Neck Deep in Schiit: Gungir Balanced DAC and Mjolnir Balanced Amp Announced!

[qusp]

Quote:

How is the Gungir power supply going to be better than the Bifrost's? IMO that was the big limitation of the Bifrost, 317/337 regulators are plain Jane. I hope Gunjir is pulling out some bigger guns.

As Judemarc says, having true clock regeneration at this price is amazing.

they make great and simple current sources though

 

[Llloyd]

Quote:

What does "end game performance" mean ?  No competition ?

Each person has their individual endgame.  Basically this means a product good enough to satisfy most to the point where they will no longer want to look any further.

 

[DarknightDK]

Will there be a statement amp by Schitt in the near future or is the Mjolnir it?
 
If there is indeed going to be another statement amp, could Schitt release the specifications / details of the amp prior to the Mjolnir shipping so that we can make a decision to wait out on the statement amp or purchase the Mjolnir.

 

[Maxvla]

Will be one amp available in fully solid state or hybrid and will have balanced and unbalanced output. That's about as much as we know presently, oh and the price is up to around $1500ish.

 

[DarknightDK]

Quote:

Will be one amp available in fully solid state or hybrid and will have balanced and unbalanced output. That's about as much as we know presently, oh and the price is up to around $1500ish.

Sounds good to me. Still a small price to pay if it can outperform other statement amps such as the AGD Master 6 or the Dark Star.

 

[MorbidToaster]

Preamp. Ohboyohboy. The hybrid pre I've been nagging Cavalli to make.

 
Quote:

Will be one amp available in fully solid state or hybrid and will have balanced and unbalanced output. That's about as much as we know presently, oh and the price is up to around $1500ish.

 
 

 

[qusp]

Quote:

Will be one amp available in fully solid state or hybrid and will have balanced and unbalanced output. That's about as much as we know presently, oh and the price is up to around $1500ish.

did they change the spec on the amp? I havent been following the thread and havent read it all, but what I read said the dac has an analogue summed single ended output along with the balanced output, but the amp was balanced only due to the difficulty of providing a summed output. adding a summed output with a ground is difficult but possible with a circlotron due to circlotrons generally running with floating power supplies, so you cant just use power supply ground for signal ground. this means for a summing stage you need a completely separate power supply and the BAL-SE section has to be separate also, meaning you effectively build an entirely separate amp inside the same case.
 
or you are talking about the statement amp?
 
edit: yes it appears you are, i'll leave the above info in case it hasnt been explained before

 

[Maxvla]

Yes we're talking about the statement. It would be really foolish to have a balanced only TOTL amp, IMO. I think what you said about having separate sections is one of the reasons for the cost jump.

 

[qusp]

Right, yeah doh, I forgot how prolific these guys are for a small company.
 
yeah it does alienate a certain number of customers and many that value tubes (not really me but I get it) also value SE systems for the characteristic distortion profile. thats one of the great things about circlotrons and other cross-coupled amps, they still retain a certain amount of that tuneful single ended sound sig, while giving that clean, extended quality and deep bass balanced brings. I'll be interested to see what Fets are used in the solid state version, theres been quite a bit of work on this topology of late, its become quite fashionable since Pass Labs brought the SemiSouth devices and the like into audio (someone else may have used them beforehand, but i'm not aware of it).
 
Often circlotrons dont have any voltage gain, but thats clearly not the case here (although with balanced sources unity voltage gain is enough for the vast majority of headphones IMO) so i'm interested in what the front end will look like and whether EOL devices have been used or something new.
 
i'm aware of the sumo 9, so i'm not saying Schiit are following the heard, there has already been a number (ok a few) of DIY circlotron headphone amps though, but i'm not aware of anything commercial.
 
 

 

[puroagave]

Jason,
Are you and Mike considering DSD decoding for the statement DAC? Im looking at the Mytek but would wait for a Schiit DAC with that capability.

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Jason,
Are you and Mike considering DSD decoding for the statement DAC?

I asked Jason this at a meet and unless things change the answer is no.  If Jason would care to correct me that would be great.  Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to my Statement DAC.  

 
Question is a happy coincidence w/ the Neil Young patents?  

  That should put futureproof modularity to the test if things actually unfold.  Big 'if'.
 

 

[Somnambulist]

Anaxilus, anything you can spill re: the statement DAC. I know it's not out till the end of the year but titbits of info are always welcome!

 

[qusp]

Quote:

I asked Jason this at a meet and unless things change the answer is no.  If Jason would care to correct me that would be great.  Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to my Statement DAC.  

 
Question is a happy coincidence w/ the Neil Young patents?  

  That should put futureproof modularity to the test if things actually unfold.  Big 'if'.
 

I know with current out dacs you need a different low pass filter setup for the output of DSD, since the AKM is a voltage out dac (provided the statement dac is still using AKM4399) it may be more of a software/firmware issue. The thing is, for DSD the dac is hardly doing anything at all and is practically bypassed. With the right output filter you can play DSD directly into an amp without any dac.

 

[Maxvla]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought the statement dac was not going to use any out of the box chips, but rather an entirely different design.

 

[qusp]

interesting, more metrum octave type madness?
 
well if they are doing their own thing, then that would certainly make dsd near impossible, or VERY expensive due to licensing