[GeorgeA]

It finally arrived........

I think you’re very relieved now. Good luck with your new toy!

 

[phoenixdogfan]

I'm not even going to touch it until I run through the entire manual and watch all the videos once again. Been so long I've forgotten what I learned, or think I have at any rate.

 

[m8o]

"How might one consult with any kind of Customer/Technical Support for the A16?"

The correct way according to the smyth site is to us the contact page. But I think that just goes to James which wouldn't help but you can give it a try.
https://smyth-research.com/contact/

I quote J.Villain but this question is anyone...

Has anyone gotten a submission thru with this form? It keeps failing for me.

 

[You Gene]

I quote J.Villain but this question is anyone...

Has anyone gotten a submission thru with this form? It keeps failing for me.

It worked for me but you could always try :
admin@smyth-research.com
james@smyth-research.com
https://www.facebook.com/pg/SmythResearch/posts/
https://www.heavenly-sound.com/ : also a contact form

but when they don't answer, believe me, it is on purpose unfortunately !

 

[castleofargh]

I quote J.Villain but this question is anyone...

Has anyone gotten a submission thru with this form? It keeps failing for me.

That's what I used when my A16 had some "error 001" problem a few months back. Worked fine at the time and the reply(from James) was pretty fast.

 

[sander99]

It finally arrived. Only 7 months and 27 days after I sent it in. They gave me serial no 109. I had 209 previouly. When I booted it up, it showed the 16 channel atmos room and I immediately leaped to the conclusion, they gave me an unmodified A16 they had lying around, and sent a nastygram to James. He just assured me that it is indeed a fullly upgraded to 24 channel model, though I have not yet looked at the 24 channel room yet. Still having my coffee, and I'm cranky. ☹

Congratulations anyway, even if took so long to get it back.
The 24 channel mode has to be set as described below (quote from the 1.90 firmware release notes), note that this is a single user mode and only hdmi inputs - including eARC - can be used for 24 channel decoding or upmixing and that is probably why they don't put it in that mode by default.
It is probably wise to read the full section 'New Features' of those release notes.

To enable the 24 speaker Atmos decode and SVS rendering mode, first ensure the audio source
is set to an HDMI input, then navigate to the Misc Settings page under Settings/System and
enable the slider on SVS 24ch. The A16 will immediately implement the change, jump back to
the home page and reload the presets.

 

[sander99]

BTW, does anyone know the the USB on the back is fully functional yet. Will it output the process 24 channel Atmos binauralized to a regular DAC, or is that still only true for the spidf and optical outs?

It would be the usb connection on the front (but maybe that is what you meant?) that can be used to connect a usb DAC, but I don't think it is functional already.
The usb connection on the back is to connect a computer.

 

[Sordel]

I'm not even going to touch it until I run through the entire manual and watch all the videos once again. Been so long I've forgotten what I learned, or think I have at any rate.

Good idea but that won't save you. The number of ways that the A16 can trip you up is myriad. For instance, everything seemed set up correctly and suddenly the HDMI from my PC wouldn't work. A couple of days later I realised that while I was using the bypass function I had accidentally turned the HDMI socket that the PC was connected to to duplicate(?) another HDMI. On the screen (where I have it) it can be quite difficult to see a tiny change like that but it makes all the difference.

Frankly, the Realiser is possibly the most vexing, and most rewarding, piece of tech I've acquired in a decade.

 

[You Gene]

There is a short term sales at Gilles web site valuing the A16 (24ch.) now at EUR 4090 (instead of EUR 4490) : (25th to 29th September only)
https://av-in.com/products/smyth-realiser-a16-format-horizontal

I am not an interested party here, only informing you.

 

[VandyMan]

It is not clear to me if the Reference Level Calibration described in the 1.98 release notes changes the output of the A16 or is just a visual helper. Anyone know?

 

[sander99]

It is not clear to me if the Reference Level Calibration described in the 1.98 release notes changes the output of the A16 or is just a visual helper. Anyone know?

What I make of it:
After determining at what volume setting you reach the desired reference level (for a specific room), then:
-You can set the A16 so that it shows the volume in dB instead of the usual volume number, such that the dB value correctly correlates with the achieved reference level.
-If also tri-volume and tri-ref are enabled then the A16 will use the set reference level (set per preset, per room) as one of the three tri-volume volume settings (and the other two are relative to that)

So I guess the answer is: it is a visual helper and depending on the settings it changes the way you set your volume.

 

[VandyMan]

What I make of it:
After determining at what volume setting you reach the desired reference level (for a specific room), then:
-You can set the A16 so that it shows the volume in dB instead of the usual volume number, such that the dB value correctly correlates with the achieved reference level.
-If also tri-volume and tri-ref are enabled then the A16 will use the set reference level (set per preset, per room) as one of the three tri-volume volume settings (and the other two are relative to that)

So I guess the answer is: it is a visual helper and depending on the settings it changes the way you set your volume.

That is what I understood too. Thanks!

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Well got started. Did auto eq for the HD 800 and the LCD X, and copied around 15 files from the shared drive onto my A16. Next step, I think is making up some rooms. I'll start with Jazzfan's D & D 8cs, and then do the Pilates room. Then I'll put together Presets one for the D & D and another for the Pilates Studio and do manLouds for each.

Then I'l do a 9,1 comprised of 5 prirs (two speaker positions measure at a time) with my own LS50/SB2000 system, and do rooms and a preset. Later, when I got some elevated stands, I'll add the height channel. Hope to have all that done by the weekend, and be listening to my very own PRIR+the Brirs from Jazzfan and Rene.

All this is somewhat preliminary (a first stab at it), I will run the analog signal through my miniDSP 2x 4 HD which has an 11 band parametric eq to fix some of the FR issues wth the LS50s, but I'll be adding Dirac Live 3 to it next month to add a further refinement. Fortunately the 2 x 4 provides for two channels of analog input, so I can input the sweeps two channels at a time, do eq and Dirac correction on them, and thus provide a better speaker system for PRIRs. I have a feeling that when I elevate my speaker and change the listening window thereby, I'll have to re eq and re-Dirac them to compensate for that.

 

[sander99]

I have a feeling that when I elevate my speaker and change the listening window thereby, I'll have to re eq and re-Dirac them to compensate for that.

Almost certainly yes. For any change of the actual speaker position it would have to be done again. If you leave the speakers in the same position and only re-orient yourself in the sweetspot in front of the speakers then you don't have to re-eq and re-Dirac.

Later, when I got some elevated stands, I'll add the height channel.

As an initial solution you could already measure the height channels by bending over in front of the speakers in their normal positions. (Using not too many or too extreme lookangles to keep it doable). And later do it again with the elevated stands (if you still feel the need for it, and/or really want to have a maximum set of lookangles).

 

[audiohobbit]

@phoenixdogfan: Congratulations that you finally have your unit back. What a nightmare... Hope all works and you'll never have to send it back again.

I noticed an oddity with the Dolby Surround upmixer:
The movie "Zodiac" on netflix has only 2.0 DD+ English sound (at least here in Germany). If I feed this as DD+ bitstream to the A16 and activate the DSU I don't get a center or surrounds, but I get height channels. The ear level stays stereo.
Then I set my Pana UHD player to decode DD to PCM, and I got a perfect center an side and back surrounds (the player always does 7.1), the A16 upmixer just adds heights.
The fact that I get center and surrounds shows that the 2ch are in fact surround encoded. So s.th. is odd with the upmixer?

With an old FW version I watched the Harry Potter movies on Prime last year and some of them were also only in 2.0 DD+ but the upmixer back then did it right.