New *Surround Processing* For Cans

Ron Party

WBF Founding Member
Apr 30, 2010
2,457
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0
Oakland, CA
http://www.3d60.co.uk/

The new album by David Gilmour and The Orb will be coming out in multiple formats, including CD, download, 180 gram vinyl, and, in a special 2 CD package which will contain an extra disc, featuring an alternative mix of the album in the new 3D60™ process, which creates a 360-degree sound experience when heard on headphones, using stereo tracks without the need for any special audio equipment.

Sounds like fun. Looks like I'm going to have to pick up a few different formats of this new album. And, it's David Gilmour! That'll work.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Smyth stuff is pretty neat stuff. It not not only simulates surround experience, but also the sound of your speakers and the room! It is uncanny to put on the headphones, take them off and listen to the speakers as if nothing had changed!
 

Johnny Vinyl

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
May 16, 2010
8,570
51
38
Calgary, AB
http://www.3d60.co.uk/

The new album by David Gilmour and The Orb will be coming out in multiple formats, including CD, download, 180 gram vinyl, and, in a special 2 CD package which will contain an extra disc, featuring an alternative mix of the album in the new 3D60™ process, which creates a 360-degree sound experience when heard on headphones, using stereo tracks without the need for any special audio equipment.

Sounds like fun. Looks like I'm going to have to pick up a few different formats of this new album. And, it's David Gilmour! That'll work.

I just read about this yesterday and looks like a buy for me. And as you said...it's David Gilmour!:D

John
 

bromide

New Member
Aug 20, 2012
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0
I was interested in this for my parents. The only problem is it imitates your room. So my parents have mostly mid frequencies coming out of a crappy built in speaker in the TV, in a large room with lots of solid surfaces, and poor dialog intelligibility... $3600 of advanced technology can accurately reproduce that experience for them. This is the one example where a pre-pro with different acoustic "settings" would have real application. Still no interest in simulating my favorite recording at the bottom of the ocean, but why don't they take samples of Lucas Film mixing environment so we can watch Star Wars and truly hear it the way the mixing artists intended? Or sample Paramount, other studios, or some ultra highend home theater.

I guess I don't get what someone with a $50,000+ audio system using conventional speakers would want with a pair of headphones that simulate what they already have. Same for someone with a crappy system. The value of simulating something is to experience something you don't have.
 

Kal Rubinson

Well-Known Member
May 4, 2010
2,360
697
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NYC
www.stereophile.com
I guess I don't get what someone with a $50,000+ audio system using conventional speakers would want with a pair of headphones that simulate what they already have. Same for someone with a crappy system. The value of simulating something is to experience something you don't have.
1. It does not have to imitate your room but can be set up to reproduce/simulate the sound of any setup and the box has multiple memories so that one can choose which setup to use.
2. Smyth has arranged to calibrate the system to reproduce the sound of mastering studios or other fine systems for their users.
3. Having the facility to reproduce one's own system, presuming it is a good one, allows one to listen to it at times and in places where it would otherwise disturb others or be impossible.
3a. Mastering engineers who rent studios by the hour can simulate that experience with the Smyth and greatly reduce costly rental expenses.
4. All this is in the literature and review: http://www.stereophile.com/content/music-round-45
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
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Too expensive and too complicated, but the concept is awesome. They need to sample a few mastering suites and some top-level surround systems and build this into a chip that they can sell for $3. Then they could sell countless millions of them to go in every AV receiver, every iPod, every headphone amp on the planet, completely transform the personal listening experience, and become unimaginably rich. That'll happen when Apple buys Smyth. In the meantime we get a tweaky unnecessarily complicated mess aimed at preserving the listening experience you already have after the missus goes to bed, for $3600. I'll wait awhile on this one and I love headphones.

Soon the kid with an iPod in his pocket and a pair of good IEMs on the subway will potentially have better sound than most audiophiles (how many of us have mastering suite quality rooms, after all?). Remember that thread that recently asked if the high end would survive into the next generation? Probably not.

Tim
 

Kal Rubinson

Well-Known Member
May 4, 2010
2,360
697
1,700
NYC
www.stereophile.com
Too expensive and too complicated, but the concept is awesome. They need to sample a few mastering suites and some top-level surround systems and build this into a chip that they can sell for $3. Then they could sell countless millions of them to go in every AV receiver, every iPod, every headphone amp on the planet, completely transform the personal listening experience, and become unimaginably rich.
They have been talking about this for years.
 

FrantzM

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
6,455
29
405
Too expensive and too complicated, but the concept is awesome. They need to sample a few mastering suites and some top-level surround systems and build this into a chip that they can sell for $3. Then they could sell countless millions of them to go in every AV receiver, every iPod, every headphone amp on the planet, completely transform the personal listening experience, and become unimaginably rich. That'll happen when Apple buys Smyth. In the meantime we get a tweaky unnecessarily complicated mess aimed at preserving the listening experience you already have after the missus goes to bed, for $3600. I'll wait awhile on this one and I love headphones.

Soon the kid with an iPod in his pocket and a pair of good IEMs on the subway will potentially have better sound than most audiophiles (how many of us have mastering suite quality rooms, after all?). Remember that thread that recently asked if the high end would survive into the next generation? Probably not.

Tim

There is such a precedent in Video processing. Guy Faroudja developped a video processor which made it possible for low-def interlaced pictures to look very good, the LD 1. He did a lo more than that but Videophiles will remember the Faroudja Line Doubler we all dreamed about back then , which was a requisite for high End Home Theater systems. It cost 20K, later Faroudja licensed its product and technology and they found their ways in all kind of video products.. I am sure he made much more money this way than selling 20 K processor to a few well heeled individuals.. This model could really work .. The question remains : Why hasn't it been tried yet?
 

Phelonious Ponk

New Member
Jun 30, 2010
8,677
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0
They have been talking about this for years.

They've tried things like it for years. There have been a couple of pretty good headphone surround soundsimulators. There have been a few pro audio headphone amps that have attempted to simulate the staging of near field monitors so engineers could mix in the field. This is different. This is modeling, and the technology for modeling complex audio has made huge progress in the last decade. Modeling of tube guitar amplifiers and rare vintage mics and mic pres has gotten incredibly good, and incredibly cheap. I played an amp at Guitar center a couple of weeks ago that had a model of a vintage Fender deluxe reverb that was so good I would have been completely happy with it, and I've owned three of the real thing. I'll probably buy one. $275, <30 lbs. mighty attractive when the gig is up a flight of stairs.

All of that is to say that the technology is ready, the time for something like this has come. I won't expect audiophiles to go for it, but that kid with the iPod and the IEMs? He'll be going "high end." he'll be carrying it around in his pocket. :)

Tim
 

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