[kevin gilmore]

A long time ago the VP of massdrop contacted me about making my amplifiers for them. We had a long discussion about pricing etc and I quickly determined that I would loose money, or barely break even for the price point they were shooting for. I was not willing to make the changes to the design to be able to make any money at the price they wanted to sell for.

A patent in the USA has a minimum cost of 960,000. This includes the patent application and the maintenance for the 20 years. Plus there is no way to patent a layout. And lots of other rules. No way schiit would have the money for this. In fact even Nelson Pass stopped patenting stuff because of the price.

Are the boards virtually identical, you bet. Likely that design is actually a 3rd party design sold to both sosolar and arist.
Fact is that many companies including totaldac and soekris and MSB use virtually the same electronic design. Same switches in most
Cases, and everyone seems to use the same fpga. That probably means that there is available purchaseable software from someone
For that chip. R2R ladder dacs are by their nature identical. You really have only 2 versions, sign/magnitude and linear.

holodac is also the same thing with a little extra stuff on it to compensate for the resistors accuracy, and the variations of the switches.
Denafrips and audio-go are also the same thing.

Stuff from China is as others have said stolen and resold unbelievably fast. For example ksa5 clone boards directly copied from my Gerbers.
Also the liquid silver which is an absolutely identical copy of the cavalli liquid gold. And for a stupidly low price. There are so many clones
Of expensive equipment available at low prices. Many Roland amps....

I'm not going to buy this item, I did get the massdrop cavalli Cth and massdrop liquid carbon, and both are completely unacceptable to me for various reasons. But the massdrop of the liquid carbon is much better built than the cavalli original.

I see no reason for massdrop to terminate this item.

 

[gLer]

A long time ago the VP of massdrop contacted me about making my amplifiers for them. We had a long discussion about pricing etc and I quickly determined that I would loose money, or barely break even for the price point they were shooting for. I was not willing to make the changes to the design to be able to make any money at the price they wanted to sell for.

A patent in the USA has a minimum cost of 960,000. This includes the patent application and the maintenance for the 20 years. Plus there is no way to patent a layout. And lots of other rules. No way schiit would have the money for this. In fact even Nelson Pass stopped patenting stuff because of the price.

Are the boards virtually identical, you bet. Likely that design is actually a 3rd party design sold to both sosolar and arist.
Fact is that many companies including totaldac and soekris and MSB use virtually the same electronic design. Same switches in most
Cases, and everyone seems to use the same fpga. That probably means that there is available purchaseable software from someone
For that chip. R2R ladder dacs are by their nature identical. You really have only 2 versions, sign/magnitude and linear.

holodac is also the same thing with a little extra stuff on it to compensate for the resistors accuracy, and the variations of the switches.
Denafrips and audio-go are also the same thing.

Stuff from China is as others have said stolen and resold unbelievably fast. For example ksa5 clone boards directly copied from my Gerbers.
Also the liquid silver which is an absolutely identical copy of the cavalli liquid gold. And for a stupidly low price. There are so many clones
Of expensive equipment available at low prices. Many Roland amps....

I'm not going to buy this item, I did get the massdrop cavalli Cth and massdrop liquid carbon, and both are completely unacceptable to me for various reasons. But the massdrop of the liquid carbon is much better built than the cavalli original.

I see no reason for massdrop to terminate this item.

Now THAT is insight from inside the industry on how things work. You may like it, you may hate it, you may think it’s wrong or unethical. But that’s the way it is. I believe if, as consumers, we were to know every fact about every product we bought - from design source to retail - and then only buy those goods that are clean/wholesome/healthy/ethical, the economy would simply collapse.

I wonder how many people weighing in on this issue actually apply the same filter to other parts of their lives/purchases, or if an anonymous forum with an easy commercial target like Massdrop just makes for fun trolling?

I have my own views on these issues, but arguing them here is like debating politics, religion and headphone cables. You’re just never going to ‘win’ an unwinnable argument. If you really want to make a difference, engage directly with Will, and vote with your wallet.

 

[kevin gilmore]

I finally had the time to look at the 2 boards in high resolution, someone sent me a my size picture of the hibiki.
Pretty clear that the hibiki board was done in protel. (widely pirated software)
Pretty clear that the arist board was done in an earlier version of Altium (widely pirated software)
Altium has a protel input function.

if someone sends me the gerbers, I have software to compare them.

 

[Inorbit8]

" then we should

I finally had the time to look at the 2 boards in high resolution, someone sent me a my size picture of the hibiki.
Pretty clear that the hibiki board was done in protel. (widely pirated software)
Pretty clear that the arist board was done in an earlier version of Altium (widely pirated software)
Altium has a protel input function.

if someone sends me the gerbers, I have software to compare them.

Now let's see if Will will take up your offer.

Now THAT is insight from inside the industry on how things work. You may like it, you may hate it, you may think it’s wrong or unethical. But that’s the way it is. I believe if, as consumers, we were to know every fact about every product we bought - from design source to retail - and then only buy those goods that are clean/wholesome/healthy/ethical, the economy would simply collapse.

I wonder how many people weighing in on this issue actually apply the same filter to other parts of their lives/purchases, or if an anonymous forum with an easy commercial target like Massdrop just makes for fun trolling?

I have my own views on these issues, but arguing them here is like debating politics, religion and headphone cables. You’re just never going to ‘win’ an unwinnable argument. If you really want to make a difference, engage directly with Will, and vote with your wallet.

"But that’s the way it is." My biggest pet peeve! Slavery? Sure, that's the way it is. Segregation? Why not, that's the way it is. Jim Crow? Women' right? Child labor? Underage marriage?

 

[SamusAran]

Uh... Are we still talking about a digital-to-analog converter?

 

[Wickham]

I finally had the time to look at the 2 boards in high resolution, someone sent me a my size picture of the hibiki.
Pretty clear that the hibiki board was done in protel. (widely pirated software)
Pretty clear that the arist board was done in an earlier version of Altium (widely pirated software)
Altium has a protel input function.

if someone sends me the gerbers, I have software to compare them.

Just curious: Are you free to articulate your problem with the Cavalli CTH? I have one and I quite like it.

 

[Th3Drizzl3]

"liquid silver" hmmmm lol

 

[omniweltall]

Just curious: Are you free to articulate your problem with the Cavalli CTH? I have one and I quite like it.

Probably the parts' quality.

 

[Zachik]

"liquid silver" hmmmm lol

Out of curiosity, I tried to google it. Not much success...
I was hoping to find people compare this knock-off to the original, and see price (in China, I know).

 

[Baten]

Out of curiosity, I tried to google it. Not much success...
I was hoping to find people compare this knock-off to the original, and see price (in China, I know).

I didn't find it either lol

 

[endlesswaves]

No more updates between MD, Airist and Sosolar?

Wanted to pull the trigger but hesitating over the ethical issue regarding the plagiarism of Sosolar's work.

Also wondering if this will make a substantial improvement if I used this as the DAC for my MD LCX + SDAC. Any advise?

 

[Baten]

No more updates between MD, Airist and Sosolar?

Wanted to pull the trigger but hesitating over the ethical issue regarding the plagiarism of Sosolar's work.

Also wondering if this will make a substantial improvement if I used this as the DAC for my MD LCX + SDAC. Any advise?

DAC differences are generally on the subtle side of things honestly. The SDAC has a well implemented sweet-sounding AKM chip.
Is it an upgrade: yes. substantial? no. It will make a sweet-looking stack with any of the massdrop cavalli amp though that's for sure.

 

[gLer]

DAC differences are generally on the subtle side of things honestly. The SDAC has a well implemented sweet-sounding AKM chip.
Is it an upgrade: yes. substantial? no. It will make a sweet-looking stack with any of the massdrop cavalli amp though that's for sure.

That’s normally true, except the Rdac is a discrete latter dac so could potentially sound very different to the DS Sdac. I’m personally an R2R dac convert, so the Rdac would be my choice in any of the MD stack setups.

Full disclosure, I don’t own - or plan to own - any MD dacs or amps for the time being, so this is more a comment on R2R over DS rather than personal interest.

 

[Baten]

That’s normally true, except the Rdac is a discrete latter dac so could potentially sound very different to the DS Sdac. I’m personally an R2R dac convert, so the Rdac would be my choice in any of the MD stack setups.

Full disclosure, I don’t own - or plan to own - any MD dacs or amps for the time being, so this is more a comment on R2R over DS rather than personal interest.

I say yes to what you say, but I also find that personally DS DACs with AKM chips are already the least "digital" sounding of the bunch. The switch to R2R might not be too dramatic. Until they ship out and we see more reviews I'm on the fence. I have a pre order in though, if I don't like it I can still resell the R2R was what I was thinking.

 

[kevin gilmore]

my bad, its the solid silver.

and the vcap hack job is completely unnecessary.

the link to Taobao seems broken at the moment.

rk50 is a nice touch