[superjawes]

I was also fascinated with your take on social media, given your youth, (younger than me, though I think Mike gives me a run for the calendar) and given the market that Centric seems to be in.  As a "casual, not that involved outside looking in" user of social media, I agree with your take.  I have watched social media change from being a place where friends connect with friends, to a place where 3rd parties try to break into the conversation, and sometimes even use my friends, to help separate me from my money.  Save for about 5 folks that I am only in contact with via my twice monthly or so sojourns on Facebook, I'd deactivate the account.  It really borders on useless to me.  You can tell that I am not in the entertainment business.  I don't require that all know my business all the time.  Hell, I'm not that entertaining.

I was going to say that Schiit is one of the few companies that could benefit from a Facebook "fan" page, but then I got the bright idea to search for it (and there it was!).

Whether it's official or not probably doesn't matter. You've got the best coverage you're going to get on Facebook now. (Although if the page isn't actually run by Schiit employees, you might want it to say that.)

 

[ThePianoMan]

I remember reading that NYT article and thinking "How much publicity did high-end audio get from this?"
This might be my favorite chapter yet.
 
(and as a second note, I had the Jehovah's witness come to the door, and imagined they saying something about "this is good schiit" nearly died.)

 

[DaaDaa]

When are you guys gonna bona fide stereo amps .... a 100 watts power amp

 

[HeyWaj10]

^^ Ragnarok.

 

[Defiant00]

  When are you guys gonna bona fide stereo amps .... a 100 watts power amp

 
I think it's been hinted at that we might be getting some speaker amps from them eventually (based off of some previous posts by Jason).

 

[jacal01]

  It won’t be done with aspie-level obsessive in-fighting about formats...

 
My ears are burning.  I resemble that remark.

 

[catspaw]

I totally dig what you meant on social Media not delivering.
 
I worked for around 5 months for a company that created social events to promote cheaper ways to get known on social media (basicly, instead of paying someone to be talked about on social media, do something interesting enough so that people will talk about it on social media).
 
The thing i learned is that almost no company actually sees increased sales from this media. Usually, big behemonts like coca-cola need to be on facebook and twitter, but its usually to show some CEO that they are relevant in this media.
At the time, part of my job was to get to know facebook and twitter very well. So obviously I decided to try to find things that would be interesting to me (like likeing Emma Watson in facebook or following some company that produces games on twitter).
It became obvious that it was bot supported in under 3 hours. The articles were generic, with no human personality or character.
The most interesting part however was that i started to get followers at increasing speed just because i was brutally honest about how useless and ad orientated those accounts were, trying to be humorous about it.
 
Its about that time that I also saw that social Media was going the way to become purely a system to find someone who you want to talk to, yet pay no attention to anything that the site displays (something like messenger or ICQ but with the inconvenience of adds, and the threat of malware).
 
 
Something quite similar started in E-Sports after the relese of the Game Starcraft 2. Everyone believed that if marketed correctly it would bring the same income as its predecessor brought in South Korea for the last 8 years.
 
Unfortunately, instead of actually making a market study or getting any type of real hard data, most companies believed that if they throw enough money at it, it will eventually work, especially since it was linked with social media. Obviously, it didn't go too well for most sponsors/investors.
 
Old media however i thing is a strange beast. Personally id trust more a program like "myth hunters" saying that the bifrost is a great DAC rather than the Times. That being said, I am a weird one, since i don't even have my TV connected to a tv signal or cable, and instead use it as a monitor.
There are so many different groups that like/trust this, but no that... Still, it can impact a lot, especially when we talk about a massive geographical impact as the times. (I actually think I gonna try to find that article).
 
Howdays we got news that support one side or the other (dosent matter in what aspect, pick your poison), blogs that get sold as soon as they become famous... to an advertising company to promote certain products, radio stations that have more ads than music, computer games that are released in beta stage with multiple DLC, Apple user milking with new phones every 6 months, etc.
 
So, i wouldent say we see through BS a lot faster, but there is so much of it that it is easy to recognize more of it.
 
And then you get a company like Schiit. So yeah, hard not to like it .

 

[Erukian]

Jason, FYI, if I click on the Bifrost link in the NYT article it leads to a dead end page.

 

[HalSF]

   
I forgot about it, at least, until early in September, when Roy gave me a call.
 
“Wow, this is a great DAC,” he said. “Really, really good.”
 
“Cool,” I told him, or something lame like that. I’d probably forgotten who he was, and was trying to put the pieces together.
 
“It was the crowd favorite,” he enthused. “But I’m not sure if the Times editors will let me actually say that. I want to, but there’s limited space, and, you know, stuff like this is a little controversial anyway.”
 
Aha. Times. Everything clicked. “Stuff like this?”
 
“High-end audio. Subjective reviews. It’s kind of, well…”
 
“Too much voodoo?” I prompted.
 
Roy laughed. “Voodoo. Yes. But it’s real voodoo. It’s just, well, we have to be careful not to go too over-the-top. But great gear really deserves more coverage.”
 
“Roy, I spent 20 years in marketing. Believe me, I understand.”
 
“No, it’s not the advertisers or anything,” he corrected. “It’s just, well, everyone seems to have a price in mind for any piece of audio gear, and if something goes over that price, but the specs aren’t any different, well, it’s hard to explain how and why it’s so much better. I don’t understand why some companies can make great-sounding stuff, but so much gear out there just sounds, well, awful.”
 
“But measures good,” I added.
 

 
Another great chapter, and a happy boost for a more-than-deserving product and company. Sweet.
 
But as someone who really, really dislikes the way the New York Times covers hi-fi, I found the passage above to be a fascinating insight into the somewhat warped perceptions and priorities of the Times tech journalists. First, the lack of independence and courage (that cringing "a little controversial..."). Second, the double standard on pricing — given that the Times shamelessly covers other discretionary-income realms like fashion, restaurants, travel, and real estate without a care in world about crazy-high price tags. Ditto the double standard on "subjective" reviewing, a nervous-nelly dodge the newspaper doesn't apply to any other consumer products and services. In short, the Bits and Personal Technology coverage of audio at the Times is entirely beholden to a craven "gadgetwise" tech worldview that believes spending thousands on cellphones and computers and monitors and apps and other Silicon Valley stuff is reasonable and hip and groovy, but spending more that a couple of hundred bucks for headphones or speakers or audio components is a dangerous and foolhardy descent into voodoo. 
 
Roy Furchgott's DAC story was excellent, and I remember being cheered and jazzed when it was published. But it's also sad to hear him saying that "great gear really deserves more coverage," because the DAC article was a glaring exception, and the follow-up since then has been more or less negligible-to-nil. Other deserving products in need of mainstream press coverage like Bitfrost and other companies like Jason's are just Schiit out of luck. The New York Times once employed a guy named Hans Fantel to review home electronics for 17 years, but that's a distant memory now. Today, they run scared of audio.
 
End of rant.

 

[Alex Martin]

It is a good but challenging time at the shop.  We are busy setting up the production line for Ragnarok, doing show prep for Rocky Mountain, and loading up on inventory for the Christmas rush.  I've been interviewing job candidates this week.  Overall, we've been lucky and have some good people to choose from.  I am looking forward to getting some more help on board.  I am bit late to the party, but I wanted to share a couple of anecdotes about Ten Thumbs.
 
The first time I met Ten Thumbs was on a hot July morning.  The SchiitHole had a backyard that was never much use to us.  It was accessed through a big chain link swinging gate, big enough to drive a car through.  On this July morning, I drive up as I normally do and right away I notice that something it missing.  The gate is gone.  As I get closer, I see that it is not gone, it is laying on the ground in the weeds.  The gate has been pulled off the hinges.  Oh great, we've been robbed.  I slowly creep around the corner with my trusty box cutter in hand. There was an old, beat-up red hatchback parked behind the shop.  I should say mostly red as rust stains and primer spots don't really count.  This guy steps out from behind the car.  Big.  Muscular.  Handlebar Mustache.  Curly black hair to his collar.  Scarred rough hands.  Oh Schiit. Is my will up to date?  Did I pay the life insurance premium?  Then I realize.  He isn't putting our stuff in to the car.  He is taking tools out of the car.  He comes over and introduces himself.  He was actually a really nice guy.  That's how I met TT.  In 60 seconds I went from certain death to forming a very unique relationship that would last far longer than any of us ever wanted.  This was the beginning of the one-month remodel that would take four months.  Why was the gate on the ground.  He couldn't find the key, so he just pulled it off the hinges.
 
The air conditioning and the door.  It is August.  It is beyond hot.  I have been stuck in the shop babysitting Ten Thumbs.  I would have loved to work in the evenings when it was cooler, but that wasn't going to happen.  TT has been at this job for about 6 or 7 weeks now.  He had finished with the outside and was now working on the inside of the shop.  My shop.  Where we build sensitive electronics.  Ten Thumbs was anything but careful.  For example, when he was painting the outside of the shop, he never taped off anything.  The windows, the trim.. nothing.  Get paint on it.  No problem.  Scrape the paint off the window with a razor blade.  Paint on the trim.  No problem.  Just paint the trim again.  He covered everything in paint, including my trashcans, my spare pallets, the crate we were going to use for shipping stuff to Rocky Mountain.  Now he was in my shop.  His first job was making the holes for the air conditioning duct work.  A careful contractor would have taped off the area, used a tool that produced a small amount of dust, and tried hard to keep things clean.  We didn't have that guy.  We had Ten Thumbs.  I had already covered every surface in the shop with plastic.  No dust was going to get on our products or work areas.  I was wrong.
 
When making a 2-foot by 2-foot hole, what tool do you use.  A drywall saw?  A sawsall?  He used a hammer.  Two days of pounding.  Why days. The holes were the wrong size.  He had to go back and do them again.  "No problem, I'll just patch it up later."  The shop was covered in a fine, gritty layer of plaster dust.  So I cleaned twice a day.  Finally, he was done.  The A/C guys came and installed the system and life improved significantly. The temperature in the shop dropped from 105 F at 2 pm to a nice 78 F.  Then came the door.
 
We ended up taking the other half of the building the SchiitHole was in.  The space between the two parts of the building had been walled off years earlier and now TT was going to put in a door.  This time he used a sawsall to cut the hole.  The problem is he didn't know how big the door was going to be.  No problem.  "I can patch it later."  So he cut the hole.  Too big.  Then came the door frame.  The frame was not directly attached to any studs or wood framing.  It was shimmed in place with scraps of wood and a crap load of nails.   It was crooked.  No right angles at all.  Then TT hung the doors.  They wouldn't stay closed.  No problem.  Just need to add more shimming.  Then they didn't close.  Eddie and I would stand there each evening and examine the work and try to figure out how long the door frame would stay in the wall.  Then I made my big mistake.  I complained about the work.
 
I sent a detailed email to Jason.  He sent it to the realtor.  The realtor sent it to the building owner.  The next day the owner comes in to the shop and just lets me have it.  I'm obstructing.  I'm not TT's boss.  I don't know what I'm talking about.  He kept going for a good five minutes.  He was beyond pissed.  Fists clenched and in my face.  I just let him yell.  What I wanted to do was pick him up and throw him out the door.  I didn't want to put us in a position where we got evicted from the shop.  I am pretty certain that battery on the owner is grounds for eviction.  One thing I learned working in schools is that when parents are pissed, let them vent.  Don't explain right away.  Just listen and let them feel like they have the power.  Then, when they run out of steam, you tell them that their kid was suspended/expelled/not going to graduate.  So I let the owner finish.  I told him that I understood and then he left.  I called Jason.  Whatever Jason did worked.  That never happened again.
 
Things started moving a lot faster after that.  Quality not so much.  But things got done.  Until TT forgot the hardener for the epoxy.  That was my fault too.  Just ask TT and the owner.  I was the villain in their story.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

Alex, I love your anecdotal contributions to this thread as well keep it up when you feel inclined/have time

 

[reddog]

That was great, some people are so dense. Thanks

 

[Maxvla]

Best chapter yet, Jason.

 

[catspaw]

I kinda know what it feel like. Since in my story I am TT.
Lucky im working on own home And im taking it slow, but still making some mistakes that take long to fix.

 

[kothganesh]

Alex,
I would have loved to see your face when you saw the gate missing 

.