[phoenixdogfan]

The A8 came out what, eight, ten years ago? Everybody gave it rave reviews and yet no other company released anything like it, let alone better. Why would you think that anyone will release a better or cheaper product than the A16?
And the Betamax analogy is simply flawed, unless “surround sound” goes out of business.

Uh, because lots of companies are working on it, and one of them is bound to be bigger than Smythe's three man operation, with lots more engineering resources to put into value engineering. When a major company does this (and it will), that company will sell more, and be able to spread its development and start up costs over many more units (think 2 orders of magnitude to start), and engage in aggressive marketing to sell it to the public. And, since personal audio has become all the rage with the millenials (something that never figured into any marketing plan formulated in 2008), there will be a semi massive market for kind of thing, and there will be technological spin off from things like VR which will make this low lying fruit for some of the bigger headphone and audio companies.

 

[Sordel]

When a major company does this (and it will), that company will sell more, and be able to spread its development and start up costs over many more units (think 2 orders of magnitude to start), and engage in aggressive marketing to sell it to the public.

It may be a dead end. Most of the money is going into a gaming product because you can't get a mass market audience to watch TV with ‘phones on their head. The personal music phenomenon is to do with walking around with your head in a private bubble ... the people wearing Beats in the street probably have streaming speakers at home. Hobbyists have a completely distorted view of how important headphones are to most people.

The Realiser is aimed at a niche audience and there may not be enough money in that market for it to be worthwhile for major companies to fight over the scraps. Even if there's an algorithmic edge for another company’s R&D, are they going to include audiophile headphone circuitry? I doubt it. If they do then it will be another high-end product.

That said, if we get a mass-market competitor to the Realiser then I'm in.

 

[SergioPOE]

Uh, because lots of companies are working on it, and one of them is bound to be bigger than Smythe's three man operation, with lots more engineering resources to put into value engineering. When a major company does this (and it will), that company will sell more, and be able to spread its development and start up costs over many more units (think 2 orders of magnitude to start), and engage in aggressive marketing to sell it to the public. And, since personal audio has become all the rage with the millenials (something that never figured into any marketing plan formulated in 2008), there will be a semi massive market for kind of thing, and there will be technological spin off from things like VR which will make this low lying fruit for some of the bigger headphone and audio companies.

And how long would you be willing to wait for that?
Something better is always coming, but if you had said that about the A8, you would've been waiting ten years or more, for the A16. Personally I think it'll be a long time (>5 years) before a comparable product comes along.

 

[musicday]

And how long would you be willing to wait for that?
Something better is always coming, but if you had said that about the A8, you would've been waiting ten years or more, for the A16. Personally I think it'll be a long time (>5 years) before a comparable product comes along.

As the Smyth Research has patented the SVS technology and there is nothing like it out there, unless they are willing to sell that, we will not see anything similar in the near future i think.

 

[SergioPOE]

As the Smyth Research has patented the SVS technology and there is nothing like it out there, unless they are willing to sell that, we will not see anything similar in the near future i think.

What exactly does that patent apply to? Is it the process of putting microphones in your ears and then playing sweeps at different frequencies over the various speakers to be emulated and recording the response of the microphones?
Because if that's the case, the only other way I could see of getting a personal HRTF would be to get a 3D scan the ear, kind of how face ID technology works.

 

[musicday]

As for me , not planning to buy every year headphones or other product that may be similar to the A16, even if such thing gets released and is cheaper.
I will settle with the A16+ Meze Empyrean hopefully and enjoy surround sound as long as I can.

 

[Eich1eeF]

As the Smyth Research has patented the SVS technology and there is nothing like it out there, unless they are willing to sell that, we will not see anything similar in the near future i think.

SVS can be licensed: http://smyth-research.com/licensing.html

No idea why that has not caught on, e.g. for high end AV processors the top of the line devices by e.g. Denon, Marantz or even Anthem or Trinnov. For the consumer brands, I'd guess it's the "complex" setup process, but even their top of the line devices are frequently installed by a dealer.

BTW, does anyone know what device is shown on the licensing page linked above?

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Uh, because lots of companies are working on it.

As the Smyth Research has patented the SVS technology and there is nothing like it out there, unless they are willing to sell that, we will not see anything similar in the near future i think.

Please, all a patent does is grant exclusivity to the inventor for doing something a certain way. In no way does it preclude another inventor entrepreneur from doing the same thing as long as it's done differently. Does anyone seriously believe Smythe's SVS technology is some unbeatable, uncopyable holy grail of binaural sound processing? As has been pointed out, there are already numerous companies working on HRTF measurement, head tracking, and pro audio currently has been using convolution reverb technology for literally decades. In short, all the ingredients for a successful alternative are already out there.

All it's really going to take is some medium sized company like Audeze, for example, to put the technology in one of its headphone amps. And the model to look at here is room and speaker correction where companies like aCCourate, Dirac, Auddessy and Sonarworks all offer cheaper versions of room correction that do the same job as the guys who sold $4-8k processors like TACT and DEQX a few years ago.

 

[audiohobbit]

I don't know, but the Smyth logo is obviously photoshopped into the picture...

The SVS patent is easy to find: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060045294A1
(What's not so easy to find is some time to read that all as I'm very busy at the moment...)

and there are some older patents from Stephen Smyth, just search for him in google patents. I think they are from his time at DTS.

 

[Maestroso]

What exactly does that patent apply to? Is it the process of putting microphones in your ears and then playing sweeps at different frequencies over the various speakers to be emulated and recording the response of the microphones?
Because if that's the case, the only other way I could see of getting a personal HRTF would be to get a 3D scan the ear, kind of how face ID technology works.

As pointed out earlier, there is nothing about creating a BRIR that is exclusive to Smyth Research. They didn’t invent that concept (actually, that was Angelo Farina, amongst a few others). To be fair, in the patent application Smyth Research highlights the fact that there is nothing new about measuring binaural impulse responses. The USP of the Realiser is the guided measurement process and UI (, which is quite a big thing), but with the right binaural mic (DIY or SoundProfessional) you can do it yourself on your PC. Just run a few exponential sine sweeps through your speakers, record in a blocked meatus configuration and deconvolve the signal (e.g. Voxengo Deconvolver or any VST reverb that supports deconvolving, there are also quite a few scripts, Max objects and Matlab packages out there, which do the same). After deconvolving load the resulting impulse responses into any standard convolver/convolution reverb in a true stereo configuration. Do that for every channel and you’ve got your DIY PRIR. No rocket science. In psychoacoustic research it’s done every day, e.g. for purposes of perceptual evaluation. But again, a more automated process, incl. source preparation (codecs - e.g. Dolby, DTS, Auro3D) bears its benefits - even for someone like me (for personal use, but also for repeatedly measuring subjects with a compact, portable setup). Don’t underestimate that kind of convenience!

BTW - 3D ear scans and HRTF personalization are coming and already can be done with photogrammetry (i.e. a standard phone cam with 1080p resolution). Check http://idaaudio.com/ . They’re working with Genelec on a smartphone app. Also, 3Dsoundlabs is working on a similar solution, http://pro.3dsoundlabs.com/category/personal-hrtfs/ , though based on a different approach (rather than aiming for geometric modeling, they went with feature matching of actual HRTF measurements - hence the need for acquiring a large database to generate an adequate approximation).

 

[sander99]

there is nothing about creating a BRIR that is exclusive to Smyth Research.

What about the head-tracking, or rather: the interpolation process. The formula they use for interpolating impulse responses and how they implement it in such a way that the latency with respect to the incoming head-tracker information is acceptable? Is that "general knowledge" also or could that be a real Smyth contribution?

 

[Maestroso]

What about the head-tracking, or rather: the interpolation process. The formula they use for interpolating impulse responses and how they implement it in such a way that the latency with respect to the incoming head-tracker information is acceptable? Is that "general knowledge" also or could that be a real Smyth contribution?

It can be done also by standard means but I believe they use a proprietary solution. So yes, that might be covered by the patent. But nothing to stop others to come up with the same functionality. The only question is whether others will ever care to develop a product like that.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

As pointed out earlier, there is nothing about creating a BRIR that is exclusive to Smyth Research. They didn’t invent that concept (actually, that was Angelo Farina, amongst a few others). To be fair, in the patent application Smyth Research highlights the fact that there is nothing new about measuring binaural impulse responses. The USP of the Realiser is the guided measurement process and UI (, which is quite a big thing), but with the right binaural mic (DIY or SoundProfessional) you can do it yourself on your PC. Just run a few exponential sine sweeps through your speakers, record in a blocked meatus configuration and deconvolve the signal (e.g. Voxengo Deconvolver or any VST reverb that supports deconvolving, there are also quite a few scripts, Max objects and Matlab packages out there, which do the same). After deconvolving load the resulting impulse responses into any standard convolver/convolution reverb in a true stereo configuration. Do that for every channel and you’ve got your DIY PRIR. No rocket science. In psychoacoustic research it’s done every day, e.g. for purposes of perceptual evaluation. But again, a more automated process, incl. source preparation (codecs - e.g. Dolby, DTS, Auro3D) bears its benefits - even for someone like me (for personal use, but also for repeatedly measuring subjects with a compact, portable setup). Don’t underestimate that kind of convenience!

BTW - 3D ear scans and HRTF personalization are coming and already can be done with photogrammetry (i.e. a standard phone cam with 1080p resolution). Check http://idaaudio.com/ . They’re working with Genelec on a smartphone app. Also, 3Dsoundlabs is working on a similar solution, http://pro.3dsoundlabs.com/category/personal-hrtfs/ , though based on a different approach (rather than aiming for geometric modeling, they went with feature matching of actual HRTF measurements - hence the need for acquiring a large database to generate an adequate approximation).

Which is my thinking. The true benefit of the A16 will lie in its all-in-one box swiss army knife capability. The fact your can do the PRIRs, play them in any codec, AND use their box as a 16 channel control center for a speaker or headphone based system through any input with any output is what will give the product its value--provided it performs its tasks reliably and well.

Right now no one can say for sure if it will ever be brought to market, if its units will perform in a manner consistent with a high end product, if its interface will make it user friendly, if it will be reliable, and if it will have a good customer support system for obtaining PRIRs and converting BRIRs.
Given those uncertainties, it's an awful lot to ask anyone to pony up $4k USD sight unseen. Me? I want to read a good half dozen reviews first.

 

[camillem]

I just have received my Audeze Mobius, this will help me wait for the A16 !

First experience of head tracking for me, this is really great !

 

[mikemav]

^^^I just got my Mobius as well, have not had time to set it up yet, hopefully tomorrow or over the weekend for sure. I also ordered a Massdrop Liquid Carbon X + SDAC (DAC and balanced headphone amp) which will be here tomorrow that I hope to eventually use w/ the A16 and my balanced converted K702 65th Anni or other balanced cans. PS: this forum lol- came here for A8/A16 info, well FFW 1+ year, now one Mobius, Yarra, and many other products ordered later....