Man, the Smyths really must think users are absolute morons.
James just replied to the email I sent on Friday about my unit still malfunctioning, and his reply regarding my unit not correctly interfacing with Windows via USB was "make sure you are downloading the USB drivers, and as the Realiser will only properly use specific programs within Windows, try using Reaper and let me know".
This is like the fourth time he's told me to download and install the drivers, despite telling him repeatedly that it's something I already had done from day one. Across three different PCs, one of which I did a completely fresh install of Windows just to test it out. This is the same issue I brought to his attention June of last year, and he told me to do the same thing then as now.
When I brought it with me to the studio, it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was in fact a hardware problem, not a user issue, and I've told James this multiple times as well. Since he seems to either forget, or not even read what is written, this time I sent him pictures with bright red arrows highlighting the steps I took, from downloading the drivers, to installing them, to the errors Windows gives.
I am pretty confident that when he told me my USB problems were "fixed" that all he did was assume that since they changed one of the boards, that it would have fixed the problem, and that the unit he actually used to test various programs out on Windows was a test unit that they always use. Because had they actually hooked mine up to a PC, they would have clearly seen it does not work.
That's not even the biggest issue with mine either. I could live without ever hooking it up to my PC if my unit could correctly utilize more than eighteen speakers. James said that Stephen was "investigating this as he wrote me" whatever that means. Unless they have a sample that is actually malfunctioning, it's kind of hard to diagnose, especially if you don't actually know what you are looking for. You know, like previously when many users were reporting the "no sound" bug until switching to a default preset? They claimed for the longest time that they couldn't reproduce it.
If you are using a listening room that uses more than sixteen channels, I highly suggest you use the 360 Atmos demo to see that your unit is actually functioning properly. I didn't even know mine was not working as intended until eight months after having a twenty-three channel PRIR. Using Test Mode doesn't show any issues, it's only during the decoding process where the A16 isn't properly utilizing all of the speakers.
360 Atmos demo