Spring update! (Or Autumn, or Fall, YMMV)

[Overture]

Ahoy all!

Been a while since I posted anything so here's a quick update as to where we're at.

1) No, we still haven't gone into production on the next lot of Surround Masters. Some of you may be aware but we were rather badly bad-debted earlier this year and we're still playing catch up on our cash flow.
As soon as we have some news there we'll post it, and put up pre-orders.

1a) Decoder evaluation kits -same as above. The design has been refreshed / updated with a few QOL bits and pieces, just waiting to get our ducks in a row.

2) Have been giving some thought to what a Surround Master V4 might look like. So far the only thing that comes to mind is to try and have some form of digital out (i.e. HDMI) - doing that ourselves involves a prohibitively expensive yearly license fee, but we may be able to get a licensed third-party to design an add-in board that goes in the case, thus getting around the problem. That would be an iterative update. The other possibility is to pivot completely away from the physical knob style and put a screen at the front with touch controls, so that it can have things like VU meters, spectrograms, vectorscope etc. Only thought is that might take away from the simplicity of the design, which was important. Would a remote add any value to the product or is that also getting too far away from the simplicity of it? And no, we haven't forgotten about the possibility of CD-4. Any other suggestions / gripes are welcome in the replies.

3) Pre-amp update: The de-hiss stuff is working very well now, and I've been bashing my head against the de-pop / de-click / de-crackle stuff. De-pop is relatively straight forward (emphasis on "relatively") but declick and especially decrackle are insanely difficult to do without affecting the source material too much, in near-real-time (which means no machine-learning analysis / interpolation) - I don't think there is a perfect solution in this tech / price bracket but I think I can see the beginnings of the idea of a possibility of a glimmer of a spark of light at the very very far end of the seemingly infinite tunnel.

Hope everyone is well and ok, particularly anyone on the South East Coast of the USA at the moment, if hurricane Helene has affected you, I hope you're being well supported.

Peace, love and mung-beans,

~Captain Dave

 

[J. PUPSTER]

CD-4.... YES!!!!

Stay frosty Cap'n

 

[Soundfield]

Hi Dave. Thanks for the interesting update. I've some thoughts on a possible SM V4. Any gripes herein should be read in the context of coming from a long-time SM fan (I've got three)-
1. Yes, I'm sure the addition of HDMI would be widely welcomed if the route to avoiding the licencing penalties is viable.
2. Don't stray too far from the simplicity of the existing SM. I'm sure that's a key part of its appeal. A lot of the stuff you talk about like graphical displays touch controls, meters etc. are pushing it into the realm (and price bracket) of your long talked about Super Quad Preamp. I'd suggest that is a very different market.
3. For broadly similar reasons I would strongly argue against the inclusion of CD-4 in the SM. Added cost and very limited appeal I'd wager (if you thought matrix decoding niche...!). What proportion of matrix users also want CD-4 ? - vanishingly small I'd guess. Do it as a standalone unit by all means (if your market research indicates there is a market which could even recover your development and tooling costs) - or again leave it for the Super Quad Preamp.
4. What would I definitely change? -
(a) I will beat Sonik to suggesting this one (!) - include a proper synthesis mode as he has long suggested. Frankly the Involve decode alone is not the greatest stereo to quad extractor, particularly on material of limited stereo width.
(b) Add a real master volume control. I've never understood Chucky's advice to use the input level control for this function - it's just a bodge. The individual speaker level controls are also more of a ornament than of value (have never adjusted mine). I'd actually reduce the main speaker controls down to just two - Master Volume and Front / Rear Balance (you could add L/R balance if you really wanted too).
5. Improve it by making it do what it does even better and broaden its appeal by making it simpler! If you try and make it all things to all men it will satisfy no one and cost the earth. Cheers.

Keep a sharp look out Capn!