thanks for the reply.... I was asking for two reasons... I noticed when comhear was demonstrating the yarra they used the A8 feeding it... I have both a yarra and A8 in bound next week... I am assuming Mark was using the
AIX setup on the A8 for the demo... would be nice to find out a good setup from the A8 into the yarra...
When Comhear was demonstrating the Yarra with the A8, I think that it was a prototype version that had a crosstalk-free mode, which would be appropriate for the A8 output (or any other signal that is already binaural). The current version does not have a crosstalk-free mode, thus it would sound almost as bad as if the A8 output was fed to a regular stereo pair of speakers. In other words, there is no good setup from the A8 into the Yarra at this time.
That is a real bummer. That was what it is was all about.
But it explains the strange first impressions a few pages back that seemed totally unlogical, like turning to surround mode would give better results with binaural recordings? Yeah, I assume like getting 3% instead of 1% of what it would be in cross talk free stereo mode.
One of my Yarra 3dx packages arrived last Friday (3 days ahead of schedule), and I am expecting the second one today. Sadly, I have not even been able to work up enough enthusiasm to open the one that arrived last Friday, because of the general misgivings I have read in the early "first impressions" reports on this site... It is almost as if the Yarra 3DX is a bomb, out of the gate, which makes me wonder what to make of all the excitement around the pre-release prototypes that were demoed at shows, and other internet sites, and inspired me to order two of them...
It is of course good that Comhear are willing to support the product with firmware updates, and I am hoping those will help to elevate the quality of the unit's performance, bringing it back to more decent and acceptable standards, or at least, the standard of the prototype editions that used to thrill "test-drivers" at audio shows.
By the way, what is the best way to contact Yarra customer service in case one needs technical assistance, or some troubleshooting advice? I am hoping their customer service and technical support departments would be at least responsive and helpful, as we try to figure out what the Yarra can really do.
From the support page. They have been very responsive to my inquiries.:
GET HELP If you have a question or need help with your Yarra 3DX please send an email to
Comhear Customer Support at CSR@COMHEAR.COM
Please provide your Name, Serial Number for your Unit, and your email address.
Describe the issue or question that you have and we will follow up asap!
From the support page. They have been very responsive to my inquiries.:
GET HELP If you have a question or need help with your Yarra 3DX please send an email to
Comhear Customer Support at CSR@COMHEAR.COM
Please provide your Name, Serial Number for your Unit, and your email address.
Describe the issue or question that you have and we will follow up asap!
But it explains the strange first impressions a few pages back that seemed totally unlogical, like turning to surround mode would give better results with binaural recordings? Yeah, I assume like getting 3% instead of 1% of what it would be in cross talk free stereo mode.
As stated earlier in the thread, the native binaural and pre-binauralised content I tested, the directional cues were by and large accurate and impressive/immersive, if and only if the Yarra applied its own HRTF processing by engaging the surround mode.
The difference in that particular context between the Yarra (in its present state) in stereo mode vs Surround mode was far greater than “3%” vs “1%”.
Nevertheless, as also previously stated, engaging surround mode in this context also wrecked the fidelity / quality of the binaural audio so I don’t think that particular use case is worth it at present
@SierraMadre : by the way, I didn't mean anything negative about you with my statement, it's just that the cross talk free stereo mode is what I expect to work far better and I didn't know that the Yarra in its current state doesn't have that mode, but apparently a stereo mode that does something different.
@SierraMadre : by the way, I didn't mean anything negative about you with my statement, it's just that the cross talk free stereo mode is what I expect to work far better and I didn't know that the Yarra in its current state doesn't have that mode, but apparently a stereo mode that does something different.
No worries, dude, I actually inadvertently omitted the concluding paragraph of my response to you when structuring it with copy and paste. What I meant to say was that even without cross talk elimination, given that at least cues/positioning are correct when applying double HRTF, perhaps Comhear could still improve the audio quality of binaural content reproduced in the Yarra’s surround mode. After all, provided the cues are correctly positioned (which they seem to be) and provided the audio quality is good, then as long as it works satisfactorily in those respects, how the results were achieved is less important.
In any case, you got me thinking about the situation again and I realised there was one scenario / config for testing that hadn’t occurred to me. I will test and elaborate later. It’s unrelated to cross talk and still involves double HRTF but if my gut feeling is correct then I think there may well be one limited, but at least decent, way of using the Yarra to reproduce native binaural content without compromising audio quality too much. . . .
I have a crazy idea! For the lucky ones who have 2 yarra's: put the two yarra's in front of you, side by side, or maybe even on top of each other is possible. Let's call them yarra 1 and 2.
Use the RCA/cinch stereo inputs, and stereo mode.
Connect nothing to the left RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the left RCA output of your source to the right RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the right RCA output of your source to the left RCA input of yarra 2.
Connect nothing to the right RCA input of yarra 2.
Aim the beams of yarra 1 in such a way that the beam for the right ear goes to your left ear and the beam for the left ear to somewhere on your left where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Aim the beams of yarra 2 in such a way that the beam for the left ear goes to your right ear and the beam for the right ear to somewhere on your right where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Now your left ear will hear the left source channel played over the yarra 1 right beam to your left ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 1 left virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 1 left input).
Now your right ear will hear the right source channel played over the yarra 2 left beam to your right ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 2 right virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 2 right input).
Effectively you now hear a cross talk free rendering of your source. (But there may be some filtering effect).
I have a crazy idea! For the lucky ones who have 2 yarra's: put the two yarra's in front of you, side by side, or maybe even on top of each other is possible. Let's call them yarra 1 and 2.
Use the RCA/cinch stereo inputs, and stereo mode.
Connect nothing to the left RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the left RCA output of your source to the right RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the right RCA output of your source to the left RCA input of yarra 2.
Connect nothing to the right RCA input of yarra 2.
Aim the beams of yarra 1 in such a way that the beam for the right ear goes to your left ear and the beam for the left ear to somewhere on your left where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Aim the beams of yarra 2 in such a way that the beam for the left ear goes to your right ear and the beam for the right ear to somewhere on your right where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Now your left ear will hear the left source channel played over the yarra 1 right beam to your left ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 1 left virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 1 left input).
Now your right ear will hear the right source channel played over the yarra 2 left beam to your right ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 2 right virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 2 right input).
Effectively you now hear a cross talk free rendering of your source. (But there may be some filtering effect).
I am inclined to agree with Erik. Stacking them on top of each other would definitely not work as the output from the respective units would still bleed together in effect even if the beams didn’t directly overlap. Side by side would be better at left/right separating the beams but even then, for the right ear not to hear anything at all of the beam meant for the left ear, the left ear’s beam would need to be drowned out by the right ear’s beam.
The Yarra promo material explaining the beam forming tech starts off with “avoiding cross talk” but later continues with the more toned down “greatly diminishing crosstalk” so I am not sure if there ever was a truly “crosstalk free prototype”. Given the position of the sound bar (away from you in front) I’d imagine there would always be a degree of crosstalk in practice at the environmental level with the issue being taming or masking it rather than truly eliminating it.
Yarra requires surround mode to be engaged (i.e. a second dose of HRTF/ binauralisation to be be applied by the Yarra) in order to accurately render directional audio / positional cues from native binaural content or content that has been pre-binauralised using another device/VSS solution (e.g. Dolby Atmos for Headphone, Creative SBX, Sennheiser GSX, Dolby Virtual X etc.).
However, doing this compromises audio quality, making presentation too bright, forward, thin and metallic, upper mids and highs in particular.
Updated impressions - Binaural Content in Dolby Digital 2.0 sounds decent in Yarra’s surround mode.
My previous impressions were gleaned from testing binaural content fed to the Yarra in 2ch stereo PCM only. It occurred to me to try the same content but rather than fed to the Yarra as stereo PCM, fed to the Yarra as Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo instead. So I set the Xbox to output bitstreamed Dolby Digital and tried a variety of binaural demos on the net (virtual barber shop, Dolby channel’s Atmos demos etc.).
Results were actually decent this time and much better than the PCM scenario mentioned above. Engaging Yarra surround mode when fed with stereo Dolby Digital, audio quality was not overly compromised as with the previous PCM scenario. By comparison, audio was warmer, more substantial and non-fatiguing. Positional cues were correctly placed although not quite as pronounced or precise as previous binaural PCM scenario. Irrespective, the trade-off was more than acceptable to me. I’ll take good directional cues *AND* better audio quality instead of great directional cues + poor audio quality any day.
Drawbacks
The source device must be able to transcode the binaural stereo source content into Dolby Digital format.
NB: Setting the Yarra to stereo mode in this Dolby Digital scenario is still a no-go for binaural content and differs little from just pumping content binauralised for headphones into conventional speakers, directional cues are off. In Yarra’s stereo mode, Virtual barber shop sounds like somebody else’s hair is being cut in front of you, engaging the Yarra’s surround mode is still required (whether feeding the Yarra Dolby Digital stereo or PCM stereo) in order to ensure that it sounds like one’s *own* hair is being cut.
I have a crazy idea! For the lucky ones who have 2 yarra's: put the two yarra's in front of you, side by side, or maybe even on top of each other is possible. Let's call them yarra 1 and 2.
Use the RCA/cinch stereo inputs, and stereo mode.
Connect nothing to the left RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the left RCA output of your source to the right RCA input of yarra 1.
Connect the right RCA output of your source to the left RCA input of yarra 2.
Connect nothing to the right RCA input of yarra 2.
Aim the beams of yarra 1 in such a way that the beam for the right ear goes to your left ear and the beam for the left ear to somewhere on your left where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Aim the beams of yarra 2 in such a way that the beam for the left ear goes to your right ear and the beam for the right ear to somewhere on your right where you hopefully won't hear it (or only very soft).
Now your left ear will hear the left source channel played over the yarra 1 right beam to your left ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 1 left virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 1 left input).
Now your right ear will hear the right source channel played over the yarra 2 left beam to your right ear (including crosstalk from the yarra 2 right virtual speaker, which is silence since there is no signal on yarra 2 right input).
Effectively you now hear a cross talk free rendering of your source. (But there may be some filtering effect).
I’d imagine there would always be a degree of crosstalk in practice at the environmental level with the issue being taming or masking it rather than truly eliminating it.
Ah, I didn't check that. Does it have a stereo 3.5 mm jack for analog in? In that case two cables from 2 x RCA to 3.5 mm jack could have been used (with a source that has RCA outputs).
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