I can totally understand the frustration but my piece of advice would be to hold on as there’s no substitute.
On my side, I had OOYH on the mac computer which I was using like once a year at most since I could not make use of it for movies, actually wasn’t watching movies on the mac anyhow.
When the realiser arrived, I did not have an A/V setup, so was trying to use it with an ipad which is what what I used for watching movies. That quickly got frustrating with issues passing audio through the appropriate dock and essentially being limited to 5.1.
I eventually invested in a 4k TV + entry level 4k uhd player and also have a near field 2ch setup that I could use to make 16 ch. prirs by rotating around. Well, this has totally transformed the experience for me and I’d know be very very frustrated if the A16 was going away. Atmos soundtracks from 4kUHD discs make the movie so much more immersive. Even just 5.1 from streaming movies is just really hard to give up once I got used to it. I basically just can‘t enjoy watching the TV without wearing the headphones on
.
btw, I used mere hd600s as headphones because they’re light, comfortable, open sounding and are driven fine in mid gain by the built in HP out. They’re just perfect for me, I still get thunderous but clean bass output, and no shrill highs (after going through a manLOUD eq though), I am just super satisfied.
To summarize: yes their is so much frustration accumulated from waiting for the product or features, but you will likely regret it if you back out now after having gone through most of the wait. As for paying retail price, despite the great experience now, I don’t think I could justify it unless it was squeaky clean and full featured (dts, auro3d, earc, ...). I feel lucky to have jumped on kickstater (I’ve been wanting the A8 before but could not really afford it so the kickstarter offer was a no brainer), it’s been a long ride but I’d now say the wait was worth it at last.
As for Z reviews, probably a moot point since the target audience is different indeed. I don’t have 1 hour to waste so I won’t even bother watching