Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

[Ripper2860]

The number of questions today have far outpaced even the sheer pace of our normal banter. Crazy!

True. Indicative of a high level of interest. Bodes well for Byggy and Singular at this early stage.

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

Anyway, after reading Martin’s mention of a Gungnir 2 with Singular prototype board in it, I felt compelled to ask if this is a G2 upgrade coming in the near-after Byggy release?

Eventually, but not super soon.
The board I’m talking about was just a test build, not a prototype for something that could go into production.

 

[Plautus001]

Okay, first post. Hi everybody!
BG: I’ve read most of the chapters and a fair bit of the last year’s posts. Been buying this company’s products for about 10 years at least while also making a fair bit of my own gear as well. SET and PP amps, preamps, DHT and IDHT stuff, speakers and turntables, etc…I think I’m not alone in having that history, here. Having (basically) failed at making tube-based phono stages quiet enough and not interested in building, or even understanding, dacs is probably how I found myself here. I don’t actually remember.
Anyway, after reading Martin’s mention of a Gungnir 2 with Singular prototype board in it, I felt compelled to ask if this is a G2 upgrade coming in the near-after Byggy release?
Thanks,
Jason

Welcome to the forum, sorry about your wallet.

 

[DACattack]

So, I've been downsizing and have changed my office into primarily a headphone station. I still have my KEF LS50s though and am pondering what to do with them. I never play them loud, around 70 dB in my small office (12 x 12). I had been driving them with Freya S and Vidar but that was, frankly, overkill.

Perhaps I ought to really simplify and consider driving them with Mimir as a digital preamp with a Gjallahorn F instead. I'd been considering a Kara F with a Vidar 2F but Mimir+Gjallahorn F is roughly one-third the cost. I wonder how'd that work. Anyone out there tried driving LS50s from a single Gjallahorn in a small room at moderate volumes?

Oh man oh man. I’ve listened to Delvon Lamarr before, but live is a revelation. This is remaaaarkable. Thanks.

Ditto. Listening to @Ripper2860 typically excellent nightly musical suggestion right now, and damn is that trio funky live. Tons of fun. Thinking I ought to buy this one to support those dudes. It sounds fantastic on my HD 800s fed by Folkvangr tonight.

The number of questions today have far outpaced even the sheer pace of our normal banter. Crazy!

Hm, did some important announcement happen or something?

 

[artur9]

... Hmm, so this begs the question, ...

I dislike this usage of "begs the question" instead of the more proper "raises the question." I may be in the minority....
https://search.brave.com/search?q=b...conversation=c80aa5317aa70da30d0733&summary=1

With Byggy at $3,500 ...

How much of the price tag comes from ... accounting with higher parts and cost of doing business (i.e. inflation) in say the last 5 years?

Inflation calculator says it's the same price the Yggy was 10y ago:
$2,574.91

 

[WeepingGuitar]

Hey guys. Was wondering if someone could offer some insights as to how many revisions there were of the Gungnir 1. I'm trying to find the chapter that talks about it but not finding it. Thanks in advance.

 

[feelingears]

But then, when I heard my first Singular DAC years later, I was like: "Yeah, ok. Now we're really cooking with gas here."

As a matter of fact, on my desk at home, I have a Gungnir 2 with a very, very early Singular prototype board in it. It has plenty of flaws, but it's still my favorite DAC on the planet. By some margin.

Byggy will be an absolute beast.

Any chance it will be a streaming DAC? I am tired of USB anything…cables, decrapifiers, etc. I don’t know anything about the tech’s unsuitability for audio, I just know my ears continue to tell me USB decrapifiers work and thus a small fortune of mine is inordinately invested in converting USB to “better” formats like i2s or AES. (Except the Yggy+ chassis which seems to prefer USB.) My purely anecdotal personal experience is that Ethernet is the best format to transmit audio data (no I have not tried Ravenna), and that if the DAC has a well designed and implemented receiver, the conversion internally can sound fantastic (Elac DDP-2 is one example).

Anyway, just thought I’d ask. I realize the software controller for such a device is a whole ‘nother can of terrible worms if you’re going to offer an in-house app, but hey, per Jason’s big FB announcement you’re a software company now, right? (Wink wink nudge nudge)

 

[madwolfa]

I'm very curious to hear from the first buyers of the Mimir who also have a R2R DAC on how they compare. Even better if a Gumby owner is buying a Mimir. I'd love to hear some impressions, contrasts, and comparisons, regardless..

As an owner of the OG Bifrost Multibit... I'm curious as well.

Aaaand finally... 3000 posts. Only took me 22 years.

 

[artur9]

Hey guys. Was wondering if someone could offer some insights as to how many revisions there were of the Gungnir 1. I'm trying to find the chapter that talks about it but not finding it. Thanks in advance.

There's a Gungnir thread where that comes up every so often: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-gungnir-dac.603219/
hst, iirc, there's Gungnir DS, OG Gungnir MB, OG G MB A1, OG G MB A2 and then the last one where Schiit couldn't find both clocks anymore so it only has one clock instead of two.

... the Byggy is now similar to the likes of Chord Electronics, Emm Labs/Meitner, Mola Mola Tambaqui, Nagra, Linn, dCS and Lampizator now with these custom implemented in-house DS DACs and FPGA implementation

The big chip houses, like TI, need volume to make it worth building the fabs to manufacture chips. A fab literally costs 1 or 2 BILLION dollars, maybe more in these inflationary times.

With that, the audiophile market doesn't have the volume they need. Cars, radios, phones, yes. Standalone DACs, no.

I don't think those big chip houses have SOTA DAC tech; really really good DAC tech, but an FPGA can probably do better.

 

[corndog71]

Any chance it will be a streaming DAC? I am tired of USB anything…cables, decrapifiers, etc. I don’t know anything about the tech’s unsuitability for audio, I just know my ears continue to tell me USB decrapifiers work and thus a small fortune of mine is inordinately invested in converting USB to “better” formats like i2s or AES. (Except the Yggy+ chassis which seems to prefer USB.) My purely anecdotal personal experience is that Ethernet is the best format to transmit audio data (no I have not tried Ravenna), and that if the DAC has a well designed and implemented receiver, the conversion internally can sound fantastic (Elac DDP-2 is one example).

Anyway, just thought I’d ask. I realize the software controller for such a device is a whole ‘nother can of terrible worms if you’re going to offer an in-house app, but hey, per Jason’s big FB announcement you’re a software company now, right? (Wink wink nudge nudge)

Schiit has long said no streamers.

 

[jonathan c]

As an owner of the OG Bifrost Multibit... I'm curious as well.

Aaaand finally... 3000 posts. Only took me 22 years.

.... and with the 'DUBLE PST' rule in effect, the next 3000 posts take ....

 

[artur9]

... Ethernet is the best format to transmit audio data (no I have not tried Ravenna), ...

A well (atomically so!) respected member on another forum says that the best according to both subjective evaluation and his lab full of test equipment is Dante (related to Ravenna).

No streamer necessary for Dante, just some (much) hardware. I would look into that to feed into a Schiit DAC. Or, maybe, Diretta but that sounds like a pain in the Schiitr.

 

[feelingears]

An ethernet interface wouldn't just mean yet another port in the back of the device, but it would require the DAC to be a streamer. That's an entirely different device category, and one that we have no desire to get into.

I2S is a really, really bad protocol for interconnects. I2S is fine for short connections between components internally within a device, but as an interconnect it's just not great.

I2S as a protocol for interconnects only makes sense if the receiving device doesn't have a good enough clock of its own and you want to be able to rely on a clean source clock, which is not at all the case for our DACs. Our DACs already have a really well done internal clock, and because of that, we re-clock all signals coming in anyway. (That's how you want it to be done, trust me.)

And so it's highly unlikely that you'll ever be seeing an I2S input on any of our DACs.

Personally, in terms of resulting audio quality, I'd suggest you always try to rely on Unison first, AES second, and S/PDIF as a fallback if the first two aren't an option.

Oh sorry Martin, just caught up/back to this. I get it, but ugh…so many cables to make this work. Maybe I should get that megabuck Inuous USB to USB thing! (Um, no…)

Anyway, I have my preorder in. Thank you.
Cheers!

 

[Mike-WI]

Updated office gigastack replacing a Ragnarok v1 integrated with new shelving and Schiit gear.
Still a bit of room.
I could do better on wire management, but space is tight.

 

[theveterans]

A well (atomically so!) respected member on another forum says that the best according to both subjective evaluation and his lab full of test equipment is Dante (related to Ravenna).

No streamer necessary for Dante, just some (much) hardware. I would look into that to feed into a Schiit DAC. Or, maybe, Diretta but that sounds like a pain in the Schiitr.

I'm feeding Apple Music to my Yggy MIB from my PC using Diretta protocol with the SOtM sMS-200 OG

A lossless 44.1 KHz file is about 2.5 Mbps only. Streamer is a very straightforward setup, but you need to have Ethernet filtering before it goes to your streamer to preserve the signal that goes through the noisy Ethernet network