It would have been beneficial if the revised A16 had allowed the sine wave sweeps that are used to measure the individual loudspeakers to be conveyed via HDMI cable under eARC protocol.
Smyth Research Realiser A16
dsperber
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Patience is a virtue, if it all works out in the end.
Surely you know my own story with the A8. First saw an article about it in 2004, and struck up communication with the Smyths at that time (since their development lab was in Camarillo, CA, about 60 miles from where I live in the LA area). I inquired regularly over what turned out to be years as to the availablility-for-purchase. And those early years turned out to eventually be FIVE YEARS before I finally emerged victorious! Completing the magic was my visit to Mark Waldrep's AIX Studios here in LA in June 2009 for the very first personal personal PRIR measurement (engineered for me by Lorr Kramer of Smyth) at AIX which was making itself available for "1-hour PRIR session rentals". I came away with both 5.1 and 7.1 PRIRs that I use to this day as my ONLY "production" PRIRs on both A8 and A16 which I actually listen through. The 5.1 AIX PRIR is still the power-on default preset P1 for my A8.
The #0001 A8 turned out to finally actually be not only available-for-purchase but actually delivered in April 2009, FIVE YEARS after my first inquiry. I drove up there, "took possession" in person, had some pictures taken with the whole Smyth family and Camarillo developers and sales people, and the rest is now A8 history. Very similar story with the much more sophisticated A16, which really only took about 3 years to see the rollout of #0001 A16. Of course it's will have been a few more years to see the many hundreds of KS and pre-orders finally receive their units, but best-case shipping at 10-per-week this is understandable.
Note, as you may also know, that I am the proud owner of both #0001 A8 (analog-only, originally paired with a Stax SR-Omega and SRM-T1s amp, both vintage 1995) as well as #0001 A16. Quite an honor, and I am very appreciative. Haven't used Dolby Headphone in 11 years now. The analog-only #0001 A8 and old Stax gear was re-purposed to a second viewing location and replaced with an HDMI-enabled A8 back in 2018, at which time I acquired a Stax SR-009 and SRM-007Tii amp for use at my primary viewing location. And when the A16 finally arrived last September 2019 I relocated the HDMI-enabled A8 to that second SR-Omega location and finally retired the original analog-only A8 back into its original shipping carton from 2009 (which I still have!).
I can say that if it is within your budget, the SR-009 (or its current successor, the SR-009s which I've not heard) and matching Stax amp is simply remarkable to listen through with either A8 or A16 and a personally captured PRIR from a wonderful listening environment. And I love both of my Stax tube amps.
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eARC works the other way around. The display becomes the source, the A16 the sink for the audio signal, so there's no benefit regarding the sweeps, as far as I can see. The HDMI board, even the updated one can only handle 2 channel audio on the output port(s). Maybe an Atmos MAT 2.0 stream could be constructed that consists of e.g. 1 channel PCM (on the center, always silent) and the sweep as an audio object placed at the relevant speaker. I've got no idea if the standard even allows such limited channel setups.
A handful of async sweep signals on a USB stick for the most common speaker layouts with the option to skip any speakers not present would alleviate most problems, I would say.
Sanctuary
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Jesus. The initial September estimate to finally start shipping preorders seems pretty off now. I wonder how much of an impact 2020 in general had on this, or if it would have been about the same anyway. At this rate, preorders won't even start shipping until next May at the earliest.
But hey, I personally have time to wait anyway now I guess (thanks 2020). Was initially going to go to a sweet room I found in a local hotel to get a good PRIR done for my A8 and use that as an initial testing base for Atmos when the A16 finally arrived. Had planned on doing that sometime between Sept - Dec originally, but even if they allow me to book the room, I probably won't bother with it until a working vaccine is released. Even if my friend and I would be "safe enough" wearing our masks and being isolated from everyone else, wearing a mask for 6 - 12 hours is not something I want to deal with. It's bad enough having to wear one for up to three hours at a time.
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Backer #244 has been notified his unit is ready to ship. There are ~330 kickstarter orders, leaving 86 to go. Pessimistically assuming 5 units ship per week, that's 17 weeks which puts it around the end of this year (I had to qualify which year!) before preorders start shipping, not next May.
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I am backer #225 and have received no deliver related email from Smyth Research, not even in the spam folder. Only saw the update today so have emailed James; hopefully, I will get a reply on Monday.
I am in the UK so delivery should not be an issue, although some of the courier companies seem to use very strange routings.
I am in the UK so delivery should not be an issue, although some of the courier companies seem to use very strange routings.
Sanctuary
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Maybe I should have been more specific and said instead "start shipping preorders from around June of 2017". They have only managed to ship 60% of the Kickstarter units so far over the course of twelve months since the first units were being shipped at full price. The last time I checked on the status of the orders was at the end of April, where they were at essentially the exact same place as they are right now.
Yes, 2020 has likely been a contributing factor, but I'm not really sure it affected Smyth Time™ all that much, since there have always been delays, setbacks and general excuses when any actual communication had been given up to this point. We even have some people who can't even seem to get the units that were actually shipped to them too. As I said though, because of 2020, my own timeline has been pushed back as well, so the delay won't affect me as much as it would have otherwise, and it's still good that the A16 is no longer just a promise in perpetuity, but this is still the slowest moving train I've ever seen. I'm more worried about even more crap happening in general before the remaining units can be honored than anything though.
sander99
Headphoneus Supremus
Time needed to adapt the firmware to the new hardware. I suspected right away it would take a lot longer than what Smyth wrote in update #59: " We expect shipments of new A16 to begin by the end of March and firmware updates for both versions thereafter. "
Actually, the shipments resumed at the beginning of August 2020.
Thanks, that helps.
Am I right to conclude that the A16 doesn't handle DSD or play nice with SACDs?
Also, it doesn't seem to recognise audio via the optical digital input.
sander99
Headphoneus Supremus
It should. However the borrowed A16 I had in my home a while back did not like it when I used a passive optical splitter (didn't work), but otherwise the optical input worked fine. So I guess it needs a good strong light source. (All my AVRs have no problem with a passive optical splitter.)
Another thing is supported sampling rates (I don't know which sampling rates are actually supported right now by the A16).
Got the Shakes
500+ Head-Fier
My recognizes optical fine. I’m using it to run sound from my tv until they enable eARC and it takes audio from my PC or consoles and passes it to the A16 like it should.
Accepting native DSD signals would essentially be pointless for the A16. For all practical purposes, you just plain have to convert DSD signals to PCM for even simple processing - you can't even modify the volume while staying in 1-bit. While it might be nice to be able to pass DSD through the A16 unprocessed to an external DAC, that's such a niche use, I'd rather see the Smyths implement anything else on the long list of possible features. In the meantime, just convert to 96kHz 24 bit PCM and rest assured that - if done properly - that's far better than anything your DAC can reproduce, much less anything you can hear.
Okay, that makes sense. The problem I was having was that SACDs just wouldn‘t play at all directly out of the Oppo, but instead I have routed it through my AV amplifier and now they do work, which solves the problem. Optical Input again just doesn‘t seem to work at all but I was only using it as a workaround so I'm happy to ignore the problem. I must say: I've never found a device which has puzzled me so much ... I wish that it was all as simple as the HPEQ which “just worked”. (Mind you, I must confess that many of the little problems I've encountered along the way are actually all about other devices and how they output the signal to the A16.)
On the plus side - and it's a BIG plus - the sound is very impressive. I've been mainly using my Oppo PM-3s with this so far. Yes, I know, closed-back headphones are not recommended and these have in any case a tendency to be rather muddy, but they work incredibly well with the HPEQ, giving a real sense of transparency of which they should simply not be capable. The head-tracking, of course, is a big part of this, genuinely removing the sense of listening through headphones at all and instead feeling as I am listening in an “ideal space”. It's a highly unfatiguing experience and my wife was suitably impressed when I got her to listen to a Wagner Blu-Ray through it. She's an inveterate sceptic when it comes to headphones, so that says a great deal.
I also think that I underestimated in advance the pleasure of listening to stereo through the A16. Cranking music through headphones has had diminishing returns for me in recent years but I love the way that the two channels resolve themselves into a complete 180° space through the A16.
