[L8MDL]

Posted 4 days ago on the Indiegogo comments, from Dr. Mark Waldrep, the main contact person for the campaign:

"The selection of color, power standard and power plug type will be coming shortly. Indiegogo doesn’t do surveys (that was for Kickstarter) but I’ll poll everyone for this information."

 

[AppleheadMay]

Posted 4 days ago on the Indiegogo comments, from Dr. Mark Waldrep, the main contact person for the campaign:

"The selection of color, power standard and power plug type will be coming shortly. Indiegogo doesn’t do surveys (that was for Kickstarter) but I’ll poll everyone for this information."

Thank you, that's good news then.

But it's not a good thing that they can't simply reply that to customers if they get an email.

 

[sander99]

I can say that the people at Yarra show the Demo with one Smyth A8, i listen some binaural demos and was amazing since you dont have earphones and it makes the sound come from different directions!

Do I understand correctly: you heared the Yarra yourself? Could you tell us more about it? (Here in the Yarra thread, otherwise people in the A16 thread might complain again...)

 

[mercury79]

Sharing my impressions of Yarra, i post this on a Smyth topic since it is relative to both:

Yes i listen the Yarra sound bar at los angeles audio show last year, it seems was their first demo they made, the first demo i listen was a binaural audio where a girl whisper "Im at one meter from you, then she said im closer; then says im beside to you" i was really impressed because when she say im beside to you it really feels that was speaking closer to my ear i yell "this is black magic!" shut your mouth and take my money , then i tried the album sgt pepper by the beatles in 5.1 and a night at the opera by queen in 5.1, the guy who show me the yarra ask to me: "did you know whats is this, while he was changing the channels of the audio, from center to left to right to left rear and right???" i saw a piece of hardware that never seen in my life and when i look the brand says Smyth realiser, was the A8! the guy told me that the smyth decodes and send the signal to yarra for send the discrete beams of sound. when i came back to my home i search more about yarra and Smyth then i found that the A16 was in campaign and listen some people who tried before and post their experiences here and with the things i know about it at los angeles, i close my eyes and pull the trigger for the A16, im a crowfounder of yarra too so as many of here im waiting for the big day, i know that the patience will be rewarded so hope to have great news soon!

 

[sander99]

@mlkri:
(I think it is better to discuss this here rather than in the A16 thread)
I found something concerning your doubts in:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...most-advanced-3d-audio-system-in-the/comments
(you may have to push the 'older comments' button on the bottom of the page one or more times):

Comhear Inc. Creator on March 14
@Daniel Bisulca - Content that is already binaualized is ideal for the YARRA 3DX beamforming process. The left and right streams are directed to your ears without additional processing.


Daniel Bisulca on March 13
@creator
How does the yarra handle already binauralized audio such as a 3d audio youtube video?

 

[462429]

@mlkri:
(I think it is better to discuss this here rather than in the A16 thread)
I found something concerning your doubts in:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...most-advanced-3d-audio-system-in-the/comments
(you may have to push the 'older comments' button on the bottom of the page one or more times):

Thank you very much, @sander99, for the very useful links. Explanations of @creator are short and clear. However, they are not quite aligned with each other. First he says PCM to be the best input for Yarra and on another occasion it is already binauralised content which is ideal for Yarra. So, which is better - 'the best' or 'ideal'?!? And why don't they mention neither 'the best' nor 'ideal' input solution in their promotional 'Story' ?
My second concern - how can Yarra know that 2 ch input was already binauralised? And If it takes it as normal stereo, the loudspeakers' output is widespread and the binaural effect is gone.

 

[sander99]

I sent a mail to Mark Waldrep with some questions about this.

 

[Erik Garci]

Thank you very much, @sander99, for the very useful links. Explanations of @creator are short and clear. However, they are not quite aligned with each other. First he says PCM to be the best input for Yarra and on another occasion it is already binauralised content which is ideal for Yarra. So, which is better - 'the best' or 'ideal'?!? And why don't they mention neither 'the best' nor 'ideal' input solution in their promotional 'Story' ?

Here is my understanding...
When he says PCM is better, he is comparing it to Dolby Digital which is lossy. PCM is uncompressed and generally better unless perhaps it was decoded from a lossy format.
When he says binaural content is better, he is comparing it to non-binaural content.

My second concern - how can Yarra know that 2 ch input was already binauralised? And If it takes it as normal stereo, the loudspeakers' output is widespread and the binaural effect is gone.

The Yarra does not know. When it receives any 2-channel input, it merely beams the left channel to your left ear, and the right channel to your right ear. Then your brain interprets any spatial cues in the content. Even regular stereo content has spatial cues, but they are usually more realistic in binaural content.

 

[sander99]

Here is my understanding...
When he says PCM is better, he is comparing it to Dolby Digital which is lossy. PCM is uncompressed and generally better unless perhaps it was decoded from a lossy format.
When he says binaural content is better, he is comparing it to non-binaural content.

The Yarra does not know. When it receives any 2-channel input, it merely beams the left channel to your left ear, and the right channel to your right ear. Then your brain interprets any spatial cues in the content. Even regular stereo content has spatial cues, but they are usually more realistic in binaural content.

All that is my understanding as well. Only when carefully looking at the yarra and kickstarter websites this (the part underlined above) is not stated very clearly, or at least I cannot find it. (Maybe it was told in the kickstarter live event video's? But I cannot find those anymore either.) That is why I decided to doublecheck it by asking Mark Waldrep some questions. I would feel guilty if some people decided to buy a Yarra based on what I thought I knew about it.
Erik, do you remember where exactly you found this information (except from that one question and answer on the kickstarters comments page that I quoted)?

 

[462429]

The Yarra does not know. When it receives any 2-channel input, it merely beams the left channel to your left ear, and the right channel to your right ear. Then your brain interprets any spatial cues in the content. Even regular stereo content has spatial cues, but they are usually more realistic in binaural content.

All that is my understanding as well. Only when carefully looking at the yarra and kickstarter websites this (the part underlined above) is not stated very clearly, or at least I cannot find it. (Maybe it was told in the kickstarter live event video's? But I cannot find those anymore either.) That is why I decided to doublecheck it by asking Mark Waldrep some questions. I would feel guilty if some people decided to buy a Yarra based on what I thought I knew about it.
Erik, do you remember where exactly you found this information (except from that one question and answer on the kickstarters comments page that I quoted)?

Yes, they mentioned 'widely dispersed stereo field', but for something like 'beaming of the stereo input', I'm also not sure ...

 

[Erik Garci]

(Maybe it was told in the kickstarter live event video's? But I cannot find those anymore either.)

https://live.kickstarter.com/comhear-inc/live-stream/yarra-3dx-q-and-a
https://live.kickstarter.com/comhea...live-q-and-a-with-peter-otto-and-mark-waldrep

Erik, do you remember where exactly you found this information (except from that one question and answer on the kickstarters comments page that I quoted)?

Not exactly. Probably in the comments and live streams.

You can read all comments by Comhear at this link (without comments by other people)
https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/yarra3dx/comments

 

[Erik Garci]

Comhear Inc. Creator on September 15
@robert - Surround sound sources are "binauralized" to maintain the proper immersive 3D localization and then projected using an array of small drivers to multiple listeners left and right ears. Each listener receives a full surround experience.

Comhear Inc. Creator on September 28
@Marco - If you connect the YARRA 3DX from a device that outputs multichannel audio (HDMI or USB), the unit will binauralize it and deliver it to your ears. You will be fully immersed in surround sound as if there were a full set of 5.1 speakers in the room. If you connect a stereo sound source — like the output of your iPhone or a turntable phono preamp, it doesn't magically convert the sound into surround. It does enhance the depth and imagery of traditional stereo because of the cross talk reduction.

Comhear Inc. Creator on October 8
@erik - The studio in West Los Angeles is my AIX Studio. It's been used by dozens of Smyth Realiser owners for measurements. The YARRA 3DX uses a "generic" HRTF for its binauralizing process...the combination with an A16 would defer to that device for a personalized binaural HRTF process. The YARRA 3DX would only deliver the sound to your ears instead of headphones.

Comhear Inc. Creator on October 9
@conrad Yonosenada - the YARRA 3DX only reproduced immersive 3D audio if the source material is multichannel like a 5.1 movie or music mix or a real-time game. If stereo material is input to the analog input, the YARRA 3DX will deliver a very wide and deep stereo image but not surround.

Comhear Inc. Creator on October 23
@Safwan Amin - Etienne is right. A stereo signal will remain a stereo signal but it is mapped into a "sound field" that copies the sound from a set of stereo speakers — much bigger sound than just the sound bar. Stereo sound amazing through the YARRA 3DX.

Comhear Inc. Creator on November 1
@Daniel Bisulca - The YARRA 3DX sound bar sounds really great on stereo material because it creates a sound field modeled on two large speakers in a space larger than the bar itself. With minimal crosstalk, the effect is very impressive.

 

[L8MDL]

FWIW they dropped multiple HDMI inputs and it will be delivered with a single HDMI input.

 

[Dr. AIX]

I regret not visiting Head-Fi.org earlier. I've been a member here for a long time but haven't visited or posted. I own and run AIX Records and operate AIX Studios in Los Angeles — many Smyth customers have been measured in my room (with great results). About 16 months ago, a long term friend from college (we both attended Cal Arts in the 1980s) showed me what he and some graduate students had developed at UCSD. It was a beamforming sound bar that could reproduce a 5.1 surround sound field without headphones. When I heard a few of my own "stage" perspective 5.1 mixes through the commercial version of the YARRA 3DX, I was blown away. It really works...basically a surround sound field (any immersive sound field) delivered binaurally to your ears without headphones. He asked if I would like to get involved with the company that was trying to bring the patented technology to market. The company, Comhear Inc, based in San Diego is basically a licensing play. But Peter (the CSO and my old friend) and the former CEO and I decided it would be cool to develop a consumer sound bar that uses the MyBeam™ technology. So we went to work, developed a brand, a design, and built a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money to produce them, It has been tremendously successful. We've raised over $1,000,000 and are on track to begin delivering units in June.

I demoed the YARRA 3DX at the LA Audio Show using my Smyth A8 as the binauralizer. The sound bar took the analog binaural output from the Symth box and delivered left and right discrete audio signals (minimal crosstalk) to listeners. What's cool about the Smyth box is the ability to "solo" the individual virtual speakers. When asked where sound is coming from, listeners would point over their shoulder — and this was using my PRIR. The YARRA 3DX can internally decode Dolby Digital and APT X HD signals and output a properly binauralized surround sound field. There are digital inputs (HDMI, TOSlink, and USB) and analog I/O — stereo input and headphones out. The binauralizer can be active or turned off, which allows stereo programming to pass through unprocessed.

The Indiegogo campaign is coming to a close very soon. The project manager and management believe interest is waning. If anyone is interested in getting one, now is the time to go to Indiegogo and search for YARRA 3DX. I'll be glad to answer any questions about the technology, application, or system. As a big fan of surround music, this is an inexpensive solution that works very well. I have one sitting in front of me as I listen and work.

 

[AppleheadMay]

I bought two fo them to connect to the A16, one for under my monitor and one for under my big screen also attached to the computer.
I'll connect both to the same sub, a B&W DB4S, I'm not using the subs that come with the Yarra.