Smyth Research Realiser A16

[dsperber]

I'm really surprised that you, as a long time user of the A8, seem to don't know anything about the (stereo) mix-down functionality.
See p. 89 in A16 manual. That's what you want (I hope).
The A8 got the same functionality.

Thank you for the reference to the page in the manual that addresses my request. Yes, that IS what I'm looking for.

Don't know why I never actually pursued this in all these years. I was clumsily accomplishing the same effect by using the SOURCE-1 (optical, coming out of the A8) and SOURCE-2 (coax, coming out of the Oppo player) of my DAC. Output of the DAC was XLR to the Stax amp/headphone in both situations but the volume level was different in the headphones depending on the SOURCE input to the DAC. So along with switching inputs I also had to adjust the DAC output volume to correspond to whichever source was selected, so as to have the loudness levels similar. That's why I say it was clumsy (and not an instant simple quick A/B swap), but at least was a way to compare "with SVS" vs. "without SVS".

If I had long ago discovered the "stereo mix-down" functionality on the A8 facilitated simply through the alternating use of MIX and SVS keys on the remote, no question I would have been using it as my A/B comparison method fo "with SVS" vs. "without SVS". And I would no doubt have also expected something similar to be in the A16 and sought it out. Thank you again for pointing out the location of the appropriate documentation.

Note that the A16 design is much more complex than the A8, so there is much more to do in the preparation steps for the A16. With the A8 it seems all you need to do is alternately press MIX and SVS keys with all of the "mix block" channel contribution defaults already correctly set with comparing 2-channel stereo source in mind. By default the L and R channels are set to 1.0 with all other channels set to 0.0, and there is no additional "stereo mix-down" switch (to enable/disable this capability) and "AV-mode" switch (to allow the use of the SPK key for headphone output) both of which also must be set correctly. It's simply press SVS and MIX on the A8 remote to toggle between "with SVS" and "without SVS". There's no additional consideration of what gets sent to the 8-channel analog output of the A8 vs. what gets sent to the 2-channel stereo output of the A8 (either optical or headphone) since we're only concerned about whether or not SVS processing is involved inside the A8 no matter what outputs are involved.

I need to play with this on the A16 to truly get familiar with everything, but it seems that I can just disable AV mode (since I'm never producing 16-channel analog output). And I can just enable STEREO mix-down mode and set contributing channels and gains as with the A8, and find a proper "volume" value so that the A/B comparison has similar loudness. Once these preparatory step are done from that point on I can simply use the SPK and HP keys of the A16 as my toggle keys (just like the MIX and SVS keys of the A8) with nothing else that also needs to be done.

I will also play with this on the A8, to further burn into my brain how this all works.

Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

 

[frank2908]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

 

[Got the Shakes]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

USB should be an option. There a USB driver available from Smyth’s website for both Windows and MacOS. I’ve had my A16 since August, but I haven’t had a reason to test USB input so I can’t say for sure how it works.

 

[audiohobbit]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

Sorry, but the A16 has nearly all inputs conceivable! HDMI, SPDIF coax and optical, stereo analog, multichannel analog, usb. What else should it have?
And then you only had about 3 years to check what inputs the A16 has and what you need to feed it.

 

[Dixter]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

go and get a RCA to 3.5mm stereo and you can hook up the m5, your computer or your phone to the A16.... very simple to figure out... don't be bummed

 

[esimms86]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

Are you a Kickstarter backer? If so, then what is your backer number? Congratulations on receiving your unit and thanks.

 

[audiohobbit]

Some more infos on vertical headtracking from Stephen:

Vertical measurement will be available in both Async and ALL modes.

The A16 will be limited to a total of 24 look measurements per PRIR, look centre being one of these. Also vertical looks will be restricted to a single pair above and below a horizontal look. Vertical look angles can range from +/-10 to +/-60 deg in 10 deg steps.

Say you have look centre, +/- 30 and +/- 60 for the horizontal, then you may want a +/- vertical measurement for each horizontal one. In this case you would have 5 horizontal looks, 5 looking up measurements and 5 looking down, 15 in total. It is not necessary to have vertical measurements for every horizontal measurement. You could, for example, have vertical looks for just look centre, or vertical looks for look centre and +/-30 looks only.

 

[sander99]

Something like this is a nice choice then I think:
9 horizontal looks, 7 looking up measurements and 7 looking down (23 in total), 15 degrees intervals horizontal, 30 degrees interval vertical.
That would give good range and precision in the horizontal, enough range in the vertical and the possible imprecision caused by the relatively big vertical interval would be mitigated a bit by the higher horizontal precision (even if for some random head position the closest measured lookangle could be 15 degrees away in the vertical, at least it would be at most 7.5 degrees away in the horizontal [Edit: except in the outer left and right edges of course]).

 

[You Gene]

Something like this is a nice choice then I think:
9 horizontal looks, 7 looking up measurements and 7 looking down (23 in total), 15 degrees intervals horizontal, 30 degrees interval vertical.
That would give good range and precision in the horizontal, enough range in the vertical and the possible imprecision caused by the relatively big vertical interval would be mitigated a bit by the higher horizontal precision (even if for some random head position the closest measured lookangle could be 15 degrees away in the vertical, at least it would be at most 7.5 degrees away in the horizontal [Edit: except in the outer left and right edges of course]).

I do not want to be rude and interrupt a technical point since I do not possess the technical knowhow to do so and neither do I have the Realiser A16 yet ; but I would like to point out, if relevant, that during the HCFR podcast of 2016, Hugo S. asked the following question to Stephen Smyth (timing of the podcast 42:48 to 50:01) :
...how come that during the Paris private demo you only took 3 measurements to get the PRIR : 1) centre with the head in central position 2) left with the head 30° to the left and 3) right with the head 30° to the right. How did you achieve a 7.1.4 reproduction with only 3 measurements?...

Stephen Smyth carried on to say that it is not too difficult and to finally conclude that with a 60° angle (30° to the left and 30° to the right) it was more than adequate...

It looks as though the whole thing got from "not too difficult" to "extremely difficult"...I also know that it was only a demo ; but with only a demo, people were impressed nonetheless.

If I got it all wrong, please bear with me!

 

[Richter Di]

Got my A16 today, to excited but then realised nothing in my setup can be used as input for the realiser. My main source is laptop but without hdmi hdmi , or fiio m5 with spdif out but only with 3.5 cable to ky mojo. I know the A 16 is supposed to be a grown up device/ home device, therefore no 3.5 or usb input available, but it kills my enthusiasm

Congratulations. Would you share your backer number, if you are a backer?
I am not sure what the problem is with the SPDIF connection from the FiiO. I got an adapter with my M9 and M11 for a cinch SPDIF cable. Do you have this adapter too?

 

[dsperber]

I need to play with this on the A16 to truly get familiar with everything, but it seems that I can just disable AV mode (since I'm never producing 16-channel analog output). And I can just enable STEREO mix-down mode and set contributing channels and gains as with the A8, and find a proper "volume" value so that the A/B comparison has similar loudness. Once these preparatory step are done from that point on I can simply use the SPK and HP keys of the A16 as my toggle keys (just like the MIX and SVS keys of the A8) with nothing else that also needs to be done.

Turns out its not the SPK and HP keys (on the upper part of the remote) that relate to enable/disable stereo mix-down. It's the "speaker" and "headphone" (icons) buttons (in the middle of the remote) which are involved.

But other than that, I've now got it working exactly as I had wanted. I did use the -3db gain values for both C and SW (both going to Lh+Rh) that appear in the four factory rooms mix configurations, with all the other individual speakers in the mix set at +0db.

And I did play with the Stereo "master volume" level for a while in order to equalize the loudness when running "with SVS" and "without SVS", and eventually settled on +8db in order to get both to sound equally loud. Now that I can compare the two directly and instantly I guess the AIX room was actually pretty "live", and remarkably smooth (no reverb, no echos, no nothing but clear vibrant CD audio with beautiful balanced tone).

Using Norah Jones' "Don't Know Why" (from "Come Away With Me" CD) was genuinely surprising how very different the identical song sounds through the identical headphones and equipment, listening through the two methods. It really was like two totally different listening environments, with the "with SVS" (i.e. AIX room) sound being clear as a bell, outside of my head and coming from external speakers in front of me, with beautiful bass/treble tone from the electronics and front B&W speakers of that room. Gorgeous. In contrast, feeding the pure untouched as-engineered CD audio to the same headphones, it was inside my head, and with no bass/treble tone control. Very flat. I think it was the implicit tone control of the AIX room as facilitated by SVS which is what I'm really observing and which is what makes this A/B comparison so startling.

Bottom line: it's amazing. Same Stax amp/headphone, same CD audio source material. Listening "source direct" is "sadly inferior" when compared to listening "in the AIX room" through the magic of SVS. This is definitely the right way to listen to CD audio music!


P.S. - though nobody has confirmed the symptom on their own A16 with 1.75 and the new direct-select of preset functionality, it is absolutely true that the "explosive discharge crack" sound occurs whenever you select a preset using 1-9 keys. Doesn't matter whether you're changing from one preset to another, or just re-pressing the key for the same preset already active. The A16 presents "wait" on the display screen in any case, along with the explosive brief crack noise out of the headphones that you are no doubt still wearing. Startling, I'm telling you.

 

[Eich1eeF]

...how come that during the Paris private demo you only took 3 measurements to get the PRIR : 1) centre with the head in central position 2) left with the head 30° to the left and 3) right with the head 30° to the right. How did you achieve a 7.1.4 reproduction with only 3 measurements?...

Stephen Smyth carried on to say that it is not too difficult and to finally conclude that with a 60° angle (30° to the left and 30° to the right) it was more than adequate...

It looks as though the whole thing got from "not too difficult" to "extremely difficult"...I also know that it was only a demo ; but with only a demo, people were impressed nonetheless

The HCFR podcast is discussing a different problem from the one here. They are counting a measurement of all speakers of a full 7.1.4 system for one look angle (one each of center, left, right) as "one measurement". All the overlapping rising sine sweeps such as you can hear here are "one measurement" by this count. Having three of those will only allow horizontal derotation from -30° to +30° and no vertical derotation at all. Vertical derotation requires additional measurements of all speakers while looking up and down, all combined with looking left, center, right, so that the A16 can interpolate between those positions.

 

[sander99]

I do not want to be rude and interrupt a technical point since I do not possess the technical knowhow to do so and neither do I have the Realiser A16 yet ; but I would like to point out, if relevant, that during the HCFR podcast of 2016, Hugo S. asked the following question to Stephen Smyth (timing of the podcast 42:48 to 50:01) :
...how come that during the Paris private demo you only took 3 measurements to get the PRIR : 1) centre with the head in central position 2) left with the head 30° to the left and 3) right with the head 30° to the right. How did you achieve a 7.1.4 reproduction with only 3 measurements?...

Stephen Smyth carried on to say that it is not too difficult and to finally conclude that with a 60° angle (30° to the left and 30° to the right) it was more than adequate...

It looks as though the whole thing got from "not too difficult" to "extremely difficult"...I also know that it was only a demo ; but with only a demo, people were impressed nonetheless.

If I got it all wrong, please bear with me!

The HCFR podcast is discussing a different problem from the one here. They are counting a measurement of all speakers of a full 7.1.4 system for one look angle (one each of center, left, right) as "one measurement". All the overlapping rising sine sweeps such as you can hear here are "one measurement" by this count. Having three of those will only allow horizontal derotation from -30° to +30° and no vertical derotation at all. Vertical derotation requires additional measurements of all speakers while looking up and down, all combined with looking left, center, right, so that the A16 can interpolate between those positions.

@You Gene: and I will add to what Eich1eef explained:
The A16 offers the choice to add more measurement points (more lookangles) to increase the range and/or the precision of the headtracking. That is what the maximum of 24 lookangles is about. And the measurement at each of those lookangles would include all the speakers.
About the range: for watching movies and listening to music while sitting in your chair 30 degrees to the left and 30 degrees to the right is adequate. But having a larger range, maybe even the full 360 degrees is mainly nice for the fun factor, or for virtual reality applications.
About the precision: probably for most people interpolating between measured points 30 degrees apart also is adequate. But using measurement points less far apart would increase the precision of the interpolation between the measured points. Interpolation means - a little bit simplified - that if during normal use of the A16 you hold your head somewhere inbetween 2 measured positions (or inbetween 3 or 4 measured positions at different vertical and horizontal angles) the A16 will "estimate" what it should do based on the available measurements around the current position.

 

[You Gene]

@You Gene: and I will add to what Eich1eef explained:
The A16 offers the choice to add more measurement points (more lookangles) to increase the range and/or the precision of the headtracking. That is what the maximum of 24 lookangles is about. And the measurement at each of those lookangles would include all the speakers.
About the range: for watching movies and listening to music while sitting in your chair 30 degrees to the left and 30 degrees to the right is adequate. But having a larger range, maybe even the full 360 degrees is mainly nice for the fun factor, or for virtual reality applications.
About the precision: probably for most people interpolating between measured points 30 degrees apart also is adequate. But using measurement points less far apart would increase the precision of the interpolation between the measured points. Interpolation means - a little bit simplified - that if during normal use of the A16 you hold your head somewhere inbetween 2 measured positions (or inbetween 3 or 4 measured positions at different vertical and horizontal angles) the A16 will "estimate" what it should do based on the available measurements around the current position.

Thank you guys!

I am still drowning, mind you... but you cleared my mind and pushed me in the right direction for which I am grateful. And it is always good to know there is always a buoy at head-fi!!!

Cheerio...

 

[sahmen]

I have to congratulate those of you who are reading and digesting the manual, and have even managed to figure out some things about how the A-16 works even without having one in hand.
As for me. I experience a total mental block when I am confronted with a manual or user guide without having the related machine or component in front of me. Reading a manual, under such conditions, is like pouring water into a basket that is full of holes : nothing stays in... So personally, when I think of the A-16 nowadays, the only instruments I am interested in controlling are my fingers and my toes....

I guess that will all change, and I shall get around to reading the manual once my A-16 arrives, in 2021, or if I am lucky, at some point in 2020. In the meantime, congrats again to those who have their A-16s in hand, and even more congrats to those of you who have figured out how it works without it,