I'm surprised every time I hear someone say this thing works great. I signed up for a pre-order because I was very enamored with the Smyth product when I demoed it at Axpona. I was hoping, from positive press that this would be a mini Smyth. Mark Henniger from AVSforum even promoted it as such based on his experience with their product launch demo and the inner ear measurements.
Well the photograph version of this does't work - or at least doesn't work for my face/ears.
I've tried it with Sennheiser HD-598, HD650, Phillips SHP-9500 and X2-HR and the related DSP match in the software.
All sound like crap. I must have tried to capture my face and ear pictures a dozen times in hopes something was wrong. It's still wrong. I tried two different android phones too - just in case it was the phone camera. My friend tried mapping his head with his Google Pixel phone and he thought it was garbage too.
It works fine, even great perhaps, as simple PC headset amp IMO. That's what I use it for, and the only reason I kept it, but the spatial sound function is crap. In surround mode it sounds like the cheapest 'home theater in a box' system you could find in a k-mart clearance isle, played back in a small tile bathroom. It's worthless for almost anything except just turning it off and using it as a compact little stereo headset amplifier. Since it's USB it removes any ground noise that you might get otherwise by plugging into a sound card or front audio port on your PC. For that usecase, it's size, and it's convenience, it gets an A. It seems powerful enough for any of the headphones I've tested with plenty of headroom to spare. For instance I usually am in the mid 30 range (of 100) on the windows PC volume meter with my headphones.
But for surround sound representation, it's so bad it's not even worth the time it took me to write this review.
. I'd still buy it but only for gaming if it works better than Atmos. I guess I'll wait for more reviews about it on gaming.
