Smyth Research Realiser A16

[castleofargh]

 

  Has anyone ever made an outdoor PRIR? That would be one way to avoid reflections (except for the ground).

 
You could always do it in free-fall, but you'd need a helluva wind screen.

NP

 

[jgazal]

Has anyone ever made an outdoor PRIR? That would be one way to avoid reflections (except for the ground).

At least where I live, I guess outdoor signal to noise ratio would defeat any advantage of avoiding reflections. We need to rent some acoustic treatment.

Eric, when you did that "coincident" dipole PRIR to simulate crosstalk cancelation, how did you choose the look angles and how did you know you were looking to the right angle spot?

Have you tried other angles like 10, 90 and 110 degrees?

I am curious to know if 10 degrees work better not only for binaural recordings, bt also for stereo mics with 90 or 110 angles. Have you compared such recordings?

Cheers.

Edited: see discussion here.

 

[Erik Garci]

I have not tried angles other than 0 degrees for the front speaker. For head tracking, I turn my head +/- 30 degrees as usual. When I created the PRIR for the Hafler circuit, I added a rear speaker at 180 degrees.

By the way, after making the PRIR, the "window" setting should be reduced to 200ms to prevent the right ear from hearing a faint echo of the left ear's signal, and vice versa.

Also, the "speaker mode" should be set to LR before measuring the front speaker, and LsRs or LbRb before measuring the rear speaker, which enables delay alignment and improves head-tracking.

 

[jgazal]

I also made a PRIR of a Hafler circuit without crosstalk, which seems to improve the sensation of envelopment.

Can you describe that sensation of envelopment improvement you heard between the first PRIR and the "Hafler" PRIR?

Does the front soundstage keep believable in both PRIRs as you turn your head?

 

[MichaelJames99]

Question,
At home when I do my measurements, I have a 7.1 system (LCR, SR/SL, RR/RL and a sub).  But I dont have physical elevation speakers in the front and rear and I dont have overhead speakers.  Can I use a test tone and tilt my held down to have the A16 read a front speaker as an actual overhead speaker (Dolby Atmos configuration on 7.1.4 or 7.1.6)
 
Hope this make sense

 

[Erik Garci]

Can you describe that sensation of envelopment improvement you heard between the first PRIR and the "Hafler" PRIR?

Does the front soundstage keep believable in both PRIRs as you turn your head?

Using the first PRIR, central sounds seem to be in front of you, and they move properly as you turn your head. However, far-left and far-right sounds stay about where they were. That is, they sound about the same as they did without a PRIR, and they don't move as you turn your head. In other words, far-left sounds stay stuck to your left ear, and far-right sounds stay stuck to your right ear. It's possible to shift the far-left and far-right sounds towards the front by using the Realiser's mix block, which can add a bit of the left signal to the front speaker for the right ear, and a bit of the right signal to the front speaker for the left ear.
 
Using the Hafler PRIR, there seems to be a greater sense of space and ambience for all sounds. If the recording was matrix-encoded, some sounds extend beyond the far-left and far-right and wrap around you. Initially I noticed that far-left and far-right sounds moved too much when I turned my head, but after I increased the front speaker level to be 3 dB higher than the rear speaker level, they moved properly.

 

[Got the Shakes]

Man I'm fighting really hard to not put a deposit down on this thing, and I didn't even know that it existed until last night. The one thing holding me back is that if I do buy one, I don't really want to put any money into upgrading my headphones. I'd be using a pair of Sennheiser HD 6XX. Would it be ridiculous to buy an A16 with the intention of listening with a pair of 6XX?

 

[Sordel]

The one thing holding me back is that if I do buy one, I don't really want to put any money into upgrading my headphones. I'd be using a pair of Sennheiser HD 6XX. Would it be ridiculous to buy an A16 with the intention of listening with a pair of 6XX?

It wouldn't be at all ridiculous. Look at it this way: if you had a pair of Apple airpods and said that you wanted to buy a $1000 DAC but not upgrade the airpods, why would that be ridiculous? Because those headphones could never reproduce the jump in fidelity, right? So in that scenario anyone advising you would say that you'd be better off spending, say, $200 on a DAC and $200 on some new headphones.

But this situation is nothing like that.

In the first place the 6xx are no slouch: they're decent headphones, in the same family as headphones that are recommended for the A16. You can go a long way on upgrading the rest of the signal path with those headphones before replacing them.

More importantly, though, the A16 is not a fidelity upgrade. Even with the cheapest on-ear headphones from a Best Buy (I'm guessing here, but I'd be pretty confident) you'd be able to resolve a significant part of the positional data, because that data is very coarse. Moreover, the A16 in principle will compensate for any roughness in the frequency response of the headphones: not that this would be a problem on the 6xx of course.

Finally, if you want surround sound on headphones there are cheaper competitors but I don't think any of them represent a trade-off where you get a better result for your headphones by spending less money. From everything I heard about the A8, if you're serious about wearing headphones and also serious about getting a static sound field, Smyth is the only way to go. There is no $200 equivalent ... you get on board at this high price point or you wait until you can afford to.

 

[Fox1977]

Indeed in theory, if i'm not mistaken, the A16 is supposed to cancel the signature of the headphones. As long as your headphones cover the required frequency range (20 - 20 000 KHz, though if it can go even lower than 20, it's better), if you measured the headphones with the A16, the sound is supposed to be pretty much the same no matter which headphones you use after it's processed by the A16. That's why the Smyth brothers focus more on the stage sound (if it's open, it will increase the out-of-your-head experience) and the comfort.

 

[jelt2359]

  Indeed in theory, if i'm not mistaken, the A16 is supposed to cancel the signature of the headphones. As long as your headphones cover the required frequency range (20 - 20 000 KHz, though if it can go even lower than 20, it's better), if you measured the headphones with the A16, the sound is supposed to be pretty much the same no matter which headphones you use after it's processed by the A16. That's why the Smyth brothers focus more on the stage sound (if it's open, it will increase the out-of-your-head experience) and the comfort.

I'm not sure this is true. At Canjam Singapore I told Mike that the HD800 sounded (especially) too subbass lite compared to his system. He immediately agreed and offered also that he found the HD800 a bit tipped up in the treble.
 
He then told me that they were going to offer EQ in the A16 exactly because of this, so you can tune the sound from headphone to headphone. He also said that the goal was the user to personal tuning their EQ, not shared profiles, because each headphone is different.

 

[Got the Shakes]

It wouldn't be at all ridiculous. Look at it this way: if you had a pair of Apple airpods and said that you wanted to buy a $1000 DAC but not upgrade the airpods, why would that be ridiculous? Because those headphones could never reproduce the jump in fidelity, right? So in that scenario anyone advising you would say that you'd be better off spending, say, $200 on a DAC and $200 on some new headphones.

But this situation is nothing like that.

In the first place the 6xx are no slouch: they're decent headphones, in the same family as headphones that are recommended for the A16. You can go a long way on upgrading the rest of the signal path with those headphones before replacing them.

More importantly, though, the A16 is not a fidelity upgrade. Even with the cheapest on-ear headphones from a Best Buy (I'm guessing here, but I'd be pretty confident) you'd be able to resolve a significant part of the positional data, because that data is very coarse. Moreover, the A16 in principle will compensate for any roughness in the frequency response of the headphones: not that this would be a problem on the 6xx of course.

Finally, if you want surround sound on headphones there are cheaper competitors but I don't think any of them represent a trade-off where you get a better result for your headphones by spending less money. From everything I heard about the A8, if you're serious about wearing headphones and also serious about getting a static sound field, Smyth is the only way to go. There is no $200 equivalent ... you get on board at this high price point or you wait until you can afford to.

Yeah that all totally makes sense. What I've wanted to do for awhile is move my setup from my HDTV with an old Boston Acoustic 5.1 setup to something a bit more intimate with a really nice 4K monitor setup on a desk. My one reservation was that I didn't want to lose surround sound for stuff like my PS4, but now that I know this exists seems like that wouldn't be an issue. Now I get to debate internally whether I want to put a deposit down, I guess the good thing is I have a few months to figure it out.

 

[Evshrug]

Question,
At home when I do my measurements, I have a 7.1 system (LCR, SR/SL, RR/RL and a sub).  But I dont have physical elevation speakers in the front and rear and I dont have overhead speakers.  Can I use a test tone and tilt my held down to have the A16 read a front speaker as an actual overhead speaker (Dolby Atmos configuration on 7.1.4 or 7.1.6)

Hope this make sense

Yes and no.

First of all, you're pretty fortunate to have a matching set of speakers for 7.1. Some people can't afford that, some people don't have the space/wife permission, some people have noise laws and neighbors too close. I fit into these "some people" categories (all of them!). The great majority of positional audio is designed only for 5.1 or 7.1 surround systems, so usually you're going to enjoy a superb experience.

Yes, theoretically you can get a positional reading for height speakers by having your head (and, ideally, your torso) leaning about 15° towards each speaker (for a spherical effect). Sounds will seem to come from above,

No, it won't sound like an Atmos system, because it won't sound like a speaker placed close to the ceiling. Remember, you're not just recording speaker positions, you are also recording the room acoustics, and you would be taking measurements of the speakers placed at the central height of the room relative to the floor and ceiling. Again, you will still get a sense of height speakers, but sound less realistic than speakers raised to the proper height relative to the room.

 

[Evshrug]

I'm not sure this is true. At Canjam Singapore I told Mike that the HD800 sounded (especially) too subbass lite compared to his system. He immediately agreed and offered also that he found the HD800 a bit tipped up in the treble.

He then told me that they were going to offer EQ in the A16 exactly because of this, so you can tune the sound from headphone to headphone. He also said that the goal was the user to personal tuning their EQ, not shared profiles, because each headphone is different.

Sounds like you are referring to the headphone EQ measurement. You take tone measurements while wearing the mics and headphones, and then the Realiser makes an EQ profile to shift the headphone's frequency response to be like the measured speakers.

This HPEQ is essentially what Fox1977 was talking about, although when he said "... cancel the signature of the headphones" he would be referring to EQ'ing any pair of measured headphones to match the target of the speakers used for the PRIR. Once the headphone is equalized, the main differentiating factors would be soundstage, comfort, how much EQ and excursion headroom a headphone has, any kind of blooming or grainy characteristics, total resolution/detail, and how fast the driver can respond to impulses to directional change. Maybe other stuff I'm not thinking of too; I have the day off, and the rain outside and cozy indoors are making me sleepy! Haha!

 

[RRod]

  I'm not sure this is true. At Canjam Singapore I told Mike that the HD800 sounded (especially) too subbass lite compared to his system. He immediately agreed and offered also that he found the HD800 a bit tipped up in the treble.
 
He then told me that they were going to offer EQ in the A16 exactly because of this, so you can tune the sound from headphone to headphone. He also said that the goal was the user to personal tuning their EQ, not shared profiles, because each headphone is different.

 
Filtering isn't perfect. There's only so much you can take things up or down before you run into issues of headroom and noise, and headphone responses often have their own "null-ish" frequency ranges that might not match up with that of the speakers when measured at the meatus. Additionally, any euphonic distortion that you may like in the speaker bass can't be applied to the headphones just by a convolution filter. It's also worth pointing out that measurement isn't perfect, as there is an appreciable amount of variance due to changes in mic fit, headphone fit, and head positioning.

 

[jelt2359]

Sounds like you are referring to the headphone EQ measurement. You take tone measurements while wearing the mics and headphones, and then the Realiser makes an EQ profile to shift the headphone's frequency response to be like the measured speakers.

This HPEQ is essentially what @Fox1977 was talking about, although when he said "... cancel the signature of the headphones" he would be referring to EQ'ing any pair of measured headphones to match the target of the speakers used for the PRIR. Once the headphone is equalized, the main differentiating factors would be soundstage, comfort, how much EQ and excursion headroom a headphone has, any kind of blooming or grainy characteristics, total resolution/detail, and how fast the driver can respond to impulses to directional change. Maybe other stuff I'm not thinking of too; I have the day off, and the rain outside and cozy indoors are making me sleepy! Haha!

 Well, yes, but that's not the key innovation of the A16. Even today we can EQ headphones.