[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

A young colleague of mine, when discovering the Jotunheim and Lyr 2 on my desk, asked what that is. I said, "Headphone amplifiers!"
"Are they new? They look so old!", he exclaimed. It turns out it's the brushed metal look that makes them look old to him.
I was surprised - I have always absolutely loved the look of brushed metal. I guess that makes me old, too? To me it looks refined and rugged, it has an elegant simplicity and maturity to it that I appreciate. Functional, yet attractive. Timeless, in my mind.
I love that Schiit!

They only see cracks. Like in our faces.
They do confuse character with old.

 

[winders]

Bitching just because you can?
Isn't that trolling too?
It does confirm what we think about your divine infallibility complex.
Leave other people be.

The content of your posts establish that you don't get to complain about what anyone else posts!

 

[MWSVette]

Just an FYI.

If there is a member whose post do not interest you, may I recommend using the ignore button.

It works great....

 

[Oveja Negra]

A young colleague of mine, when discovering the Jotunheim and Lyr 2 on my desk, asked what that is. I said, "Headphone amplifiers!"
"Are they new? They look so old!", he exclaimed. It turns out it's the brushed metal look that makes them look old to him.
I was surprised - I have always absolutely loved the look of brushed metal. I guess that makes me old, too? To me it looks refined and rugged, it has an elegant simplicity and maturity to it that I appreciate. Functional, yet attractive. Timeless, in my mind.
I love that Schiit!

Very well put.

I fully agree with you. Schiit design "philosophy" based in minimalism is fantastic, I hope they never change that (sorry Mr. Toad, that goes against your desire of seeing VU meters while you lay over a big leaf on the water ).

 

[mike138]

I never really thought of Schiit as having an old design. Yeah, most AV equipment you see at places like Best Buy is black and shiny, but stuff like Macbooks, HTC phones, and other devices have brushed silver.

 

[Roy G. Biv]

A mostly positive but otherwise light-weight review of Saga/Vidar:
http://www.digitalaudioreview.net/2017/11/schiit-vidarsaga-an-affordable-care-act-for-loudspeakers/

 

[Ableza]

Not old, obsolete.

Just ask @Jason Stoddard

Ah hell, I totally missed this.

Discrete design: obsolete.
Tubes: obsolete:
Class AB amps: obsolete.
Real switches, no software UI: obsolete.
Multibit DACs: obsolete.

Hell, everything we do is obsolete!

I love it.

 

[HumanFly]

Yeah, this is more of a "fixing problems" thing.

For now, tech support is via two people, both of whom own and use a lot of Schiit gear, so they absolutely, ah, "Know their Schiit." (However, please note that they still aren't going to be baited into answering subjective questions--other than their own opinions--or answering really bizarre questions--like the one we got yesterday about the Saga output jack metallurgy). Both of them have other duties, and neither are overloaded, as we're typically looking at 75-100 emails per day. What adds complexity though, is that we also have two other people on the orders and returns side of things, and sometimes all 4 need to coordinate.

Our previous "management" system for answering inquiries was beyond laughable--as in, no management, so we had an increasing number of incidents where nobody knew who was on first, and things were dropped. A helpdesk allows us to immediately eliminate all of these collisions and (potential) missed emails or miscommunications.

Now, of course, a helpdesk can do lots and lots of other things, but that's not what we're looking at the system for. It's just a management and visibility tool.

Maybe you should make a loaner-pool of refurbished Schiit (or Schiit with a dent or something) for everybody that works the phone. Actually using the schtuff you talk about will increase efficiency dramaticly.
Having hooked up something wrong yourself will make it very easy to determine wether someone else did so too for instance. But you seem like the kind of company that already does this.

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

Maybe you should make a loaner-pool of refurbished Schiit (or Schiit with a dent or something) for everybody that works the phone. Actually using the schtuff you talk about will increase efficiency dramaticly.
Having hooked up something wrong yourself will make it very easy to determine wether someone else did so too for instance. But you seem like the kind of company that already does this.

Seems a bit like a doctor advising his staff to get every venereal disease just to get acquainted with the feeling and urge to resolve it.
A keeper indeed.

 

[HumanFly]

Didn`t think of it that way, they could catch acute audio-nervosa and ruin the company.
Ah.... I see you use a Bimby? Hmmmm...I`m sorry to inform you that anything less than the Yggy will not do anyway. Thanks for calling and goodbye!

 

[liquidsmote]

I love reading this thread via email notifications ... and then re-reading on the site itself for all of the differences

 

[RCBinTN]

@Jason Stoddard

I understand that at a certain number of cases per day and client base a sane company that wants to stay sane starts using software or whatever else they think will work to deal with the increasing drain on resources. From a user's point of view this is bad because it is a sign that Schiit is beginning to go in the commode with all the rest of the big companies that have poor user support. It doesn't have to be that way, I have for example always had great service from Apple. I sometimes feel guilty about how long they will take trying to fix your problem.

My question for you is have you wondered if Schitt is getting so big and so successful that it will no longer be fun for you, Mike and the others who have been with you for a while now. Just saying...

I like your thought process, but could have presented it in a different way...e.g. more positively.
Like um ya know Schiit is trying to improve their customer service.

 

[RCBinTN]

Dear @OldRoadToad
I love you.
You say more with your deleted posts than...well most.
I struggle with my accolade. Just keep doing, what you're doing, my Toadish friend.

With all possible Toady respect,
RCB

 

[AudioBear]

I like your thought process, but could have presented it in a different way...e.g. more positively.
Like um ya know Schiit is trying to improve their customer service.

Jason made that clear in his response. When I wrote that I was partly thinking of 9-layer deep voice menus that always send you back to main menu and accents I can't understand reading from canned pages that have nothing to do with my problem. I shouldn't have taken such a dim view of Schiit's desire to do things differently and do them for us, the customers.

The other part of my response was that I was thinking that it's pretty clear Mike and Jason love designing great new stuff and popping the FRaudiophile high price bubble. They have created a workplace they enjoy. But growth means many more products to service and many more customers. Complexity and workload grows. When you get big enough, it just isn't fun anymore unless you are very very careful not to let it rain on your own parade. I was simply posing the question if growth (eg in number of products or number of sales) is always good; sometimes staying small is a good thing.

I'm glad that Schiit have installed service management software so that people don't get forgotten. There could be some real benefits. Good software can help track weak links that break too often and they can help standardize solutions to recurrent failures. There's nothing worse than trying cures that don't work again and again until you find the right one. It could save a lot of time and really improve service if the software, or some additional software, helps track and analyze causes of service calls.

After yesterday's discussion I wondered if Schiit could do something really novel and post records of service requests and their solutions on a blog. No company that I know of does this but Schiit has always been very transparent and have always been willing to rock the boat. A lot of times a service request is the result of customer not using the product correctly, misunderstanding what the product can and can't do, or not being able to troubleshoot a problem they can fix themselves. If service records were organized by product and maybe divided into appropriate sub-categories, it might help users use their products correctly and could potentially reduce the number of service calls. At the very least it would help the user describe their problem more accurately and do some preliminary troubleshooting like try another power cord and another power source, change the interconnect, etc.

Each product category could begin with "MY PRODUCT DOESN'T WORK" Answer: Have you tried the power switch, it's on the back.

 

[Baldr]

Dear @OldRoadToad
I love you.
You say more with your deleted posts than...well most.
I struggle with my accolade. Just keep doing, what you're doing, my Toadish friend.

With all possible Toady respect,
RCB

Speaking for myself, I am having more fun than I have ever had with respect to work. My only problems are when I am “writer blocked” on a new product or series of products. Growth is just a result of doing more than 51% of what we do “right”. When, in 7 years you grow from one to 19? (I lose count) products and a garage to 8000 square feet many more repetitive tasks appear. The software I use to lay out PCBs efficiently deals with a class of those, an organizational requirement of which appeared years ago. The ticketing system is another system which appeared as a blindside of wondering who was dealing with a really aggressive customer.

As we grow, also grows a need for new subsets of organization. That organization allows us to get out of our own way and do more of what we really enjoy. If we enjoy what we do, then the odds are you will as well.