[ry_goody]

I have a schiit lyr and schiit bifrost. I think they are really great. But it seems kind of ridiculous to me that they are so large. If a computer can go from desktop to macbook air size, shouldn't audio tech do the same? I assume there has to be something just as good thats smaller.
 
I would ideally like a compact DAC/Amp combo unit. It doesn't have to be portable, but smallish.
 
These would be powering AKG K812 and Audeze LCD-2

 

[Magic77]

I would check out the Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100 DAC. I just bought one recently. It's a portable size and sounds great.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ry_goody /img/forum/go_quote.gif

I have a schiit lyr and schiit bifrost. I think they are really great. But it seems kind of ridiculous to me that they are so large. If a computer can go from desktop to macbook air size, shouldn't audio tech do the same? I assume there has to be something just as good thats smaller.

 

If you build PCs rather than just buy prebuilt Macs, it would be easier to see the problem why those hi-fi equipment don't get any smaller. And it isn't how PCs use non-custom motherboards like even the Mac Pro does now, but all the performance bits require a lot of space for the parts involved as well as cooling.

 

Look at it from this perspective. Your Macbook Air isn't going to run Battlefield 1 or Total War: Warhammer at 4K, minimum 60fps. Heck it's been years since the MBAir 13 had a discrete GPU, and even the Macbook 12 for all its innovations in having a tiny motherboard with storage chips soldered on and surrounded by battery packs only comes with an M7 CPU, at most (and the upcoming Y-series from Intel).

 

Now, while you can build a miniiTX rig the size of a sneaker shoebox with a GTX 1080 and an i7-6700K with decent cooling, you still have to take into account that you can cram active cooling components in there. They can still run quiet, like how graphics cards have Zero Fan Mode now (well, technically, they had it for years, you just have to manually set what GPU chip temperature the fans start spinning at) and you can set a manual fan curve so the CPU fan only starts spinning at 50deg C for example and even then not run like a hair dryer. Not the case for audio amplifiers. As much as one can build a silent enough PC with active cooling, using the same kind of cooling on an amp still add to the noise, and then render such amps undesirable for those who go as far as building a fanless music server that uses the entire PC case as heat sink.

 

In other words, absent active cooling given its noise penalty, cramming components tightly together is a bad idea, at least until they can get fullrange Class D stable on high impedance loads. Those jokes about Rockford Fosgate BBQ Grill amps (they look the part and get hot enough to warm sandwiches) in cars or cooking eggs on the Asgard are real concerns if you want to shrink a high output amp like that, Class A/B or not, to a form factor that you would consider to be the MBAir equivalent to the Lyr's ATX desktop.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by ry_goody /img/forum/go_quote.gif

 

I would ideally like a compact DAC/Amp combo unit. It doesn't have to be portable, but smallish.

 

These would be powering AKG K812 and Audeze LCD-2

 

That said the real problem isn't really so much how little power can be made in such a small form factor but whether you actually need that much. And in this case the LCD-2 with a 100dB sensitivity and moderate 120ohm impedance (neither too high nor too low) likely will not. I've use my Pangea HP101 on an LCD-2 and it's good enough if size is that much of a concern.

 

Alternately, there's the question of how much larger the DAC-HPamp amp is in any other direction vs the Lyr+Bifrost. There's the Woo WA7 which is much smaller in two dimensions, but there's its height (and also it has the tubes sticking out more). Plus I think it uses an external PSU, which while making the total volume not that small, can be positioned off your desk provided you have enough cable. There's also AudioGD's products. The NFB-28 isn't as tall as the Schiit stack and it's also narrower, but it's deeper to the rear. Its high clean output levels however are a lot closer to what the Lyr can do.

 

[penmarker]

Chord Hugo TT is small enough. The Chord Dave is smaller due to its weird shape. Smaller than that would be a Chord Hugo, and then the Mojo.