As requested here is a guide for what I did to make a PRIR using the async method. Thanks to
@Thomasphoenix98 for the async files and to
@audiohobbit for pointing out which folder a few necessary files were stored in. Here we go.
Items Needed:
- Release notes for firmware 1.80 and 1.90 as the have the instructions for using async. Located 1.80 here and 1.90 here
- Async .wav files
- Laptop
- Receive with HDMI input
Procedure Used:
I essentially just followed the step by step instructions in the 1.80 release notes which worked like a charm. The system I captured is a 5.1 setup so I used "PCM_sound_room_8" in the .zip with the async files. You'll need to make sure to grab three other files that are located in "PCM_sound_room_25" which are "noise.wav", "level_cal.wav", and "pll_cal.wav". The way I kept everything organized and executed the measurement were with these steps:
- Create a folder on your desktop named whatever you want and place all of the .wav files for the setup you want to capture as well as the three .wav files above
- Connect your laptop to a receiver via HDMI. Once connected right click on the sound options in the lower right side of the Windows taskbar and change the sound output to match the setup you're capturing either 5.1, 7.1, or Dolby Atmos for Home Theater
- Make sure you use some media player like VLC that can output multi-channel tracks
- Setup a PRIR sound room on the A16 to match the speaker layout you're connected to (this is the start of where the 1.80 release notes give you instructions)
- Go into the PRIR measurement app on the A16 set your appropriate settings an select "measure async PRIR"
- Play the "noise.wav" track on your laptop
- Play the "pll_cal.wav" file and wait for the A16 to do it's thing
- Play the "level_cal.wav" track and let the A16 do what it needs to
- Play the "look center" track from the room async files and follow the directions that are spoken in the track
- Continue playing one by one the rest of the look left and right files in the room you're capturing. It does not seem to matter what order you do them in, but you will have to lay each one individually. There will be a spoken voice on each track telling you what instructions to follow
- Upon completing all of the look track, the A16 should take you to a screen showing you that it's captured all of your speakers. There will be a white box around each captured speaker to confirm that it did successfully capture them
- Press enter on the remote to have the A16 save the PRIR
At this point you should have successfully created a PRIR using the async method. To use it you of course have to add the speakers to a PCM and Dolby room and then add them to a preset. The result for me was much better than the one I captured over a year ago using the sync method and unplugging and replugging all sorts of speaker cable. I suspect that the biggest reason why is that I was able to sit in the sweet spot and with minimal movement of my head.
The preamble is completely missing here! This tells the A16 what speakers and what look angles are to be measured!
Concerning level_cal, there's something messed up here. Normally every room should have its own level_cal file, most of them are just missing here. So we have to take one of the existing files, it should work I think.
The man noise and the pll files are always the same. I recommend to copy them to all folders and I strongly recommend to rename all files in the folders according to folder no. and track order. Otherwise if you copy files elsewhere and they all are just named look_center you don't know any more which is which.
I suggested this already to them to give those files specific names, not "look_centre" in every folder, but e.g. 25a_04_look_centre.wav etc.
The order of the look angles doesn't matter with the newer Firmwares but the peoposed order (as with the Sync mode) is always alternating between left/right, the reason is when using the HT guided modes you always move your head through the center so the HT can "recalibrate" itself.
See also the example menu layout in FW update 1.80 instructions p. 5:
So as an example ( I don't have the correct file names here) for a room 25 file naming and order of the procedure:
25_01_noise.wav: With mics in your ears you should set the level of your sound system according to the picture "Ideal level" on p.8 of FW1.80 instructions.
25_02_level_calibrate.wav: With mics in the ears and looking forward the Realiser automatically sets its mic gain. The ideal target gain is 4 (dB)! So if It's above or below this you should readjust the level of your sound system
25_03_phase_lock.wav: Mics in ears lokking forward, totally quiet, keep your head as still as possible. The phase between player and Realiser is adjusted for best results. Afterwards a phase drift in samples per second (s/sec) is reported. This should be as low as possible, ideally 0. In the example it's 0.2
52_04_preamble.wav: This is the setup track. It tells the Realiser what speakers are to be measured and (I think) what look angles are to be expected.
However it is said in FW1.80 that you should also setup a PRIR sound room with the speakers in the order as described in the Async sound rooms document and of course you should give the room a name and select it for the measurement so that the files be named accordingly.
With the new function "Override preamble IDs" you can enter different speaker IDs in the PRIR sound room setup as explained in FW1.90 instruction p.9/10
What I don't know is if you still need the preamble, but as far as I remember the preamble also tells the A16 which look angles should be measured. The on screen numbers of Azi looks and Elev looks only appear after playing the preamble.
And what I also don't know if you can measure less speakers than originally included in the sweeps with "Override preamble IDs". Let's say you only want to measure stereo L and R and we only have a 5.1 sweeps, so you would just enter the speakers 1 L, 2 R in the PRIR sound room and leave everything else blank, then active the Override preamble ID switch and use the 5.1 sweeps to measure just the 2 speakers. This would be good if that worked.
Then you could measure even a 9.1.6 system with 7.1 or 5.1 pcm wavs. Let's say we have a 7.1.4 system and only a 7.1 pcm sweep. We would measure the 7.1 ear level speakers as they are. Then we would assign the top speakers to the channels 1,2,3 and 5. 4has to be omitted because that would normally be the SW channel and this is band limited.
So we would assign 1 Ltf, 2 Rtf, 3 Ltr, 5 Rtr.
We have to plug in our real top speakers then to the L, R, C and Lss posts on our AVR and reassign the EQ settings (and crossovers; and distances but this doesn't matter) in the AVR from those top channels to those LCR and Lss channels.
IF this would work as I hope.
However then you play the look angle tracks:
25_05_look_center.wav
25_06_look_left_15.wav
25_07_look_right_15.wav
25_08_look_left_30.wav
...
And not forget to use the PRIR viewer, at least after the first sweep to see if everything seems all right and at the end to get an overview. See the video on YT for this.
