Schiit Audio has a surround synthesizer gadget.

[AlexS]

In 1988 Bob Katz wrote an article for Stereophile titled, “Extraction vs Generation,” in which the DSP-1 is highlighted. It offered both ambience synthesis and ambience recovery. If you knew how to fiddle with it, which is what Bob describes in his piece, you could get it to output mostly recovered ambience.

 

[himey]

I purchased a Syn and have been pretty happy with it. I own multiple monoblock amps, an Oppo 105D

How does it compare to Oppo's DTS NEO:6 mode?

 

[johnnyangel]

That’s an excellent question. Unfortunately I can’t say I ever used the Oppo‘s NEO:6 mode much so I can’t compare knowledgeably. Since it was there “for free” and certainly gave me surround effect, I would’ve used it more, but I didn’t like that you have to have a screen active and go into the setup program to toggle it on and off. (Unless, of course, there actually is a way to do it from the remote that I was too dumb to ever find.)

Also, like some other Oppo owners, I’m just slightly paranoid about keeping mine going (I know that’s dumb since I’m 67 and the 105D is likely to outlive me, plus I have a 103 in reserve). It does tend to run warm and it’s relatively power-consumptive so it’s nice to only have to power it up when I really need to, for SACDs, multichannel FLACs, etc.

 

[himey]

toggle it on and off

This is where the app comes in handy along with tweaking the channel levels.

 

[johnnyangel]

Topic drift here, but yes, I’m aware of the app. Problem is, it crashes most of the time on up-to-date versions of iOS, which are my preference. I wonder if Magnetar or any of the vendors of Oppo/Mediatek clones have any updates that would work.


I still prefer the Syn for the power- and device- saving reasons mentioned above. And my Parasound preamp can adjust levels conveniently from its remote!