Realiser A8

Overwhelmingly, serious music listing is done through speakers and much less through headphones. This is despite the fact that distortion, frequency response and efficiency of headphones can be much, much better than speakers for less costs. One factor is that sound stage and room acoustics are not well reproduced with headphones, due to the lack of cross correlation of the L and R sound sources in the L and R ears. In the past there have been attempts to rectify this with frequency-dependent cross-talk circuits, but success has been limited. With the advent of fast and low-cost DSProcessors it is now possible to actually record the complete acoustics of room, speakers and Head Related Transfer Function, and emulate in-room listening to speakers over headphones. The Smyth Realiser A8 is such a unit, and Jan Didden and Stuart Yaniger set out to explore how well the A8 fulfilled its task. Although both authors are generally very critical about inflated and unsubstantiated claims, their conclusion was that the A8 does what it is supposed to do extremely well.