[Alcophone]

An Engineering question to all of you in the know:

I can't get my brain about what these plug-in type power conditioners sold by several vendors offer to add to my Schiit stack.

I can see how running your power feed SERIALLY THROUGH a standing device could help if your local supply was noisy and sucked, but how do these things working in PARALLEL so magically transform the music? Based on the ad and review hype, I'm a 3 dimensional loser for not having one in every empty outlet, each one peeling away a layer of grime from the Window To The Absolute Sound metaphor.

Since devices can induce noise in parallel, I suppose they could also do the opposite (active noise cancellation?). Wild guess, though.

 

[Mr Rick]

An Engineering question to all of you in the know:

I can't get my brain about what these plug-in type power conditioners sold by several vendors offer to add to my Schiit stack.

I can see how running your power feed SERIALLY THROUGH a standing device could help if your local supply was noisy and sucked, but how do these things working in PARALLEL so magically transform the music? Based on the ad and review hype, I'm a 3 dimensional loser for not having one in every empty outlet, each one peeling away a layer of grime from the Window To The Absolute Sound metaphor.

Someone once said, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

 

[valiant66]

BTW - Mike 'gets' thread moderation
"I detest censorship. Occasionally posts are held for moderation by the Head Fi controllers, only to be released within hours. The only posts I ever deleted were for incoherence. I have edited only a very few posts for political reasons, but left the main message intact."

Kudos on finding that post from back in April. Nicely done.
.

 

[Jason Stoddard]

An Engineering question to all of you in the know:

I can't get my brain about what these plug-in type power conditioners sold by several vendors offer to add to my Schiit stack.

IMO, none of them.

The only power device I have ever seen that made a measurable difference in power quality was Dave's completely insane, LC-shunt across the AC line. It weighed about 50 lbs, required hand-tweaked, exotic inductors, would cost about $1500, and was patented. Note the word "shunt" and note many engineers turning pale right about now at the thought of a reactive network being placed across their AC lines. Maybe Dave will want to talk about it someday.

 

[Jason Stoddard]

...Window To The Absolute Sound metaphor.

Har har!

No, serious, LOL.

No, this is really hilarious.

You'll get it on Tuesday.

 

[rkw]

You're gonna call me a total heretic, but I think 320K MP3 is perfectly fine for portable use.

I am even worse of a heretic. Bluetooth headphones are good enough for portable use for me.

Bluetooth is actually capable of 320K data rate, and it is the highest rate on Spotify Premium (not a coincidence).

 

[AudioBear]

You forgot to say how much we will have to pay for this little wonder the "Venom Defender". Do they have a Bluetooth version?

 

[438555]

Bluetooth is actually capable of 320K data rate, and it is the highest rate on Spotify Premium (not a coincidence).

Sony LDAC can go up to ~900, but that only works with Sony headphones and portables.

 

[mtkupp]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-freya-impressions-and-tube-rolling-thread.832177/

Lots of good info there...

Thanks, I never considered looking in the headphone amp forum, since Freya isn't one.

 

[DSNORD]

Hey Jason,

Thanks for allowing The Boys to start the Schiitferbrainz YouTube channel. This is EXACTLY what I've been dying for, a peek behind The Curtain of Oz.

After seeing the construction techniques and thinking about the number of processes and people involved to get my Yggy out of Mike's brain and through the steps you two have so perfected, it TOTALLY amazes me at just how insanely reasonable your prices are. Considering that you place such great importance on taking care of your employees, I can't fathom how there is much left over for you two at the end of the month. I guess that is the power of selling a bazillion items at a buck a piece rather than the other way around. Kudos all around.

You do realize that should you desire to sell out or retire, we WILL hunt you down, and you will be propped up in the back corner in sunglasses starring in our version of "Weekend At Bernie's!!"

This Schiit Can Never Die!!!

 

[Alcophone]

Bluetooth is actually capable of 320K data rate, and it is the highest rate on Spotify Premium (not a coincidence).

Not enough for lossless, which means the lossy MP3 gets decoded to PCM, and the re-encoded to whatever your Bluetooth devices hopefully can agree on.
But it's true that it would be progress if you could just stream the still encodee MP3 over BT. That would break the abstraction to apps, of course.

 

[Robert Wortman]

MQA is not necessary for high-res streaming, which should be obvious by the fact that Netflix, etc regularly stream 1080p content at about 5Mbps and are beginning to offer 4K at about 25Mbps. Yep, I get plenty of glitches in my Tidal account, but that's due to Tidal, not due to our connection (Netflix 4K works just fine, even as Tidal chokes...thanks, Tidal.)

24/96 FLAC bandwidth: 2.3Mbps
Global average connection speed: 7.2Mbps (yes, global)

US average: 18.7Mbps

https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php

Seems to me that MQA is a method to try to cram 10lbs of stuff into a 5lb bag when 10lb bags are cheap and readily available. I don't get why the audio press are gaga over it.

 

[Robert Wortman]

IMO, none of them.

The only power device I have ever seen that made a measurable difference in power quality was Dave's completely insane, LC-shunt across the AC line. It weighed about 50 lbs, required hand-tweaked, exotic inductors, would cost about $1500, and was patented. Note the word "shunt" and note many engineers turning pale right about now at the thought of a reactive network being placed across their AC lines. Maybe Dave will want to talk about it someday.

IMO this company lacks credibility. A while back they got kudo's from the audio guru's for basically discovering inductance. http://shunyata.com/2017/06/22/dtcd-technology/

 

[OldRoadToad]

.

 

[FrivolsListener]

IMO, none of them.

The only power device I have ever seen that made a measurable difference in power quality was Dave's completely insane, LC-shunt across the AC line. It weighed about 50 lbs, required hand-tweaked, exotic inductors, would cost about $1500, and was patented. Note the word "shunt" and note many engineers turning pale right about now at the thought of a reactive network being placed across their AC lines. Maybe Dave will want to talk about it someday.

The power companies do use reactive loads intentionally, too. A famous disconnect of such a load was recorded on videotape, not because it was a reactive load, but because they wanted to diagnose a disconnect switch failure. The footage has been often shared:

Now I do wonder if Dave's shunt load produced such a show as well.

(obSchiit: Looking forward to the next installment)