I know three people who use the Trinnov or version of it (JBL) for home use...
My point was... The Realiser is quite comparable to the Trinnov when it comes to I/O as well as it's decoding ability.
Smyth Research Realiser A16
My point was... The Realiser is quite comparable to the Trinnov when it comes to I/O as well as it's decoding ability.
Best of luck on your virtualized multichannel journey... We'll be glad to help you when you return. 
audiohobbit
500+ Head-Fier
I am really sorry, and I mean no offense,
but this is BS.
sorry.
Look at the back of a 1500$ AV-Receiver for example. They sometimes even have MORE connections.
You CAN'T have enough I/O connections!
All the manufacturers buy IO boards off the shelve and just have to implement these, I think this really is the least expensive thing in the whole unit.
Then: You can easily buy a (headphone) amp for 5000+ $, look here just a random example:
https://www.ttvjaudio.com/Chord-Hugo-TT-2-DAC-and-Headphone-Amplifier-p/cho0000078.htm
Doesn't do much more than D/A and amplify.
Compare this to the functionality of the Realiser!
You can even buy a single CABLE for thousands of dollars:
Look at this: https://fidelisav.com/products/interconnects/sigma-v2-rca-interconnect-1-meter
ONE meter of stereo RCA cable for 4000$!!!
THIS is greed!!!
And you accuse the Smyths of being greedy...
Holy f...
audiohobbit
500+ Head-Fier
I'm on a german home cinema forum. There are many more guys using Trinnovs at home.
And other beautiful but expensive stuff...
It's quite obvious that you don't understand high end products. Both the Trinnov and the Realiser are the absolute number one in their own category. While I would also prefer to spend less money on gear it is just the way it is. It's the highest quality and the demand is limited. It sounds like you're not willing to spend the money it takes to get the #1 product, so you're not getting the #1 product. Then it's quite simple, get some other solution aimed at the mass market. Nothing wrong with that.
I think this discussion has no further value.
audiohobbit
500+ Head-Fier
Well, 24 high end speakers for 5000$ will be a bit difficult.
And then you have no room treatment at all.
Room treatment is more important than the speaker as long as it has minimum quality.
IF I had no neighbours I'd go that road probably but even w/o neighbours the Realiser has many advantages. You can have any high end system "in your realiser".
You can rent a pair of very expensive speakers and can create 24 of them all around you!
(this what @Litlgi74 here is doing/offering, in a room treated studio environment).
You can take for example some electrostat speakers (which in reality can't go very loud), "conserve" their sound and crank the volume up (depends on the headphone of course) to levels that would harm the real speakers.
etc. etc.
No need to apologize because no one cares if buy one or not. We are not sales people. Obviously, most of the active people on this forum think that the A-16 was worth what we paid, but if it is not for you, take care, see you around.
dsperber
500+ Head-Fier
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Actually, that's the whole point of this device: i.e. NOT to have a real speaker system available (because of condo vs. private home, and/or neighbors below you, etc.) because for one reason or another (not just cost) it is NOT AN OPTION.
Instead, you take the equipment and calibrated microphones to ANOTHER LISTENING ENVIRONMENT that you are lucky enough to be able to arrange with, that actually DOES HAVE REAL SPEAKERS and a fabulous listening room that you could NEVER have in your own home, either just because of cost or physical layout. And then you "capture a personal PRIR measurement", of exactly how that room sounds to your own personal ears. You've now just completed a "sonic photograph" of how that room and all of its equipment and floor/wall/ceiling/baffle treatments actually sound TO YOUR OWN EARS... magically now usable through that PRIR digital filter file as a "playback filter". When you now feed any new source content INTO THAT FILTER you will hear things through the playback headphones exactly as if you were once again actually listening to that content IN THE ORIGINAL LISTENING ROOM ENVIRONMENT... as if you were really there, and listening to the new content.
Then you add in a generalized HPEQ measurement for your headphones, optimzing the whole playback system for the characteristics of your headphones/amp/DAC. Now it's even BETTER than just what the PRIR filter can do. Now it is maximally EQ-optimized to be even a better "duplication" of the original listening environment, for your ears and for your specifica headphones.
This is MAGIC. For me personally who does NOT HAVE SPEAKERS POSSIBLE IN MY CONDO, this is what I've always dreamed of: having a PRIR to simulate the fantastic AIX mixing room studio sound system through my Stax SR-009/SRM-007tII headphones (and Audio-GD NFM9 external DAC, for passing the still-digital stereo output of the A16 to the DAC and then on to the Stax gear). I am truly at AIX when I listen to anything through this setup.
WELL WORTH THE COST!! It will serve me for the rest of my life. Dolby, DTS, Auro, streaming source, BluRay source, HDTV cable TV source... for me this is perfect. And my neighbors don't even know I'm playing things as loud as I am... in my headphones.
Plus... you can build a collection of MULTIPLE such PRIRs that are "sonic photographs" of assorted different listening environments that you might be fortunate enough to have the owner let you "take that sonic photograph to PRIR digital version". Now you have a library of different worlds you can listen to any new content through... as if you were listening to that content IN THAT SPECIFIC WORLD!
This is NOT Dolby Headphone with four HDMI inputs. It is a "sonic photograph camera/playback device". It is designed to capture the sound of a specific listening environment AS YOU HEAR IT WITH YOUR OWN EARS, producing a playback filter so that you can now use it to hear new content AS IF YOU WERE THERE! This isn't trying to create small/medium/large one-size-fits-all "virtual surround", like Dolby Headphone. It is a completely different concept, and one that in my own situation allows me to have the AIX studio in my own headphones in my bedroom. I can listen to anything now, and I'm at AIX!!
That's what I paid for, and that's what I got.
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Got the Shakes
500+ Head-Fier
I will second this. More I/O is better than less I/O. I currently have something like 9 devices feeding sound to my A16. For me to get that all working is a combination of eARC, the HDMI 2.0 ports on the A16, and the HDMI in of my Oppo 203. If they haven’t added eARC I’d be in quite the bind as I have some HDMI 2.1 devices that I would lose a lot of functionality on (although HMDI 2.1 switches are finally becoming a thing).
Maybe the A16 isn’t for you, that’s fine. You mentioned you can get a whole speaker setup for the same price, which I’m not sure is true given that 23 speakers, a sub, and the receiver to drive it all can get costly, but for the sake of argument let’s say you can. If you move, you have to break the whole setup down and move it with you. If you live in a small space, a real Atmos setup is likely not an option, and if you live in an apartment it surely isn’t an option. With the A16 you get basically a 100% recreation of that surround experience in a box that’s smaller than most Blu Ray players. Plus if you’re lucky enough, you can capture a surround setup with high end speakers that would normally cost $50,000+ without having to spend $50,000+.
audiohobbit
500+ Head-Fier
There is dts X headphone, and afaik it is included on some (UHD) Bluray Discs:
https://dts.com/dts-headphonex/
But I never heard it. I think it will have the same problems as every generic binaural implentation. There's no "on size fits all" HRTF.
So most of the users may just have a mediocre experience her. idk.
I had a friend who used to make binaural recordings of Grateful Dead shows and they sounded terrific. In my limited experience, well-made binaural recordings work well for most people. Multichannel (and especially stereo) recordings converted to binaural are more hit and miss.
Dolby Atmos is a totally different product… the key is it is not customizable, and the calculations aren’t as precise. I get some slight sense of spatialization with Dolby Atmos, and I’ve used a ton of different surround/spatial DSPs (they were an obsession for me for a long time… I still get excited for solutions), but the Smyth Realiser demo at a CanJam NYC and Munich’s High End show circa 2016 was the first time I literally couldn’t tell the difference between a surround speaker setup and when playback was happening on the headphones.
If you want something cheap, I recommend looking into Creative Labs products (many of which I reviewed a long time ago) or Redscape Audio. Redscape is almost entirely a software product, but it does support attachable head-tracking units which in my experience really help keep your brain calibrated for an “out of your head” experience, and you can enter some parameters such as the width of your head. Creative Labs was doing AI-optimized spatial audio tailoring long before Apple recently deemed it an important addition to upgrade their Airpod Pro 2’s spatial audio; Creative’s “Super X-Fi” app has you take a picture of your head and ears from different angles, and matches up your shape with the closest pre-measured head response to give you a more believable sensation of space and direction.
Creative and Redscape offer good options for less money, but there’s no getting around the fact that Smyth’s sophistication and customization set it apart as the best way to make headphones have good soundstage and sound speaker-like.
I missed that he was doing that… immediately had to check his location. Things probably won’t work out for me: I bet I’ll miss the timing while I’m job hunting, and he’s probably in New York City rather than near Pittsburgh, but if he’s representing a store and maybe this time next year he still has this available as a service, it would probably be worth it for my birthday to buy a plane ticket and book some time with him.
Smyth took many years to actually release the A16, but they didn’t give up on it or close their business. I’m still rooting for them to get into a situation where they can crank out more product for sale, and I also think someone willing to sell studio time would be a great service to unlock the full potential of the Realisers.
weijiangnan
New Head-Fier
The user manual contains this passage.
"SVS bass is a sub‐sonic Bass shelving filter that can be deployed when listening to any audio source over the headphones. The Bass gain can be adjusted +/‐12dB while the shelf frequency is fixed 0 to 40Hz. Adjustments to the filter occur in real time and affects all audio channels for both User A and User B equally. "
Is it possible to turn this function on to improve the bass of the headphones?
"SVS bass is a sub‐sonic Bass shelving filter that can be deployed when listening to any audio source over the headphones. The Bass gain can be adjusted +/‐12dB while the shelf frequency is fixed 0 to 40Hz. Adjustments to the filter occur in real time and affects all audio channels for both User A and User B equally. "
Is it possible to turn this function on to improve the bass of the headphones?
Unfortunately, the feature has been eliminated... Stephen said it didn't work correctly.The user manual contains this passage.
"SVS bass is a sub‐sonic Bass shelving filter that can be deployed when listening to any audio source over the headphones. The Bass gain can be adjusted +/‐12dB while the shelf frequency is fixed 0 to 40Hz. Adjustments to the filter occur in real time and affects all audio channels for both User A and User B equally. "
Is it possible to turn this function on to improve the bass of the headphones?
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