[Fox1977]

“As of yesterday, it’s been exactly four years since...”

“It was 20 years ago today/(that)Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play”

Thanks ! At first I wrote “yesterday, it was 4 years...” and then I had a doubt and edited my message, I shouldn’t have second-guessed my instinct

 

[esimms86]

I sure wish they would sell the Sgt Pepper album that they did for the ATMOS music demo - I just listened to the Beatles " Love " in 5.1 surround and its so nice on the A16...

I agree on both counts. Have you checked out Abbey Road yet in Dolby Atmos?

 

[Dixter]

I agree on both counts. Have you checked out Abbey Road yet in Dolby Atmos?

No I have not.. only the MQA version via TIDAL... glad you reminded me as I had been looking for just the blu ray disc with Atmos... guess they didn't split it out of the offering... just now put it on order and can't wait to hear it... thanks again for the reminder...

 

[Thomasphoenix98]

Overall the machine sounds ‘much better’ than my earlier 1.95 firmware, could be the additional 9db.

 

[Om ma Ni]

Overall the machine sounds ‘much better’ than my earlier 1.95 firmware, could be the additional 9db.

Maybe also the tuning of their SVS processing algorithm with this new Fmw..from my side with balanced mode, i noticed that the low frequencies have more punch and precision, the LFE is more expansive without getting muffly. The overall soundstage is well present and stay clearly detailed when hitting higher volume or in busy movie scenes where all the channels are involved. Didn t experienced any sound clipping so far.

 

[Thomasphoenix98]

Maybe also the tuning of their SVS processing algorithm with this new Fmw..from my side with balanced mode, i noticed that the low frequencies have more punch and precision, the LFE is more expansive without getting muffly. The overall soundstage is well present and stay clearly detailed when hitting higher volume or in busy movie scenes where all the channels are involved. Didn t experienced any sound clipping so far.

True ! It sounds really good, I will have to re listen all my favorite demo pieces .

 

[mrmac]

I upgraded the firmware yesterday and initially my heart jumped when I experienced the dreaded white screen while doing the double volume knob push. It happened TWICE, and I feared the worst. However on the third try it all worked fine.

So far I’m happy with the new FW. I played around with the reference level settings a bit last night and I’m a little bit confused. I’m using an external DAC/amp (oppo HA-1) And I did the recommended and maxed the volume on the amp. I could not reach 85db reference and having the 20db peak headroom. I had to lower the output to 79db to just have the yellow indications above the green. Dose this mean my amp is not powerful enough?l

I’m also confused with the SW and the 10db boost. With the 10db on, what should the reference be? What about direct bass? Anyone tried that? What about volume for that?

Anyway, I’m VERY excited about the A16 and it works incredibly well, and better and better with each FW. I’m however very disappointed with atmos. It has insane potential, but how it’s implemented on very recent and big blockbusters is lacklustre!

 

[Om ma Ni]

I upgraded the firmware yesterday and initially my heart jumped when I experienced the dreaded white screen while doing the double volume knob push. It happened TWICE, and I feared the worst. However on the third try it all worked fine.

So far I’m happy with the new FW. I played around with the reference level settings a bit last night and I’m a little bit confused. I’m using an external DAC/amp (oppo HA-1) And I did the recommended and maxed the volume on the amp. I could not reach 85db reference and having the 20db peak headroom. I had to lower the output to 79db to just have the yellow indications above the green. Dose this mean my amp is not powerful enough?l

I’m also confused with the SW and the 10db boost. With the 10db on, what should the reference be? What about direct bass? Anyone tried that? What about volume for that?

Anyway, I’m VERY excited about the A16 and it works incredibly well, and better and better with each FW. I’m however very disappointed with atmos. It has insane potential, but how it’s implemented on very recent and big blockbusters is lacklustre!

I think we should be careful with the ref level settings as it is the first new feature of this firmware so it won t be fully stable at first glance imho.. The priority is always to protect your ears and also your HP and amp etc...
Bass management is tricky and complicated and the manual is even harder to understand when it comes to this topic...
Totally agree regarding the massive gap of quality mix with what we have atm regarding Atmos content...so far i am using Logan 4k uhd and the latest spider man for testing my 11.1.8 and 15.1.8 rooms atm...also noticed that all the atmos content mixed under Sony entertainment are pretty decent with Atmos.

 

[audiohobbit]

Maybe also the tuning of their SVS processing algorithm with this new Fmw..from my side with balanced mode, i noticed that the low frequencies have more punch and precision, the LFE is more expansive without getting muffly. The overall soundstage is well present and stay clearly detailed when hitting higher volume or in busy movie scenes where all the channels are involved.

What tuning of the SVS processing are you talking about?

To be honest, I don't see anything in the updates that would lead to better sound, as far as I'm concerned, I think this is just imagination/wishful thinking.
But as long as you're happy all is fine!

I really hope that with the new update I won't encounter any of the problems I had over the last weeks anymore.
Additionally Stephen will send me the new internal SD card and I really hope this will finally solve the problems.

 

[Om ma Ni]

What tuning of the SVS processing are you talking about?

To be honest, I don't see anything in the updates that would lead to better sound, as far as I'm concerned, I think this is just imagination/wishful thinking.
But as long as you're happy all is fine!

I really hope that with the new update I won't encounter any of the problems I had over the last weeks anymore.
Additionally Stephen will send me the new internal SD card and I really hope this will finally solve the problems.

I might be wrong but it s how i interpreted it.." 2)The APM89L Atmos decoder included in revisions 1.91 and 1.92 was an experimental version (v2.3.2 8901 May) that did not allow wide speaker operation. This erroneous version has been replaced with the correct version (v2.2.5 8901 July) in this update." from the page 1 of the new firmware note pdf. Are they talking about "experimental" firmware revision etc..?
Anyway, like you said it also can be my mind only...
Regarding the SD card, seems that i can t check the health log atm..i press the enter key but nothing ..so my page is actually with 0 everywhere instead of a date and health rate level?

 

[audiohobbit]

I don't expect that a different Atmos decoder leads to a different sound but I may ask Stephen about it.

If your unit is not brand new or has been updated very recently it still has the Sandisk internal SD card and with that you can't check the health of the SD card. This is only possible with the new Micron SD card.
Everyone who had problems with sluggish behaviour or stalling of the unit and reported this to Smyth should get an E-Mail asking for a log-file and the serial number so that they can prepare the new card for them and send it out.

 

[Om ma Ni]

Co

I don't expect that a different Atmos decoder leads to a different sound but I may ask Stephen about it.

If your unit is not brand new or has been updated very recently it still has the Sandisk internal SD card and with that you can't check the health of the SD card. This is only possible with the new Micron SD card.
Everyone who had problems with sluggish behaviour or stalling of the unit and reported this to Smyth should get an E-Mail asking for a log-file and the serial number so that they can prepare the new card for them and send it out.

Could you list some of the symptoms regarding the sluggish and stalling of the A16 so we will be able to detect them more precisely and contact the Smyth if needed etc..?

 

[audiohobbit]

Stalling is the term Stephen used. It means simply that the unit freezes completely. I think you will recognize this easily if this happens....
I could not really report a sluggish behaviour of my unit, just the freezing. It usually happened when I browsed throgh the menu and tried to enter sub-menu or a sub-sub-menu, in the Settings menu for example. I remember going to Settings-System and then want to to go to a sub menu, push enter and that was it, unit freezes completely. Only turning off and on again helps, but if I tried to go to the same menu again unit freezes again.
If you stumble over this you'll easily recognize it...
Only reinstalling of FW helped. But it still can happen again and it was random, I could not say that i did specific things that led to this stalling/freezing.

The other things I encounter regularly is that my presets lose their settings. Not the loaded active preset, but if you set something in preset 1 for example load a specific HPEQ or set the audio delay to xx ms and then reload the preset. If I go back to the preset settings page suddenly there is a different entry for HPEQ (or even PRIRs) or the audio delay is reset to 0 again (or the upmixer) etc. So if you just want to change something and don't check all the other settings and reload this preset you could end up with a wrong HPEQ or even wrong PRIR etc.

AFAIK for a long time I was the only one that reported this behaviour here (and to Stephen) but a few pages ago someone else reported this also.
And he (hm who was it?) also reported the white splash screen after startup from time to time which I also sometimes have.
I don't know if all this is also related to the internal SD card. I really hope though because it's annoying, I always have to check and cross check all my settings in the presets if they reloaded correctly...

Initially I thought my sudden volume drops I encountered are also related to this, but this has now been explained with the clipping protection.

The last errors I had, and someone else also, that there was no sound from the headphones, just after switching presets back and forth then it came on (not always). I hope that this is related to the experimental Atmos decoder. Also the buzz I once had and the ugly white noise on all channels...

 

[Thomasphoenix98]

I have a June make unit with the new boards , faced a white screen ( then hung) and a audio drop out one time so far .

 

[Om ma Ni]

Stalling is the term Stephen used. It means simply that the unit freezes completely. I think you will recognize this easily if this happens....
I could not really report a sluggish behaviour of my unit, just the freezing. It usually happened when I browsed throgh the menu and tried to enter sub-menu or a sub-sub-menu, in the Settings menu for example. I remember going to Settings-System and then want to to go to a sub menu, push enter and that was it, unit freezes completely. Only turning off and on again helps, but if I tried to go to the same menu again unit freezes again.
If you stumble over this you'll easily recognize it...
Only reinstalling of FW helped. But it still can happen again and it was random, I could not say that i did specific things that led to this stalling/freezing.

The other things I encounter regularly is that my presets lose their settings. Not the loaded active preset, but if you set something in preset 1 for example load a specific HPEQ or set the audio delay to xx ms and then reload the preset. If I go back to the preset settings page suddenly there is a different entry for HPEQ (or even PRIRs) or the audio delay is reset to 0 again (or the upmixer) etc. So if you just want to change something and don't check all the other settings and reload this preset you could end up with a wrong HPEQ or even wrong PRIR etc.

AFAIK for a long time I was the only one that reported this behaviour here (and to Stephen) but a few pages ago someone else reported this also.
And he (hm who was it?) also reported the white splash screen after startup from time to time which I also sometimes have.
I don't know if all this is also related to the internal SD card. I really hope though because it's annoying, I always have to check and cross check all my settings in the presets if they reloaded correctly...

Initially I thought my sudden volume drops I encountered are also related to this, but this has now been explained with the clipping protection.

The last errors I had, and someone else also, that there was no sound from the headphones, just after switching presets back and forth then it came on (not always). I hope that this is related to the experimental Atmos decoder. Also the buzz I once had and the ugly white noise on all channels...

So all these bugs might be related with the old micro SD cards?