Smyth Research Realiser A16

[esimms86]

I'm curious to know what the file limitations are through usb(e.g., is it still pretty much limited to red book quality?). HDMI is great for movies(and games, I suppose, though I'm not a gamer), but suboptimal for primary music listening.

Paul, have you considered getting an OOYH preset made from one of your personal PRIRs? It's expensive at 150 USD but then it allows you to effectively carry the Realiser experience on your laptop.

Esau

 

[106099]

I'm curious to know what the file limitations are through usb(e.g., is it still pretty much limited to red book quality?). HDMI is great for movies(and games, I suppose, though I'm not a gamer), but suboptimal for primary music listening.

Paul, have you considered getting an OOYH preset made from one of your personal PRIRs? It's expensive at 150 USD but then it allows you to effectively carry the Realiser experience on your laptop.

Esau

 
Esau,
 
That is a great idea.  
I will ask if that is possible.
 
A couple of OOYH settings did work for me on a few business trips using my Macbook Pro, a Hugo and my Bose QC25.  At home, been playing around the OOYH with a Chord DAVE using various phones.  While the 3D imaging is hit or miss, the one factor that distracts in all this (including A8 Realiser) is the physical presence of the headphone.
Yes, there are phones like a Grado GS1000i that does seem to disappear after a while using A8 and my Nagra HD DAC, but with most phones they tend to weight down and the 3D illusion is reduce the longer the session goes.
 
Still, we are getting the million dollar speaker installations for a fraction of the cost with these simulators.
 
Paul

 

[valleynomad]

   
We have no idea if the single speaker measurement works on A16. But if it does, I would hope one can simply record the ceiling speakers by simply looking down during that measurement. For anyone not aware, the measurement is done by sitting in a chair and simply rotating yourself at different angles around the 360 axis. The speaker obviously is never moved.

 
This will work only when the room "disappears" during measurement. It can be done in a true anechoic chamber. However, aside from the difficulty in making such chamber in home, the result with the PRIRs measured anechoicly will not be satisfactory for most people as it sounds way too dry.

 

[hekeli]

 
This will work only when the room "disappears" during measurement. It can be done in a true anechoic chamber.  However, aside from the difficulty in making such chamber in home, the result with the PRIRs measured anechoicly will not be satisfactory for most people as it sounds way too dry.

 
I have no idea why you are insisting anechoic chamber, and what this has to do with single speaker measurement method (vs perhaps multiple - there's no difference really). Studios are not anechoic. Home theatres are not anechoic.
 
You position the speaker in a room, in a position that's satisfactory, perhaps get some mattresses and other stuff temporarily to damp a little bit and fix peaks and valleys etc with eq if necessary.
 
More likely you get a better result from a single speaker that's positioned well, than two or more speakers in an average room without treatments, they might even have different response curves between them due to room interaction. With single speaker in single position you can achieve identical response for all virtual angles.
 
But yes you can argue you could get confusing room reflections. On the other hand, the whole Realiser concept is confusing for the brain visually, unless you listen exactly where you measured the PRIRs and see the actual speakers.
 
Realiser manual acknowledges this:
 

Note that this method does not replicate the room acoustic exactly, because the room walls
effectively rotate with the speaker as the listener turns in his chair. This may or may not be
advantageous, depending on the room.
To capture the room acoustic as it is, the listener would place the speaker in the front centre of
the room, initiate the first sweep, and then move the speaker counterclockwise to -30° or 11
o’clock, do the second sweep, then move the speaker to -60° or 10 o’clock, and so on. For the
entire procedure the listener would face forward in a stationary chair.
In a well-behaved room, moving the speaker may give the most realistic result. In a room where
some speaker positions are acoustically favorable and some are not, the user might create a
better result than the real room by placing the single speaker in the best position and replicating
the sound of that speaker in that position to all positions by rotating in the chair.
 

 

[valleynomad]

   
Well, it might still be possible. Speculation ON: 1) You could measure the response of your body and ear to one speaker in different positions right at your home. 2) You could measure just the speaker in your room with a mic on a tripod without yourself in the room. 3) The realiser could now take the room out of the equation (differencing between 1 and 2) and calculate a room-independet HTFR 4) The result could be applied to a measurement of a target room  (e.g. AIX) without you having to be present yourself. Speculation OFF
 
It's probably not easy and maybe the resulting quality is not as good as doing the direct route, but it is not theoretically impossible.

 
Although my memory on convolution is quite foggy, I don't think 3) and 4) are valid

 

[valleynomad]

....
 
But yes you can argue you could get confusing room reflections. On the other hand, the whole Realiser concept is confusing for the brain visually, unless you listen exactly where you measured the PRIRs and see the actual speakers.
 
Realiser manual acknowledges this:
 

 
Yes, if you don't mind getting inaccurate room acoustics, moving listener instead of speaker might work with somewhat unpredictable performance. But I would like to suggest you lie down when measuring PRTF for ceiling speakers because the upper body also affects HRTF

 

[dsperber]

Just heard from Lorr regarding some questions I had about the A16.
 
(1) It DOES accept using existing PRIR/HPEQ files from the A8.
 
(2) The exterior is plastic, not metal.  So this might be large, but it's clearly not as heavy as it would otherwise be had it been made of metal.

 

[bmoura]

   
Unfortunately this is the only way for the realiser to work correctly. There is no other way around it.

The Realiser 8 comes with a standard set of measurement files.  They work, just not as well as the ones created to match your hearing.

 

[Juy777]

 
You are not alone in this observation.  I think the AIX room is truly unique, in its "deadness".  That's actually what makes listening to anything through its PRIR is such a joy.  It's an intimate pleasure, and all you hear is the source program through the speakers.  There is no reverb.
 
Contrast this with the other three or four PRIR's I've gathered (including from the Egyptian Theater 1st-row balcony, with nobody in the auditorium... talk about echo and reverb!) where that's all you can notice, is the echo/reverb.  And yet when you were in that room measuring for the PRIR it didn't seem at all noticeable.  But get home and listen through that PRIR, and it's unavoidable and distracting and not enjoyable.  Somehow the microphones picked up something my brain had obviously rejected and apparently filtered out.
 
 

When i made my first test measurement at home using a stereo speaker setup i also had the impression that i get more room / indirect sound via the A8 when not listening
in that particular room. But you can still modify audio parameters of the PRIR's you recorded, for example i played around with the speaker proximity values (PRX) and was 
able to modify that PRIR from lots of room info to almost completely dry using this paramteter. You might still be able to "zoom in closer" to the speakers of the measurement
you did in that cinema to get a desirable amount of reverberation.

 

[Videodr0me]

  When i made my first test measurement at home using a stereo speaker setup i also had the impression that i get more room / indirect sound via the A8 when not listening
in that particular room. But you can still modify audio parameters of the PRIR's you recorded, for example i played around with the speaker proximity values (PRX) and was 
able to modify that PRIR from lots of room info to almost completely dry using this paramteter. You might still be able to "zoom in closer" to the speakers of the measurement
you did in that cinema to get a desirable amount of reverberation.

Typically these issues arise from headphone equalisation, as the XFACT for the high frequency band is only 0.3.... in such cases increasing XFACT or even better use the manual eq of the HPEQ.yields better results - but beware very high XFACT values for the high frequency band might have some unwanted side effects. In another thread it was purported that one of the smyth brothers stated that even with the recommended stax headphones he has to use manual eq to get the high frequencies correct as an XFACT of 0,3 did not correct for the headphone completely. On some headphones the additonal high frequencies response especially highlights  the amount of indirect reflected  sound and should be corrected if perceived as excessive. If it is not the headphones high frequency response -> outside of HPEQ  you also could use the TAPER adjustment to adjust for reverb directly (and as you already did you could also try the speaker proximity)

 

[hekeli]

Unless they fix the HPEQ completely, you are probably better off using something like Sonarworks to flatten out the headphone response before feeding Realiser. This was discussed on the A8 thread, for example A8 HPEQ does not touch frequencies under 1khz at all! And gets pretty confused with HD800's 6khz peak.

 

[Videodr0me]

  Unless they fix the HPEQ completely, you are probably better off using something like Sonarworks to flatten out the headphone response before feeding Realiser. This was discussed on the A8 thread, for example A8 HPEQ does not touch frequencies under 1khz at all! And gets pretty confused with HD800's 6khz peak.

I got very good results using the manual EQ procedure - it is not automatic and takes a while, but you can correct all frequency bands (also below 1khz), and is the recommended procedure. It is tedious though. So an automatic way would be much appreciated. How exactly would using Sonarworks with the Realiser output work? I hope they improved HPEQ with the A16 - by the way: did anybody get any confirmation email yet for interest in their kickstarter campaign?

 

[hekeli]

I got very good results using the manual EQ procedure - it is not automatic and takes a while, but you can correct all frequency bands (also below 1khz)

 
Manual EQ does stuff in 500hz bands, it's far from perfect. Did you verify with measurements that it actually affects bass <500hz? Not sure if I tested it, was long time ago. With bass the most critical stuff are subbass roll off (<100hz) and the usual 100-200hz bumps in some phones. There's no way to fix stuff like this properly with 500hz bands. This is why one should use as flat phones as possible to begin with.
 
Sonarworks or any other generic EQ has nothing to do with Realiser. You simply do the EQ in your player/system. Realiser will play what you feed it.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/418401/long-awaited-smyth-svs-realiser-now-available-for-purchase/2700#post_10815401

 

[Videodr0me]

There's no way to fix stuff like this properly with 500hz bands. This is why one should use as flat phones as possible to begin with.

That's why one should look at the frequncy graphs before buying a headphone  - the Audeze's and Oppos work pretty good, but also the phones with fostex bio-cellusose driver (50mm) have good sub-bass response. The Senneheisers are generally not very good with the sub-bass, here rerouting bass to a tactile transducer helps a lot - but apart from that the HD600 also work pretty good. For the dreaded 6khz spike of the HD800 i would recommend one of the DIY mods or the new HD800S.... but don't expect any sub-bass here, even though the HD800s compensates with some euphonic distortions which emphasize the mid-bass. Right now i am using the Audioquest Nighthawk (i believe - without final proof - that it uses the fostex driver) which is quite nice to equalise (HPEQ+MANUAL) and provides some extra sub-bass for movies. I would not recommend this headphone to anybody who is not using the realiser or an equaliser, as the unprocessed mids are much to recessed. I tried lots of other phones with the realiser: LCD-XC (great but heavy), LCD-2, Oppo-PM3 (very good), Oppo PM-2 (more open, but not as good), HD600 (very good except sub-bass), Beyerdynamic T1 (various problems), Fostex TH900 (sadly to bright -> difficult to equalize), HD800 (problem with 6khz peak and bass), STAX 207 (very good imaging and very comfortable but you need an extra amp).... and a couple of others i forgot. One also has to consider the comfort of wearing the headphone, as an uncomfortable headphone can quickly destroy the illusion of the realiser -> that's another reason i went for the audioquest in the end, as it is very comfortable to wear for long periods of times, also i wanted a more-closed headphone to reduce sound leakage for others.

 

[VandyMan]

I have been wanting an A8 for several years, but the complexity of integrating it into my two channel TV setup kept me away. I don't have a pre-pro and various HDMI switches I've tried always have issues. I'm very excited for the A16! However, I do have some concerns:
 
- A wired remote and a web interface are mentioned, but nothing about a wireless remote or IR codes for programming a universal remote. (Edit: Found a reference to a IR remote.)
 
- The form factor is very cool, but not at all practical. I would have three HDMI cables running in, one running out, analog in/out, plus digital in/out. So it has to sit with my components, but it looks too tall to put in my rack. Plus it looks like you need line of site for the head-tracker.  Can't put it on top of the shelves because that is where the TV sits. I'd probably have to put it on its side or on the floor, which is not very appealing. I'd be happier with a boring old box over the current design.