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Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up
Oct 7, 2017 at 3:20 PM Post #25,426 of 153,233
Just back from RMAF and the Schiit room. Heard not a word about the new gadget other than reports on line. A smaller gadget will come out and if it sells then larger(?) more complex units to follow. By the way, the Loki was way smaller than I had thought it would be. Freya, Vidars, ... Salk Song3A speakers. Saw neither Jason or Mike when I was in the room but spoke with Jim of Salk Sound. Nice man from Pontiac MI. Schelps his gear by trailer to the show. The sound was very nice for a hotel show room.
 
Oct 7, 2017 at 3:21 PM Post #25,427 of 153,233
MASantos said:
Wasn't an official announcement taking place at RMAF? Any news regarding the new product?
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Is there an indication that The Gadget was already unveiled and "tested" by anyone at RMAF?

I'm kinda surprised to not see any post commenting on it.

EDIT: Well, at least there is a pic...

10011078_thumb.jpg
 
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Oct 7, 2017 at 5:17 PM Post #25,428 of 153,233
exdmd said:
The customer is always right remember.
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Speaking as someone who used to work in retail. When I heard the phrase "The Customer Is Always Right" it is usually after i tell them why I can't sell a product to them and they don't like what they hear. E.G Asshole of a customer comes up to a female friend who was recording waste on the shop floor at a supermarket I used to work in and immediately grabs some out of date stock. When asked to leave the waste alone and told why she can't have it, she gets mad, verbally abusive and uses the phrase "The Customer Is Always Right". As to which point I walk over to my buddy and tell the customer why I'm calling security.

Sometimes "The Customer" isn't right. Sometimes he/she is just an asshole.
 
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Oct 7, 2017 at 5:20 PM Post #25,429 of 153,233
@Jason Stoddard, will the Vali 2 be getting the new volume knob that's on the Magni 3? It's very good, BTW.

Edit: never mind, I see in the Schiit Happened chapter that you state the old knob is gone. Cool!
 
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Oct 7, 2017 at 5:46 PM Post #25,431 of 153,233
ScottFree said:
This will be a quick post and I'll type a longer one later but in terms of MQA, this seems to be the official word on the subject from Schiit - CLICK HERE. In terms of 192khz support. There is ABSOLUTELY no AUDIBLE benefit for anyone to be recording in 192khz.. 24/96 is enough to get every bit of resolution needed.This magic 192khz figure is simply bull****. Bull**** of the highest order.

When it comes to albums that claim to be recorded at 192khz, the only example I can provide is Hans Zimmer's soundtrack album for 'The Dark Knight Rises'. I know Hans and I also know that when they recorded the soundtrack which for TDKR was at AIR they recorded at both 24/48 and they archived a recording at 24/96. So I don't know where the extra 96khz of audio data came from.

Addendum. On Hi-Res I highly recommend this video from Dr Mark Waldrep about "High Res Audio". Please watch to the end I think you will be surprised.

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That is a fascinating presentation. I learned a lot by watching it.
That's the kind of guy I will listen and learn from. He reminds me of Mike.

I wish Dr. Waldrep had spent more time on MQA.
He seemed to say it can compress/uncompress a 16/44.1 file to make it less expensive to stream.
That point was somewhat glossed-over, at the end of his presentation.

What was clear to me - if you start with 16/44.1 quality, you can not make 24/96 out of it.
But, if you start by recording 24/96 then you can have true "high resolution" music.
So......as usual........"Schiit In = Schiit Out."

That explains why many of the 24/96 albums I've purchased from HD Tracks don't sound very good.
So for now, I'm with 16/44.1 Redbook. No more 24/96 from HDT.

As for MQA...still need more information going forward.

Thank you, @ScottFree
Cheers,
RCB
 
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Oct 7, 2017 at 5:57 PM Post #25,432 of 153,233
RCBinTN said:
That explains why many of the 24/96 albums I've purchased from HD Tracks don't sound very good.
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All sorts of possible reasons for that. If you want to really find out, MusicScope is worth the price. You'll see that brickwall drop at 22.5KHz on 96/24 files upsampled from 44.1/16. Works digitally mastered at 96/24 do not have that.
 
Oct 7, 2017 at 7:30 PM Post #25,438 of 153,233
ScottFree said:
Don't worry mike138. Just remember what ol' Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it."
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Where's the sequel to that movie?! I demand a sequel!
 
Oct 7, 2017 at 10:42 PM Post #25,439 of 153,233
Ableza said:
But that would be using digital. :)
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Digital isn't always an improvement. For example --

I got to play -- literally -- with some government surplus 18 meter radio telescope dishes -- at least, that's what we turned them into. The original tracking system consisted of a half dozen tubes, some transformers, and a pair of Selsyns each for AZ and EL. Our replacement system, initially running on a 486 system, was 10,000 lines of code executing on a 486 with how many millions of transistors. We kept the Selsyns for visual indication of whether it was working or not. The code, like any nontrivial program, was fairly buggy and quirky initially.

Was it really an improvement over the analog computer it replaced? It certainly was more flexible. But better?
 
Oct 7, 2017 at 11:23 PM Post #25,440 of 153,233
Spent a couple hours at RMAF. Chatted with Mike Moffat at the Canjam setup and got to try out the Gadget. It was set up with Gungnir MB and a single ended amp. It was interesting. There's a lot of manual setup. You have to fish around for the sweet spot where it is turning A over Middle C (440 Hz) down to Middle C (256 Hz), and you are rewarded with the front panel light lighting up. If you do this while it is inline instead of bypassed, you get a trip back to your worse nightmares of wow and flutter from your earliest cheap gear! :) As for it's functionality, well, it just works, once set up. They didn't have music I had at home (so I thought, I later learned that they did) so I didn't get to get a feel for whether I would feel the magic. Mike talked about future directions and products, but since I'm weeks behind on his thread, I don't know what he's saying over there.

The good doctor whose name I always forget was also there, but said nothing. She appears to be painfully shy and would only acknowledge my comments directed towards her with a nod and a smile before she went back to her phone.

I ended up talking to a couple of "head fi personalities," for lack of a better term, and asked about headphone improvement from my HD800s. I got a couple recommendations and tried them out.

The reason I bring this up is because I ended up at a vendor booth where they were demonstrating their top-of-the-line phones with Tidal and MQA. I used it to compare a track I know extremely well on the target phones. I can now say with a single sample of data, that if that example was what MQA can provide, I can say I agree with @Baldr (i.e. Mike) that it. Sounds. Like. Ass.

With that unpleasant experience behind me, I went back to congratulate Mike for the multibit DACs (I have a Gungnir MB) as well as the Doctor again, and went up to see Jason at the speaker room.

Upstairs was relatively boring: A very similar setup as last year except with production Vidars instead of the prototypes that had heat issues last year. Nonetheless, it's always pleasant to talk with Jason and the other guys from Schiit.

I had to leave after only a couple hours because reasons but I'm glad I had a chance to try out the Gadget.
 
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