Smyth Research Realiser A16

[shmau]

Sigh. Just can't win with this company. Could have paid full price two years ago, but instead decided to wait another year, expecting the slowest train in existence to finally pick up some speed, only for setback after setback after setback to happen. When I finally decide to just bite the bullet and pay the difference from my pre-order, it turns out I'll have just wait yet another year anyway.

I have to preface this by saying I don't actually know anything, but I would assume the backlog is for batches of components with their usual cost. If you pay full retail they'll probably be able to use alternate sources for individual components at greatly inflated cost and deliver quite quickly. Maybe just ask them?

 

[Sanctuary]

I have to preface this by saying I don't actually know anything, but I would assume the backlog is for batches of components with their usual cost. If you pay full retail they'll probably be able to use alternate sources for individual components at greatly inflated cost and deliver quite quickly. Maybe just ask them?

I am right now.

 

[weijiangnan]

I am right now.

Looking forward to the good news you asked for!

 

[Got the Shakes]

Sigh. Just can't win with this company. Could have paid full price two years ago, but instead decided to wait another year, expecting the slowest moving train in existence to finally pick up some speed, only for setback after setback after setback to happen. When I finally decide to just bite the bullet and pay the difference from my pre-order, it turns out I'll have just wait yet another year anyway. Unless they actually have a few units just sitting around waiting to be sold at full price, but I doubt it.

Fairly certain in the past month or so they still had some units available for full price purchases. That was second hand knowledge, but I do know someone who told me they had inquired and were told they could pay full price and have a A16 shipped within a couple of days.

 

[SobiC]

Fairly certain in the past month or so they still had some units available for full price purchases. That was second hand knowledge, but I do know someone who told me they had inquired and were told they could pay full price and have a A16 shipped within a couple of days.

One of my colleagues actually bought one a month ago...

 

[dsperber]

Well, I placed an order for that splitter as well. It absolutely does seem like the right solution where a compromise is required for any approach. The downside here is the loss of ARC/eARC capability (at least without doing some rewiring if you need to) but that's really of very very very little consequence when all these streaming devices are available to feed the AVR/A16/TV in that forward direction.

Radio silence here for this week, while I await the arrival of my replacement AVR!!

The splitter actually arrived last week but I put off playing with it until I finished working on a separate set of issues tied to the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun Flex 4K OTA ATSC 3.0 tuner box I'd purchased back in December. So, just this past weekend I finally had an opportunity to get to work recabling things so that all sources went into the AVR, and the new splitter (attached to HDMI1-main output on he AVR) handled the split feed with one output going to the LG OLED TV (at full 4K) and the other output going to the A16 (downscaled to 1080p).

Well my first unexpected surprise was that my Yamaha RX-A860 AVR only has 3 of its 7 HDMI inputs HDCP 2.2-capable. These are what would be used for Dolby Vision, But I have four sources that can deliver Dolby Vision. Problem. I didn't realize that was an inherent advantage of the sources coming through the four HDMI inputs on the A16, all of which are HDCP 2.2-enabled. No real way to solve that one easily, but at least I could still test out the new splitter arrangement for all four sources going into the AVR even if only three of them would deliver Dolby Vision video.

Then I ran into my second unexpected surprise. Turns out HDMI1-input is "defective", in that its physically defective apparently. No amount of physical pushing and twisting could make the solid/stable electrical connection required for high-bandwidth Dolby Vision complete properly. At first I couldn't figure out why the movies offered by Netflix were not being offered in Dolby Vision, so I took a step back to re-verify that my video settings on the source device were set correctly. Well, I couldn't run the high-bandwidth HDMI tests successfully. Each time it ended with "we've reset you back to the way you were".

I should have realized there was an actual HDMI port issue as the video was flickering on the TV screen using HDMI1, but on no others. I could swap cables from sources so that this "defective" source went into HDMI2 or HDMI3, and Dolby Vision worked perfectly. And other sources previously working fine in HDMI2 and HDMI3 both failed when plugged into HDMI1.

So, no other conclusion than that HDMI1 is "acceptable" for lower bandwidth needs (and I had previously been using it for an old Oppo 103, for 1080p use). It was my Oppo 203 which had been perfectly happy on HDMI2 that was now unahappy when fed through HDMI1. But it's clearly broken and unusable for high bandwidth needs. And that meant my three total HDMI sources supporting Dolby Vision was now down to just two for real. And I still actually had four sources capable of delivering Dolby Vision.

Right. Time to buy a new AVR. No other choice. So I placed an order for a Yamaha RX-A1080, which is not a current model and is longer available or being made. But it's only a few years old and is a terrific upgrade from my A860. Turns out all seven of the HDMI inputs on the A1080 are HDCP2.2-enabled. So that problem is solved. While ZERO online retailers offered the A1080 for sale (all show UNAVAILABLE) I did find one source selling Yamaha factory-refurbs with 18-month Yamaha warranty (and also including a free 3-year extended warranty as a "discount coupon code"). Price is 1/3 off original retail, so it's a very good deal.

OI course I had no choice but to buy one last night. Already received the shipping confirmation email today and it will be delivered here on Friday. So I can resume work on this splitter project then. For now I've put everything back the way it was so that I can watch all the stuff I need to watch this week.

So there's been a 1-week temporary delay in implementation. I shall return to it next weekend, with all four of my source devices capable of delivering Dolby Vision plugged into four (of the seven) ports of the A1080 that support HDCP 2.2.

 

[pervysage]

While Smyth says they intend to fulfill all kickstarter and preorders, they haven't shipped any to these folks in more than a year. You might be able to upgrade your preorder to full price to get one.

The last word from James is that some parts are now backordered up to 52 weeks.

So no, don't expect you're get yours this year.

Kickstarters still haven't been finished? What number were they up to since last?

 

[Camano]

Kickstarters still haven't been finished? What number were they up to since last?

As far as I can tell, there are fewer than 20 kickstarter orders left. Then there are at least 226 preorders waiting.

You said you paid in late 2017. That puts you at the end of the list - Preorder #226 was placed in 10/2017.

Sorry!

 

[esimms86]

As far as I can tell, there are fewer than 20 kickstarter orders left. Then there are at least 226 preorders waiting.

You said you paid in late 2017. That puts you at the end of the list - Preorder #226 was placed in 10/2017.

Sorry!

"James SmythCollaborator
September 7, 2020

Happy Monday everyone,

We have now shipped A16 units to KickStarter backers #1-278. This week we will ship to backers #279-289. If you are a backer from #1-289 and haven't received an email, please contact us right away.

Warm Regards
Smyth Research"

The above is the last Kickstarter communication sent out/posted by Smyth Research and still visible on the Kickstarter website. I do not know if any backers beyond #278 who subsequently received their units. I also can't verify whether or not there may be some backers with numbers below 278(or 289) who had been passed over in shipping (yes, this had previously happened in more than one case during the shipping process).

According to Smyth Research, there were backers up to #330. That number, however, is actually not completely accurate as it doesn't account for (1) some undetermined number of people who subsequently canceled their order, and (2) at least one person who had publicly admitted on this forum to have mistakenly made a small Kickstarter pledge to back the campaign without requesting a unit. Further, there may be some undetermined number of backers who ordered more than one unit.

As best as I can determine, that is where things currently stand with Kickstarter backers. I, of course, welcome anyone to provide any further information that I am not aware of.

 

[Dixter]

@dsperber .... if your getting the HDMI splitter from ezcoo... according to the manual you won't need to down scale either one of the ports to 1080.... it will support 4K out of both ports if you want/need.... the splitter runs from a USB cable... I just plugged the cable into the front of the A16 and let it power the splitter that way... the splitter is pretty small and seems to work well for what it was designed to do

 

[phoenixdogfan]

As far as I can tell, there are fewer than 20 kickstarter orders left. Then there are at least 226 preorders waiting.

You said you paid in late 2017. That puts you at the end of the list - Preorder #226 was placed in 10/2017.

Sorry!

AFIK Smyth is producing and shipping orders for those willing to pay full price. When they will honor the balance of their commitments is anyone's guess.

 

[pervysage]

As far as I can tell, there are fewer than 20 kickstarter orders left. Then there are at least 226 preorders waiting.

You said you paid in late 2017. That puts you at the end of the list - Preorder #226 was placed in 10/2017.

Sorry!

Oh I see, I was just curious. I am not actually a pre-order, I was a Kickstarter backer (#254) and was lucky enough to get mine delivered back in August 2020. Was just catching up on the thread and surprised to see they hadn't at least finished the remaining Kickstarter's yet.

 

[Sanctuary]

Still waiting for some kind of reply from James, but it's been crickets so far. Was going to wait until next Monday and try again if nothing by then. Not sure if he's the one I should have emailed anyway, but I don't really have any other contact info for someone that seemed to regularly reply in the past, and he was also the one who emailed me anyway back in 2017 for pre-order payment.

 

[weijiangnan]

Still waiting for some kind of reply from James, but it's been crickets so far. Was going to wait until next Monday and try again if nothing by then. Not sure if he's the one I should have emailed anyway, but I don't really have any other contact info for someone that seemed to regularly reply in the past, and he was also the one who emailed me anyway back in 2017 for pre-order payment.

Maybe your email went into his junk mailbox. I once sent more than a dozen letters before I received a reply saying that I found my letter in the junk inbox. You try to send more times.

 

[dsperber]

@dsperber .... if your getting the HDMI splitter from ezcoo... according to the manual you won't need to down scale either one of the ports to 1080.... it will support 4K out of both ports if you want/need.... the splitter runs from a USB cable... I just plugged the cable into the front of the A16 and let it power the splitter that way... the splitter is pretty small and seems to work well for what it was designed to do

This USB-supplied power issue also presented a minor problem. The cable they provided isn't terribly long, and in my case actually isn't long enough for the other end to plug into an old phone-charger I have that could plug into a wall socket. Just not close enough to the nearest power socket/strip.

So temporarily I plugged it into a USB port on the back of my Oppo player. That was fine except that the USB port is only powered when the Oppo unit itself is powered on. So that means I have to power on the Oppo even when not in use, in order to power the splitter. Not ideal.

For cosmetic reasons I didn't want to run the USB cable to the front USB port on the A16. Also, I don't know if like with the Oppo that front USB port only receives power when the A16 itself is powered on. Haven't ever tried it, but if that is true then it too is not ideal. The idea is to be able to use this whole new setup either in (a) headphone listening mode, with A16 powered on and AVR powered off but with HDMI pass-through enabled to deliver audio to A16 and video to TV, or (b) speaker listening mode, with A16 powered off and AVR powered on.

Of course I could just buy a longer USB A-to-micro-B cable and use the charger, which is what I will probably do.

Last weekend I'd only gotten as far as working on the AVR-related usage, with speakers and TV. Hadn't yet tried the A16-related usage. but I had done what was suggested, and that is to drop the A16-output side down to 1080p. There's never going to be a situation where video is going to be sent through the A16 to the TV (because Smyth's recent implementation of HDMI pass-through has too many negatives) which is why this splitter configuration notion has such utility: AVR and A16 do not both need to be powered on, depending on the situation.