[45longcolt]

  Thank God another chapter is coming today. This thread has been 99.9% worthless chatter for the past week or more.

Can we go for 100%?!?!

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

 
Can we go for 100%?!?!

Oh yes we can.
This is no place for The Inquisition.
 
Apart from that:
I gave away all my vinyl (some 3000 albums) and gear...
Because my all digital Schiitheap sounds so much better!!!!

 

[KoshNaranek]

I would like to state for the record that I am married to A Stubborn Engineer.

(An EE in point of fact)

 

[pctazhp]

  I cant speak for 50 years ago. But the nineties seemed a lot less materialistic than nowadays to me.
This might have been eighties-backlash or just my perception as the scene I hung with was not your average healthy young people (grossly understating).
I don`t remember brands being that important back then. You had some elitist stuff for sure but I don`t remember kids giving eachother s**t about their no-brand-shoes.
Today it seems with young people,you need at least a pair of Nikes and a Beats headphone jacked(pun intended) to your iPhone to be socially acceptable.
I totally worry when I see six year old girls obsess about looks and asking if they are to fat. But I guess all that comes with the grey hair.

The cars that many kids drove to my affluent public high school back in the 50s were certainly not for basic transportation.
 
During the 90s I regularly attended the high-end show at CES. The prices even back then would make much of what is discussed on HeadFi today seem like we all currently buy our gear at Walmart.
 
I suspect the pursuit of material goods for more than necessity is as old as human history.

 

[rkw]

  In the 'old days' it was much simpler... a small handful of decent and affordable record decks to choose from...I opted for a Linn Sondek LP-12 with a Lingo (no contest)... a decent amp (Exposure pre & monos) and a pair of Linn speakers. The only tinkering I did was the occasional cartridge (a bit like tube rolling I suppose). I had this system happily for years. With digital there are many more variables to get right

 
I disagree. With vinyl there are a large number of tuning variables. Perhaps it only seemed simpler because you decided to go with Linn (I did too). But even staying within Linn there were a variety of choices — tonearms, cartridges, phono preamps, power supply, etc. And Linn made ongoing updates that were expensive to keep up with (https://www.vinylengine.com/linn-lp12-history-and-upgrade-path.shtml). If you're not all-Linn and doing mix and match of components from different sources, the decisions multiply exponentially (e.g. choice of platter mat). If you are a fanatic about vinyl performance, it gets much more involved than digital.

 

[FrivolsListener]

  2017, Chapter 6:
Conversations With A Stubborn Engineer
 
[...]  
So, let's take a look at some of the latest audio fetishes, when run through the lens of the Stubborn Engineer.
 
On Bluetooth: "So, you want us to spend thousands of hours in engineering to create an interface that is lower-quality, less reliable, and requires a de facto agreement to tens of thousands of hours for support, patches, and upgrades in the future, because you're too lazy to plug in a wire?"
 
On WiFi: "So, you want us to pick one of several half-baked standards--any of which might go away at any time--and spend thousands of hours in hardware engineering, plus become a de facto software company producing apps for setup, or add a screen and alphanumeric IO to the product, plus the tens of thousands of support hours in the future, plus updates on both the hardware and software until the end of time, because using one of the well-known and reliable wired analog or digital interfaces is just too much trouble? Oh, and remind me why we have multiple digital formats and connection standards?
 
On wireless headphones: "So, you want us to spend tens of thousands of engineering hours to produce something with lower sound quality, higher noise floor, customer frustration due to lost connections, the inconvenience of another device to charge, additional weight, and potentially dangerous batteries, based on a fast-moving standard we have no input on, because customers can't just plug the headphones into their phone?
 
On streamers: "So you want us to become an actual computer company, producing custom hardware ans software, with the tens of thousands of hours associated with it, to release a product that will require the largest amount of customer service ever seen in the history of the company, to replicate something any $300 computer already does?"
 
On DAPs: "So, you want us to build all the infrastructure for advanced handheld manufacturing, starting with micron-tolerance machined chassis and tough glass technology for large screens, plus advanced battery management, phone-level microprocessors, and custom operational software—which will be buggy as all heck, no matter what we do—in order to create a device that is bigger and does a small subset of what your phone already does? Oh, and have you ever seen the customer support for smartphones? You're crazy, I quit."
 
On MQA: "So, you want us to submit to a proctological examination of all our DACs by a third party and rely on their timely approval to certify them, with the associated hundreds of hours of engineering necessary to include their code in our devices, plus the thousands of hours in the future to update it, plus the thousands of hours of customer support to explain the various options on the one shaky streaming-music service that supports it, for the limited amount of music that is MQA-encoded, plus how the MQA-encoded CDs will play through the system, and take the chance that this is (a) what will become the de-facto standard for big streaming services like Spotify and Apple, and (b) will not simply be perceived as an irrelevant consumer standard like SRS?, and (c) has not painted itself into a lose-lose corner?"
 
[...]
 
The point being: charging in to new tech has a lot of gotchas...a lot of gotchas that aren't easy to see from the outside. This is why we're going to be slow and cautious when it comes to new standards, especially when they're fundamentally a convenience, and especially, especially when that convenience comes at the price of quality.
 

 
I agree with you on this, Jason.  I am very retro in a modern world.  I don't do wireless audio; I don't do streaming, even though I've considered Tidal; My rips are to FLAC, not to the proprietary format du jour.  I'm even uncomfortable with computer-controlled amps, because some day that flashed software is going to be unreadable, and your beautiful amplifier has just become a pumpkin.
 
However, I do do semiconductors.  Tubes wear out, too!  So I understand where you are coming from.  
 
I suspect this chapter was inspired by the random ravings found in your thread about streaming MQA over ethernet to unicorn connectors, ad nauseum.

 

[HumanFly]

I suspect the pursuit of material goods for more than necessity is as old as human history.

Not disputing that one
My rant was more about the brands, the logos. Those are becoming more important.
And I bet it being the fifties those were highly customised hot-rods which are much more individualist than another Audi or Merc.

 

[HumanFly]

I would like to state for the record that I am married to A Stubborn Engineer.

(An EE in point of fact)

That makes two of us. How many of your ideas pass the bar on a yearly basis?

 

[Brubacca]

Jason,

Great chapter. I love to hear your insights. I have to disagree with the streamer angle. Not that I think that you should do one, I agree with your logic that you shouldn't. I disagree that any $300 computer can do the job. I used several methods with my Gumby (self built computer, Squeezebox Touch, Naim Qute digital out, Sonore MicroRendu). There are several available devices purpose built for Audio that are excellent. Again, I not saying you should do it, I'm saying it has been done and can be way better than just a $300 PC.

I would encourage anyone to get a Sonore MicroRendu or a Sotm SMS-200 and pair it with whichever Schiit Multibit DAC you want for an amazing streamer.

 

[pctazhp]

  Not disputing that one
My rant was more about the brands, the logos. Those are becoming more important.
And I bet it being the fifties those were highly customised hot-rods which are much more individualist than another Audi or Merc.

I just have a different perspective. Audio brands have been all important for decades in audio:  Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, VPI turntables, Basis turntables, Mark Levinson, Atma-Sphere, Wilson Audio, Soundlab, Vandersteen, Theil, Goldmund, MIT cables, Linn, Martin-Logan, Infinity etc. All well documented in old issues of The Absolute Sound and Sterophile magazines.
 
Weren't any Audis or M-B around back in the late 50s/early 60s when I was in high school. Just Cadillacs, Vets and 56 Impalas )))   My hand-me-down 1953 Mercury couldn't compete!!!!

 

[KoshNaranek]

That makes two of us. How many of your ideas pass the bar on a yearly basis?

2. On average.

 

[schneller]

@Jason Stoddard:
 
All of the technologies you list are of no concern to me. My "source" is a HTPC for this reason because of the power and versatility it brings. I want Schiit to build the best DAC in the world from a value perspective. My concerns are the comments made by many Schiitphiles at a meet-up last weekend, many of them Yiggy owners who currently love their Yiggy but are being intrigued by competing products, who indicate that Yiggy is due for some upgrades with regards to the input stage (USB is the devil, duh) AND its analog output stage. I was surprised to hear the latter. When I look at investing $2K+ in a DAC that I want to keep for many years down the road, comments like these certainly cause me to put my wallet back in my pocket. (Although I just bought a black Mimby on a whim.)
 
If Schiit could provide the final solution to the USB question, you all would be golden!

 

[Mr Rick]

  @Jason Stoddard:
 
All of the technologies you list are of no concern to me. My "source" is a HTPC for this reason because of the power and versatility it brings. I want Schiit to build the best DAC in the world from a value perspective. My concerns are the comments made by many Schiitphiles at a meet-up last weekend, many of them Yiggy owners who currently love their Yiggy but are being intrigued by competing products, who indicate that Yiggy is due for some upgrades with regards to the input stage (USB is the devil, duh) AND its analog output stage. I was surprised to hear the latter. When I look at investing $2K+ in a DAC that I want to keep for many years down the road, comments like these certainly cause me to put my wallet back in my pocket. (Although I just bought a black Mimby on a whim.)
 
If Schiit could provide the final solution to the USB question, you all would be golden!

 
Keep in mind that users of products such as the Yggy will always clamber for upgrades. Simply because the design is upgradable.

 

[winders]

  @Jason Stoddard:
 
All of the technologies you list are of no concern to me. My "source" is a HTPC for this reason because of the power and versatility it brings. I want Schiit to build the best DAC in the world from a value perspective. My concerns are the comments made by many Schiitphiles at a meet-up last weekend, many of them Yiggy owners who currently love their Yiggy but are being intrigued by competing products, who indicate that Yiggy is due for some upgrades with regards to the input stage (USB is the devil, duh) AND its analog output stage. I was surprised to hear the latter. When I look at investing $2K+ in a DAC that I want to keep for many years down the road, comments like these certainly cause me to put my wallet back in my pocket. (Although I just bought a black Mimby on a whim.)
 
If Schiit could provide the final solution to the USB question, you all would be golden!

Well, the cool thing about Yggdrasil is that if any new technologies or features become available, it can be updated with simple board swaps and firmware upgrades. So it is not like buying some other company's DAC where an update would require selling your current DAC and buying a new one. By Yggdrasil knowing it can be upgraded!

 

[HumanFly]

2. On average.

You must be so much more convincing than me
2 would be a very good year for me indeed.