New Schiit! Ragnarok and Yggdrasil
Sep 10, 2014 at 6:24 PM Post #2,806 of 9,483
There is certainly some sad truth to the point estreeter is making.  Although we all applaud schiit for being so price conscious and making great audio products available to the masses, some of their products really may not be receiving the respect they deserve for that very reason.  For example, if you look at the comments by veteran EE's on one of those other "unmentionable" headphone sites, they suggest the mjolnir is a more sophisticated and transparent amp than the Lau.  But here on head-fi, because the latter costs 10x as much, we celebrate the **** out of it.  The fallacy that quality and performance bear a direct relationship to price is a persistent devil.
 
Back on topic, I'm very much looking forward to hearing a yggy, whenever it is ultimately ready to be released into the wild, and remain hopeful that the ultimate pricing will not cause my wife to attempt to exercise a veto.   
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 8:07 PM Post #2,807 of 9,483
the chassis of a typical hIGH eND component is a significant portion the total manufacturing cost.  as someone who has taken a peek inside of a Gungnir, i'm impressed that they could design such an attractive, yet cost effective chassis.  it's simple, elegant, and even novel in my experience.  sure, Schiit could go with an over-built and totally unnecessary chassis design, and sell through a dealer network, but that would probably mean that the price of a component would be more than 2x current pricing structures.    
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:28 PM Post #2,808 of 9,483
What does the circlotron inside the Ragnarok look like? For some reason I have visions of a centrifuge with pipes coming off it but of course it will be nothing as sci-fi as that.
 
Fascinating technology...
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:39 PM Post #2,809 of 9,483
  What does the cyclotron inside the Ragnarok look like? For some reason I have visions of a centrifuge with pipes coming off it but of course it will be nothing as sci-fi as that.
 
Fascinating technology...

Most likely a pair of output device pair phase bridged together with a different voltage source per device. It's a simple topology, but they probably (most certainly) tweaked it their way. Curious on the final boards too!
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:40 PM Post #2,810 of 9,483
  What does the cyclotron inside the Ragnarok look like? For some reason I have visions of a centrifuge with pipes coming off it but of course it will be nothing as sci-fi as that.
 
Fascinating technology...

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circlotron
 
It's specifically about valve circlotrons though.
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 9:49 PM Post #2,811 of 9,483
What does the circlotron inside the Ragnarok look like? For some reason I have visions of a centrifuge with pipes coming off it but of course it will be nothing as sci-fi as that.

Fascinating technology...

Here's a picture of the interior without the casing.

Link
 
Sep 10, 2014 at 10:46 PM Post #2,814 of 9,483
Sep 11, 2014 at 1:03 AM Post #2,815 of 9,483
   
Let me think for a moment...
 
...um, ah, no.
 
Nor will it decode Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Digital Super Ultra Master Kitchen Sink Atmosphere Wowie Edition Great-Ass Audio, DTS Master Gangsta Stupid 38/679 Extra Money Edition, or any of the 479 surround formats out there. Nor will it take HDMI input or do 4k res HDTV at 240 FPS. Oh, well.
 
Ask Mike for a less politically correct answer that includes yak farts and bleating sheep.

so you're saying there's a chance...
 
Sep 11, 2014 at 6:12 AM Post #2,818 of 9,483
Correct. There is no way Yggy can support DSD, except in the way that 90% of the popular delta-sigma DACs do: by converting it to PCM. And we're not going to add that code to the system. It already has its hands full, serving the 99.999% of the music already out there in PCM format.

Fact: our DAC sales keep increasing--and accelerating--despite no support for DSD.

Fact: the promised "flood" of DSD is less than a trickle. It is less than 0.001% of the total market.

Fact: quad- and octo-rate DSD (if there is even any content available, besides a couple of demo tracks) means 3 albums per terabyte (exaggerating a little bit here, but you get the point.)

Fact: much DSD content has suspicious provenance, having passed through PCM conversion at some (or many) points.

Fact: most DSD you hear is converted to PCM or another intermediate multibit delta-sigma format before you hear it, except on a handful of chipsets.

Fact: no non-standard audio format has ever succeeded. How are your HDCDs doing these days? That used to be a literal "must have" in any new DAC. Mike fought that one, too. Everyone told him he was crazy. Guess what? He was right.

Fact: inquiries about "do you support DSD" to our customer service team have fallen off a cliff (literally 95% lower this year than 2013)

Adding this up...we will not be doing any further development on DSD unless it reaches more than 1% of the total market. I'm pretty confident at this point that we won't be doing any more DSD work.

But...let's say...we wake up in an alternate universe tomorrow where Sony has released 8,000 completely pure DSD-from-the-start albums for $9.99 each, and Apple starts streaming DSD from the iTunes store for $14.95/month. (Yeah, I know, stop laughing.) Let's just say. Guess what? Our DACs, from Bifrost on up, are fully upgradable. So, we add DSD capability--real DSD, not converted-to-some-intermediate-format DSD, with DSD-appropriate filtering, and you can upgrade all our DACs to do it, rather than buying a new one.

We may seem like a silly company at times, but make no mistake: we are dead-serious about great sound—and about delivering value that nobody else can match. As our ad in the RMAF show guide says: "The end of the world is only the beginning."


Loud and clear, thanks for your clarification.

I personally don't mind converting DSD into PCM before decoding, I never was a DSD fans, and own zero SACD up to this point, and my current system doesn't support DSD at the moment. However, SACD market is fairly alive in Hong Kong over the last few years, we have 50/60 new entries in a good years, and around 30 in a slow year, which is quite significant in a small city like us. Occasionally there are a few that I would like to try out, so I don't understand why its sound so bad when someone is asking about DSD capability.

I understand 90% so-called SACD player will decode in PCM, and I am quite sure 99% of SACD will involve PCM somehow, somewhere, the post-processing limitation on DSD format is completely handicap, can't blame the recording/mastering engineer for that. So SACD or DSD format is never the real mean here, it is right now the only off-the-shelf High definition format that I can buy (HDTrack won't have Chinese title on 24/96), and if playing DSD on PCM DAC does sound better then playing 16/44.1 files or disc, I hope I can have that option in my next system, I hope I'll not be crucified because of that. :deadhorse:
 
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Sep 11, 2014 at 8:46 AM Post #2,819 of 9,483
Loud and clear, thanks for your clarification.

I personally don't mind converting DSD into PCM before decoding, I never was a DSD fans, and own zero SACD up to this point, and my current system doesn't support DSD at the moment. However, SACD market is fairly alive in Hong Kong over the last few years, we have 50/60 new entries in a good years, and around 30 in a slow year, which is quite significant in a small city like us. Occasionally there are a few that I would like to try out, so I don't understand why its sound so bad when someone is asking about DSD capability.

I understand 90% so-called SACD player will decode in PCM, and I am quite sure 99% of SACD will involve PCM somehow, somewhere, the post-processing limitation on DSD format is completely handicap, can't blame the recording/mastering engineer for that. So SACD or DSD format is never the real mean here, it is right now the only off-the-shelf High definition format that I can buy (HDTrack won't have Chinese title on 24/96), and if playing DSD on PCM DAC does sound better then playing 16/44.1 files or disc, I hope I can have that option in my next system, I hope I'll not be crucified because of that.
deadhorse.gif

 
You can actually have that option right now, it's just in a separate box and is called Loki.
 
Sep 11, 2014 at 9:35 AM Post #2,820 of 9,483
You can actually have that option right now, it's just in a separate box and is called Loki.


Unfortunately Loki doesn't seem to work with my current approach, NAS ->RJ45 or WIFI -> Network player -> DOP out of coaxial or I2S -> DAC -> XLR out ->Full balanced headphone amp.
 
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