The second option, which is the one I’ve been using with ooyh while waiting for the realiser is to kill the reverb in the prir or record in a dry room. I was lucky enough to get my prirs at aix, and that’s the only location that works for me back in my small japanese room. The other prirs I got at other locations on that day plain suck back at home (weird reverb) while they sounded just fine when I checked on site.
I know I am one of the exceptions among target users but, all I am after is hrtf processing by the realiser and I could not care less for the imprint of the speakers, room and pickup chain (I’ll probably be using the 1 speaker procedure using a tweeter and thick curtains on all walls + cut the reverb tail to capture my “prir”s)...
I know this isn’t the type of speaker/room characteristics that movies are mixed for (the speaker system is expected to be in a mildy wet room), but, for me, the colorations from the room (in particular the reverberation) for more outweight the benefits of transforming the audio mix into a binaural signal, both for movies and especially for music.
As a result of this, I am also one of those who clearly prefer listening to music straight through high end headphone rig without processing than through this type of binaural emulation.
The brain is notoriously easy to fool. I don't think it'll take long for it to accept whatever it's hearing through the headphones, even if the physical reality of it is impossible.
The brain is notoriously easy to fool. I don't think it'll take long for it to accept whatever it's hearing through the headphones, even if the physical reality of it is impossible.
It also helps if you've done a lot of your high end listening in darkened rooms (which fosters the illusion of real instruments playing in real space which is what this whole avocation is supposed to be about anyway.)
If only Smyth Research can tell us what's exactly happening with the A16 progress and Dolby Atmos certification...
Hopefully soon another update, some real news about a delivery date maybe? One can dream...
I can not believe that Dolby could ask for more than accurate decoding of Dolby bitstreams. Now, what is so complicated and delicate about decoding Dolby? Isn't it something that was solved a long ago by somebody else? Could it be that Smyth is able to accurately 'copy' loudspeakers only if he does the decoding inaccurately?!?
I can not believe that Dolby could ask for more than accurate decoding of Dolby bitstreams. Now, what is so complicated and delicate about decoding Dolby? Isn't it something that was solved a long ago by somebody else?
Probably it is not complicated in itself. Just a list of requirements concerning options that should be there (in the user interface also) etc. I can only guess Smyth is just still busy making changes and improvements in general and once it is all finished then the certification will (hopefully) be just a formality. The fact that Smyth mentioned certification so many times may make people think that that is somethink problematic and very time consuming, but I don't think it is like that. Its just the last step, but it can not be done before the rest is finished (or at least finished to the point that no more big changes or changes directly related to the certification requirements are expected).
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