headphonegeek

The Smyth Realiser is limited to 24bit/48K. I think I read in the manual or on the head-fi thread that OOYH is 32bit/48K. I have not heard the Geek either, but "3D Awesomizer" sounds like it might be a cross-feed function. Who knows, but I am pretty sure it will not support 7.1 channels of audio. It's a two channel DAC/amp.

I prefer speakers. To me the sound seems more like real life in that the sound is coming from in front of you, not direct to your ears. People often speak of "imaging" when talking about how well a pair of headphones works. To me, there is just no comparison when you talk about imaging when comparing speakers to headphones. With that said, headphones are so much more convenient. That's why I like headphones too. This is why I am always searching for a way to have the sound of speakers but with the convenience of headphones like the Smyth Realiser or other speaker virtualization software. To me that's the best of both worlds. Plus you can get surround sound for watching movies that way.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I was referring to the review that this thread is about, the Realiser review. I should have written: "Although I have been interested in the Realiser for some time, I never saw the above Realiser review before. Great review, 'input username here'!" Separately, I thought that anyone interested in the Realiser might find Out Of Your Head interesting too since they are similar. Personally I am interested in any audio/speaker virtualization technology. That's why I posted it. Not meant to be spam...

Although I have been interested in the Realiser for some time, I never saw this review before. Great review! Just curious if any of you have heard of Out Of Your Head software? http://fongaudio.com I tried the trial version and it worked pretty well for my ears.

I was able to get it to work with JRiver, no problem. Rather than retype the steps, I found a thread over at Head-Fi that has some more instructions regarding getting it to work: Out Of Your Head - new virtual surround simulator It looks like the creator of the software is posting on that thread. You might want to ask there if you can't get it to work.

There's no way to easily copy and paste the list, but the trial version has about 20 presets. You can just scroll through the list. You do have to download and install trial in order to see the list though. Wait, I just found all the presets in the install directory. They are each separate files. To get the descriptions, you have to run the trial and there are descriptions in the list of presets.

That's cool, but the prices seem high compared to the USA retail prices especially since Stax lowered a lot of their MSRP's not too long ago. For example: Stax SR-009 Canada $5495 CAD USA $4450 USD (That is not a discounted price, that is MSRP.) Not sure if the price discrepancy is just a US vs. Canada thing.

Thanks for the tip DigiPete! Wow! I don't have a 5.1 speaker setup and I don't think I've ever heard multi-channel music on a high end surround system. Using Out Of Your Head and JRiver, I was able to play back a few "Surround 5.1, DSD 64" files and they sounded amazing. I could hear the speakers in front and behind me pretty clearly using just my Vmoda M-80 headphones. I also played a DVD movie (Star Trek Into Darkness) using Cyberlink PowerDVD and Out Of Your Head. Audiophile music aside, watching a movie was just fun! Again, I don't have a home theater setup, so being able to watch the movie in 5.1 surround as really cool. I like the "Magical" speakers for the movies since that preset seems to have a lot of bass. I assume they are some kind of Magico speakers. Hearing 6 Magico speakers to watch a movie is cool. I think I am going buy it just for watching movies.

Hmm... I only heard it at the meet, but finally found some time to try it on my laptop using an HRT Microstreamer and a pair of VModa M80's. I thought it worked pretty well. It was a little disconcerting at first since my brain couldn't figure out what was going on, but one thing that they did at the demo was to mute one of the channels by clicking on the little speaker icons in their control panel. Once I did that, the localization of a single speaker was very apparent. So when I tried it at home, I did the same thing and could immediately hear the sound coming from a speaker out in front of me. Then when I turned back on both channels, my brain was "calibrated" and to me it sounded like there were two speakers in the room in front of me. Another thing they did was to click on the "bypass" preset (at the very bottom of the list) and then switch back. So when I did that, I could hear a dramatic difference in the location of the sound source. In bypass, everything just collapsed into my head. With an effect enabled, the sound moved out in front of me. I am going to fire up a 5.1 DVD using JRiver and see how that sounds. They did that at the demo and it was pretty impressive.

There are a few impressions on the Head-Fi thread about the San Diego meet. I think a few people even got fooled and thought the sound was coming from the speakers even though the speakers were not even plugged in. I heard it and was very impressed. It was better than any of the other headphone surround software/hardware I have heard. I have also heard the Realiser and I would say it was very similar in quality from what I can remember, very convincing. One of their listening stations had their software running on a Macbook using Parallels to do Windows emulation. It actually worked. They had JRiver running in Windows 8 in Parallels on the Mac.

I've been pretty happy with my AK120. I like the small size. I even use it as a portable USB DAC for my laptop. Sound is incredible. I guess it should be for that price though.

If you don't have the cash for a Realiser, I saw this software demoed at a recent headphone meet - Out Of Your Head . Seems to work like a Realiser. Other than that, I never considered headphones to really have any imaging compared to speakers.