Smyth Research Realiser A16

[Juy777]

- double post plz ignore -

 

[Juy777]

I really afraid Smyth Realiser will not do well on Kickstarter. They must have a really awesome product, however the marketing is not there yet. Take the A8, really different and nice product, but high price and was sabbatical for a few years, now no one heard of this awesome technology. On the other hand, some company like LH Labs did an awesome job on marketing for their crowdfunding project on a "not very new" technology Dac & Amp, but raised millions.
Based on the interest on this thread, this is worrying. I really like to preorder the A16 on kickstarter and Smyth Research doing well.

The A16 will get released anyway. They just want to speed up development/production with the additional funding. Quality will always sell

 

[jcx]

 Quality will always sell

are you sure you are familiar with modern audio consumerism?
 
stories sell, bling sells, quality??

 

[frank2908]

yes. Take lh labs Geek Out and Pulse. They raised huge interest on head fi and some reviewer. But now they dont get much praise except from the crowd they've raised interest from. Im not saying they dont have a good product, but it is no way close to what they claimed. Successful crowdfund campaign, not the product. But is also a shame if the reverse is true for Smyth

 

[Juy777]

The A8 / A16 devices will always be a extreme niche product since you depend on doing your own measurements in a suitable location.
 
That's where 99.9% of the usual consumers are out of the picture anyway.
 
Selling licenses for this won't work for the same reasons.
 
That being said, the rest of the true audiophiles willing to pay that much money usually also have the background to actually use
 
the equipment to most of its potential and apreciate the result and quality they get out of it.
 
You won't see any mass produced Ipods with this technology anyway.

 

[Chillzone21]

I really hope the A16 can equalize headphones under 1khz, the bass region is always problematic with the A8. I had to add an equalizer before the amplifier to cut out the low frequencies, they were just too disturbing, weird vibrations etc.

 

[Juy777]

  I really hope the A16 can equalize headphones under 1khz, the bass region is always problematic with the A8. I had to add an equalizer before the amplifier to cut out the low frequencies, they were just too disturbing, weird vibrations etc.

did u try the bass pass thru option? I have made excellent experience with that, so you basically bypass the binaural processing under a user defined frequency (i set it to 80 hz).
 
Since you barely can localize such frequencies the "inside head" effect of bass frequencies is not noticable. Using several headphones with the A8 i didnt have any frequency response
/vibrations issues above 100 hz.

 

[Music Alchemist]

Does anyone know whether the A16 is going to replace the A8? Will it be better in every way or merely better in some ways but inferior overall? I noticed that on their website, both models are listed right now, but that might change once the new model is released. Since it is roughly half the price, it would be nice if the A16 could fully replace the A8.

 

[VandyMan]

I don't know it for a fact, but all the marketing makes it sound like the A8 goes away. Why would you expect the new model to be "in some ways but inferior overall"? That seems a very odd expectation to me. Everything is better than the A8 in terms of technical specs. DSPs are much faster and cheaper than when the A8 came out. DAC chips are better too. And the marketing materials imply that they have made a lot of enhancements to the software too. The lower price most likely reflects the parts becoming less expensive, already recovered R&D costs (mature software), lessons learned from the A8, and an attempt to do more of a volume business. That is my guess.

 

[Music Alchemist]

  I don't know it for a fact, but all the marketing makes it sound like the A8 goes away. Why would you expect the new model to be "in some ways but inferior overall"? That seems a very odd expectation to me. Everything is better than the A8 in terms of technical specs. DSPs are much faster and cheaper than when the A8 came out. DAC chips are better too. And the marketing materials imply that they have made a lot of enhancements to the software too.

 
Thanks. I saw the marketing, and it does make it seem like the new model is better, but since they are still selling the A8 for twice the price and I hadn't researched the technical stuff, I wasn't entirely sure.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Just proof that even exotic electronic units like the Realizer are subject to the trend toward "commodity pricing" as they as they advance in their life cycle.

 

[Chillzone21]

PRIR editing would be awesome in the A16. Sometimes I calibrate my system but decide that the center channel needs adjustment in room, PITA to have to go and do all 7 again. Or you could add channels later on, like heights etc.

 

[Jon Sonne]

Hi everyone! Today I tried the A8 for the very first time at a local store, and I must say it truly lived up to what people have been saying about it here on head-fi! For the demo they used two Genelec 8030 speakers for the back left/right and three other speakers behind the screen + one subwoofer arranged in a 5.1 set-up. The head-trackers that came with the A8 had unfortunately been lost, so I tried the system without head-tracking. The system had already calibrated the speakers, so I only had to do the PRIR calibration and the equalization of my Hifiman HE 400s. I've tried quite a few different surround sound/speaker simulation plug-ins and most were very disappointing, to say the least, and I have never had a true 'out of your head' experience with headphones. As such, I was very skeptical about the Smyth A8 realiser, and did not expect much. Boy I was surprised! First I did not believe my ears, I genuinely thought that the speakers were playing, not the headphones! What really impressed me was the voices and the bass, both sounded very realistic!
 
The impression left me convinced, and I am certainly going to back the A16 kickstarter campaign. 
 
Now, for those of you who have the A8, I have a few questions:
A) How much will the head-tracking improve realism, and is there any latency when moving your head and hearing the soundstage change? 
B) How well does the A8 simulate stereo speakers; is the A8 mostly for surround sound?
 
I really hope the kickstarter campaign will launch soon. I think that Smyth planned to launch early July, so it must be just around the corner by now. 

 

 

[dapedius]

Should be live on Kickstarter on Monday .... count me in

 

[Jon Sonne]

Launching August 1 on kickstarter! The've also adjusted the estimated street price, its $1595 now. I have not received any e-mail update regarding the kickstarter pledge structure. I've also joined the thunderclap: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/45048-realiser-a16-on-kickstarter