[Defiant00]

I just noticed the Loki is discontinued and it seems that no schiit product supports DSD at all. 
I know DSD is not some awesome revolution, but currently I am running a Marantz with DSD and subsequently acquired about 150 DSD albums. 
When I move back to the USA I definitely planning on putting together a Schiit rig, but.. no DSD support? Will any 3rd gen Schiit DACs offer it out of the box, or have a DSD upgrade card? 

Since basically no one bought the first one (apparently it took up until a few months ago to sell the first run of them), they've said that they won't be doing any more DSD unless it suddenly becomes more prevalent. You can always convert it to PCM on the fly if you end up with a DAC that doesn't support DSD.

 

[glassmonkey]

  I just noticed the Loki is discontinued and it seems that no schiit product supports DSD at all. 
I know DSD is not some awesome revolution, but currently I am running a Marantz with DSD and subsequently acquired about 150 DSD albums. 
When I move back to the USA I definitely planning on putting together a Schiit rig, but.. no DSD support? Will any 3rd gen Schiit DACs offer it out of the box, or have a DSD upgrade card? 

My answer would be don't use a Schiit DAC if you like DSD (I really like DSD, and generally prefer it to PCM). Schiit doesn't like DSD, and thinks you are a bit silly for liking it, but will try to appease you with an incomplete product like the Loki. I feel like the Loki was a flawed design that didn't do what consumers wanted, which is why it had absolutely anaemic sales and is now discontinued. Loki forces you to switch DACs constantly if you want to listen to DSD or have two DACs hooked up at the same time, which is annoying.  The Loki came off as 'here's what you guys asked for, see it's not that great, don't ask again.' Instead of improving a product practically designed to fail, they took its failure as confirmation that there was no market.  I wouldn't hold your breath for Schiit to change their opinion on DSD, you'll quickly suffocate.
 
Schiit can hear and engineer sound better than most consumers or run of the mill audiophiles, but many consumers just want the music they own to play when they want to play it without having to go through a needless ritual, whether on their $200 or $2000 DAC. I don't know why Schiit doesn't want these folks' money. Making consumers jump through hoops because you've decided you just don't like a format is dumb. There are many fantastic DACs out there that sound excellent and play DSD at all kinds of price points, don't feel like you need to get a Schiit.
 
I've been very very impressed with the sound of Schiit gear, but I'm not impressed with their disdain for DSD consumers. It comes off as very elitist to say that DSD is a fad (sales are expanding, as is available hardware to play it), and to tell consumers who have bought DSD that you don't really care about if they can play it with a Schiit DAC. Schiit buys tons of DSD capable DAC chips, they're just too stubborn to implement them in their gear and provide a product that many of their fans would like to see. Schiit's rotten attitude towards DSD really turns me off as a consumer.
 
If you must have a Schiit DAC, I recommend using software conversion to get the signal to PCM or DSD (if finding a second hand Loki). JRiver includes this feature in their DSP studio. You can convert DSD files to play as 24/192 (or 24/96 if that is where your DAC tops out) or convert all PCM to DSD64 (where the Loki tops out). I imagine other software also have this feature, but I'm not using them.

 

[aamer23]

  My answer would be don't use a Schiit DAC if you like DSD (I really like DSD, and generally prefer it to PCM). Schiit doesn't like DSD, and thinks you are a bit silly for liking it, but will try to appease you with an incomplete product like the Loki. I feel like the Loki was a flawed design that didn't do what consumers wanted, which is why it had absolutely anaemic sales and is now discontinued. Loki forces you to switch DACs constantly if you want to listen to DSD or have two DACs hooked up at the same time, which is annoying.  The Loki came off as 'here's what you guys asked for, see it's not that great, don't ask again.' Instead of improving a product practically designed to fail, they took its failure as confirmation that there was no market.  I wouldn't hold your breath for Schiit to change their opinion on DSD, you'll quickly suffocate.
 
Schiit can hear and engineer sound better than most consumers or run of the mill audiophiles, but many consumers just want the music they own to play when they want to play it without having to go through a needless ritual, whether on their $200 or $2000 DAC. I don't know why Schiit doesn't want these folks' money. Making consumers jump through hoops because you've decided you just don't like a format is dumb. There are many fantastic DACs out there that sound excellent and play DSD at all kinds of price points, don't feel like you need to get a Schiit.
 
I've been very very impressed with the sound of Schiit gear, but I'm not impressed with their disdain for DSD consumers. It comes off as very elitist to say that DSD is a fad (sales are expanding, as is available hardware to play it), and to tell consumers who have bought DSD that you don't really care about if they can play it with a Schiit DAC. Schiit buys tons of DSD capable DAC chips, they're just too stubborn to implement them in their gear and provide a product that many of their fans would like to see. Schiit's rotten attitude towards DSD really turns me off as a consumer.
 
If you must have a Schiit DAC, I recommend using software conversion to get the signal to PCM or DSD (if finding a second hand Loki). JRiver includes this feature in their DSP studio. You can convert DSD files to play as 24/192 (or 24/96 if that is where your DAC tops out) or convert all PCM to DSD64 (where the Loki tops out). I imagine other software also have this feature, but I'm not using them.

yes it was under developed, their reason was that they can get PCM to sound as good and unless DSD becomes mainstream they don't want to develop it. I like the sound of DSD but this multibit DAC sound just as good 

 

[Baldr]

I have neither contempt for nor consider DSD users silly.  I have no problem with them at all, actually.  As I have written elsewhere, DSD capabilities have been included in the majority of Delta Sigma (cookbook) DAC chips.  There are many software DSD to PCM playback solutions to decode DSD as well built in to most software Mac and PC players.  Since DSD remains a playback medium for 1% of users, and as well as there are many, many available solutions for DSD playback available, I consider my time far better spent catering to the 99%.
 
My real problem with DSD is the fact that it is a mechanism to resell your existing music in yet another incompatible format.  In the last 100 years of audio, that has only really succeeded twice:  the first was vinyl to CD, and the second was physical CD to stream/download.  The two times that happened, it had full support and cooperation of all media providers.  This is not the case for DSD.
 
Other attempts to resell music libraries include, but are not limited to, reel to reel tape, cassette tape, elcaset tape, mini-discs, 4-track cartridges, 8 track cartridges, quadraphonic LPs, and others which I forget.  This was done without the full support and cooperation of all media providers.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
 
My opinion is that PCM at its best is better than DSD at its best.  That is why I build what I do.  There are others with different opinions who build DSD d to a converters.
 
The Loki was not a failure - we sold 1000 units in two years.  It was intended to be a cheap DSD solution.  At the time it was built, I knew DSD was destined to eventually fail.  The point is that we sold many, many times more Modis over the same period of time.  DSD is a marginal market sector which is rapidly vanishing into insignificance.  

 

[glassmonkey]

  I have neither contempt for nor consider DSD users silly.  I have no problem with them at all, actually.  As I have written elsewhere, DSD capabilities have been included in the majority of Delta Sigma (cookbook) DAC chips.  There are many software DSD to PCM playback solutions to decode DSD as well built in to most software Mac and PC players.  Since DSD remains a playback medium for 1% of users, and as well as there are many, many available solutions for DSD playback available, I consider my time far better spent catering to the 99%.
 
My real problem with DSD is the fact that it is a mechanism to resell your existing music in yet another incompatible format.  In the last 100 years of audio, that has only really succeeded twice:  the first was vinyl to CD, and the second was physical CD to stream/download.  The two times that happened, it had full support and cooperation of all media providers.  This is not the case for DSD.
 
Other attempts to resell music libraries include, but are not limited to, reel to reel tape, cassette tape, elcaset tape, mini-discs, 4-track cartridges, 8 track cartridges, quadraphonic LPs, and others which I forget.  This was done without the full support and cooperation of all media providers.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
 
My opinion is that PCM at its best is better than DSD at its best.  That is why I build what I do.  There are others with different opinions who build DSD d to a converters.
 
The Loki was not a failure - we sold 1000 units in two years.  It was intended to be a cheap DSD solution.  At the time it was built, I knew DSD was destined to eventually fail.  The point is that we sold many, many times more Modis over the same period of time.  DSD is a marginal market sector which is rapidly vanishing into insignificance.  

In other attempts to resell music libraries, the key one to this question was forgotten: SACD. The strict controls on SACD ripping is why DSD has not succeeded as well as it could. if SACD were rippable by non-arcane means, we'd have a different picture here. I believe that computer ripping will happen as soon as Sony-Philips patent control expires, which is very soon. I fundamentally disagree that DSD is destined to fail. There are many niche markets that succeed for generations. Vinyl was supposed to be dead, too, same with cassette tapes. If the argument is about the proportion of the market, all the audiophile gear manufacturers should abandon hope now, because lo-res streaming and downloads are where it's at in the music market, most listeners haven't even heard a file above CD quality and many are actively eliminating even that level of quality from their collections.
 
With regards to Loki sales, 1000 units in two years is not a failure and its very impressive, given the product limitations. That Schiit sold more Modis isn't a surprise, the Modi is $50 (33%) cheaper and plays the most common format of audio available (PCM). By not allowing the Loki to play PCM, its sales were automatically nerfed. If one wants to seriously offer people a DAC that is capable of giving people the best (or even a taste) of both worlds in a user-friendly set-up, they'd build a setup with two signal paths (one for DSD one for PCM), with something similar to the switch on the Loki built in, and with full DSD capabilities built in (meaning Native and above DSD64). The words above do nothing to convey an intention to make Loki have any mass appeal. I stand by my sentiment that the Loki was an offer meant to appease the request for DSD from Schiit fans while rebuking them for making the request and thus allowing engineers to get back to designing the PCM circuits they like to design.
 
The Loki was not a serious attempt at getting people to try DSD, because Schiit doesn't think people should bother with DSD. You may not mean to say DSD users are 'silly' but the quoted pronouncements about DSD's fate paint a picture of DSD consumers as people foolishly deciding to go down with a sinking ship when there are perfectly functional life rafts available. Not only that, they could have flown across the Atlantic instead of taking a rusty boat. That is a pretty 'silly' image. Disdain may be strong, and your choices seem to have a lot to do with what you like to design--more power to you, I've got friends who go crazy for redbook NOS DACs-there's room for everyone--but it never seemed like the Loki was an honest effort at capturing the mainstream. It would have been more honest to say we aren't ever going to do it, than to do a half-hearted job that was clearly half-hearted and sold largely because the price of DSD capable DACs was still high at the time of introduction. It's a bit of a strange case: a bold experiment where the experimenters really had no interest in the outcomes and didn't even really want to do the experiment.
 
I got another DSD capable DAC for $25 recently (I now own 4 DSD capable DACs and will have 2 more in the next few months), and it sounds pretty good (no critical listening yet), plays DSD128  natively, and also plays PCM with no pop switch problems. I bet the Loki sounds better, but not even 3 times better and I highly doubt the Loki sounds as good as my Pulse X-Infinity. The hardware for DSD has legs, and the format delivers the goods sonically. I hope that @gr34td3str0y3r finds a DAC that meets their needs, whether it has DSD or not.

 

[gr34td3str0y3r]

 I hope that @gr34td3str0y3r finds a DAC that meets their needs, whether it has DSD or not.

I have DSD DAC. My Marantz. Its fantastic! End game for me. But I use it at work. 
I only have a Objective Dac at home. 
What I want is Bitfrost with built in DSD support. Schiit&s stuff is fantastic and I really want to build a Schiit stack. But no DSD support is holding me back. I am not ready to build a stack now, I just bougt a LD Mark IV SE and HD650s. but maybe in a year or two I want to upgrade my home setup. 

 

[Currawong]

You could always put regular music into Onkyo HF Player on a phone, which has DSD 5.6 up-sampling.  Then you'll get the same "sound" with your DSD DACs without having to deal with the storage space of DSD. IMO the reason DSD sounds different from PCM has nothing to do with it being DSD, but because the PCM filters on a lot of DACs are the relatively poor ones that come with the DA converters built in. Again, IMO, this becomes very apparent after using a good filter implementation, either something like iZotope up-sampling on a computer or one designed by someone very talented (such as Mike). 

 

 

[glassmonkey]

  I have DSD DAC. My Marantz. Its fantastic! End game for me. But I use it at work. 
I only have a Objective Dac at home. 
What I want is Bitfrost with built in DSD support. Schiit&s stuff is fantastic and I really want to build a Schiit stack. But no DSD support is holding me back. I am not ready to build a stack now, I just bougt a LD Mark IV SE and HD650s. but maybe in a year or two I want to upgrade my home setup. 

The Objective DAC is a fine DAC, especially paired with the O2.  Have you tried the Chord MoJo? The amp is nothing to write home about on it (I didn't think it drove my HD600 sufficiently), but the DAC is excellent and the price is definitely right. It is fantastically natural sounding whilst being very detailed and will play all the formats you want to play, no questions asked. If you are up for the top of the line Schiit, I've had some very good listening on the Yggy/Rag setup. It is one of my favourite setups I've listened to, but I didn't have time to do format comparisons and any super critical listening in about 8 hours of listening. Schiit makes fantastic gear. I think you'll be very happy with your setup should you choose to build it.
 
For me DSD sound has more romance than PCM. It feels more emotionally full. My wife and I did a blinded (partially) test comparison of Rolling Stones tracks in DSD64 and PCM 24/88.2 from the same SACD. We did this without trying to tell which was which, but just defining which we liked the sound of better. The problem is that DSD can't be automatically volume matched, so there is likely some bias in our decisions. My love of the DSD sound might just come down to volume level and neurosis.

 

[kstuart]

 

  I have DSD DAC. My Marantz. Its fantastic! End game for me. But I use it at work. 
I only have a Objective Dac at home. 
What I want is Bitfrost with built in DSD support. Schiit&s stuff is fantastic and I really want to build a Schiit stack. But no DSD support is holding me back. I am not ready to build a stack now, I just bougt a LD Mark IV SE and HD650s. but maybe in a year or two I want to upgrade my home setup. 

The Objective DAC is a fine DAC, especially paired with the O2.  Have you tried the Chord MoJo? The amp is nothing to write home about on it (I didn't think it drove my HD600 sufficiently), but the DAC is excellent and the price is definitely right. It is fantastically natural sounding whilst being very detailed and will play all the formats you want to play, no questions asked. If you are up for the top of the line Schiit, I've had some very good listening on the Yggy/Rag setup. It is one of my favourite setups I've listened to, but I didn't have time to do format comparisons and any super critical listening in about 8 hours of listening. Schiit makes fantastic gear. I think you'll be very happy with your setup should you choose to build it.
 
For me DSD sound has more romance than PCM. It feels more emotionally full. My wife and I did a blinded (partially) test comparison of Rolling Stones tracks in DSD64 and PCM 24/88.2 from the same SACD. We did this without trying to tell which was which, but just defining which we liked the sound of better. The problem is that DSD can't be automatically volume matched, so there is likely some bias in our decisions. My love of the DSD sound might just come down to volume level and neurosis.

Various audiophiles have done comparisons of DSD and PCM.  More than one has concluded that DSD adds a subtle distortion that sounds "good" because it emphasizes aspects of sound that tend to be restricted by the recording process (such as transients).
 
This is like boosting the sharpness or color settings slightly on a TV.  Not accurate, but looks more lifelike.
 
But comparing DSD64 and then a PCM 24/88.2 made from the same DSD64 is not a real test.  The 24/88.2 is automatically worse, because there is potential loss from an additional conversion, and more importantly the bandwidth of the 24/88.2 is less than the DSD64.  Both files will have the same subtle DSD distortion, but the 24/88.2 is simply lower bitrate.
 
You can get better comparison files free from:
 
http://www.2l.no/hires/

 

[Skylab]

Shameless plug...if anyone is desperately looking for one of these, there happens to be a Loki in the FS forums at the moment

 

[bozebuttons]

Can the loki be inserted in a system that uses a Aurender n100h with out using a computer also using a non  dsd empirical overdrive se as a  dac. ?
 I do have  a mac mini running audionervna  just trying to eliminate using a computer as a source. 

 

[Aradea]

Anyone here still has/use the loki? Just got one due to a great discount.
Does this dac needs a proper burn in? Still very early days for me (below 30 hours) and I feel that the sound is a bit muddy/not clear. Only noticed the mids and some of the lows, the highs were almost non existent

 

[gr34td3str0y3r]

  In other attempts to resell music libraries, the key one to this question was forgotten: SACD. The strict controls on SACD ripping is why DSD has not succeeded as well as it could. if SACD were rippable by non-arcane means, we'd have a different picture here. 

Russian torrent sites have more SACD rips and DSD files than any other single source on the web. Its pitiful. 

 

[thewinelake]

Where might one get hold of a Loki now?

 

[Roen]

Would it be smart to pair a Loki with a Yggdrasil? Too bad the Loki had no balanced output out.

A V2 Loki should be slightly more high end and have both Single Ended and Balanced In/Outs, if they're going to use this piggyback design.