[You Gene]

https://smyth-research.com/
They now mention on their home page the specs of the new 24 channels A16.
No change on the selling side.

 

[GeorgeA]

The new specs are only mentioned as part of “The Realiser A16, At first glance”. The downloadable extensive specs were not updated yet.

 

[You Gene]

@You Gene The way i see things, MDS informed Smyth Research that their boards will be discontinued likely at some point in January. They sent them samples of the new boards. SR needed some time to adapt the firmware to the new hardware and the new features coming with it (mostly the 24 channels). That could explain why there was pretty much no shipping in February.
Even though MDS can still send the previous boards for a few months, Smyth Research decided that it was smarter to switch right now to the new models and propose straight away an enhanced A16. However, they still had a certain number of old boards in stock, which represents quite some money, so they couldn't afford to throw it away and replace them with the new ones. Consequently, they decided to continue shipping A16 with the old boards till they ran out of it, and only then to inform customers of the changes and that's why they said that the modifications were effective immediatly.

Note that i don't actually know if that's what really happened, but it's the way that would make sense to me.

I am certain you are right in your reasoning.

What about your tentative timeline of January 2020.
We could fine tune it by looking at which manufacturer integrated the HSR41T HDMI repeater before us :
- the RS20i from Datasat (US) was also using the HSR41Q in 2017.
- according to the Software Released Notes V1.05.05 (of RS20i), the software update was available for the HSR41T HDMI repeater on December 10th 2019.

Datasat and the Smyth would have had the info about the new circuit board prior to that and what puzzles me is that we are getting uncomfortably close to the initial shipping schedule of August 2019…they would have started shipping asap in August 2019 because of the change of circuit boards ?

 

[Fox1977]

It's possible that they were informed about it around the time they started to ship the first batch of A16. I guess they sent all in all so far around 250 units (around 200 KS, all those who preordered via Gilles, a few at full price, etc.). I give this number as an example, it could be a bit more, i don't know. But if they had bought around 250 sets of both boards to prepare them last summer or in spring 2019, they couldn't afford to toss them to the trash and buy new boards.
They could have informed us also, but how could they say "We are going to ship you units but we already know that they are kind of out of date already" ?
Already communication is not their strong when it's just to give simple information, so such a delicate news to give could be complicated at that moment.

 

[You Gene]

Look at that : https://smyth-research.com/coronavirus/
CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19): 23RD MARCH 2020

Smyth-Research operational update
Our business operations here in the UK are running normally.
We expect to resume A16 shipments around the end of this month.

 

[You Gene]

The new specs are only mentioned as part of “The Realiser A16, At first glance”. The downloadable extensive specs were not updated yet.

They just are now : https://smyth-research.com/product/a16-realiser-2u/ but yes no updated download

+ price remaining the same at USD 3.995

 

[Juy777]

Shouldnt they call it A24 now hehe

 

[GeorgeA]

There is an updated file: Fiche - recréer une salle virtuelle 7-1-4.pdf, version 1.1, available at dropbox. The file is offered by av-in.com, la boutique officielle du Smyth Realiser A16 in France.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/egbmn3mkkojpopg/Fiche - recréer une salle virtuelle 7-1-4.pdf

 

[AppleheadMay]

Again not receiving any emails for the threads I watch anymore.

 

[m8o]

https://smyth-research.com/
They now mention on their home page the specs of the new 24 channels A16.
No change on the selling side.

Attn Smyths: I just want my frak'n A==16==. Ship me my A==16==. Quit giving/wasting ANY time of ANYONE on ANYTHING else!

 

[mrmac]

One thing that’s confusing is that the previous chipset (APM89L) is also meant to be comparable with Dirac room correction. In James’s update it says that the future (maybe) Dirac compatibility is for the new APM110. Do anyone out there know if this is because they Dirac implementations are different on the two chipsets. Or would it most likely work on both?

Might send an email to MDS and see what they say.

I sent an email to James a week ago regarding the chipset update time frame limitation, and have not got a reply.

 

[esimms86]

I was wondering if any A16 owners had taken any well recorded binaural releases for a spin. I’m considering dipping a toe into that particular pond.

 

[johnn29]

Hoping an A16 owner can answer this question. With Impulcifer I can easily generate my own HRIR because it automatically plays sweeps on all 7 channels one after another. So I hit a button and then it progresses to record. With the Smyth will it actually generate the sweeps on each speaker including the atmos height channels over HDMI?

I remember reading earlier that you had to plug and unplug via preouts etc. which is a serious pain and I'd never want to bother doing that.

Also is any sort of virtual room correction available? With Impulcifer I can apply whatever target room I want, for example, Harman Loudspeaker in room target. It'll flatten out the frequency response and hit the target curve while maintaining my HRIR.

 

[Eich1eeF]

One thing that’s confusing is that the previous chipset (APM89L) is also meant to be comparable with Dirac room correction. In James’s update it says that the future (maybe) Dirac compatibility is for the new APM110. Do anyone out there know if this is because they Dirac implementations are different on the two chipsets. Or would it most likely work on both?

The update mail from James read

The APM110 supports Dirac Live room correction which can run concurrently with Atmos (or dts-X/Auro3D)

So according to that, the APM89L can't run Dirac and Atmos at the same time, but the APM110 can. There shouldn't be much of a difference from the Realiser point of view if Dirac were running on the old or the new module, since a consistent API is one of the reasons to buy them from MDS.

 

[mrmac]

So according to that, the APM89L can't run Dirac and Atmos at the same time, but the APM110 can. There shouldn't be much of a difference from the Realiser point of view if Dirac were running on the old or the new module, since a consistent API is one of the reasons to buy them from MDS.

Would that mean that legacy codecs up to 7.1 would be able to be processed with Dirac on the old module? Theoretically...