BTW...what is a "fair" markup?
Excellent question.
I have no idea after reading Abeleza's post. One person's fair markup is another person's being taken advantage of.
No answer to this question I can think of. Too many variables.
BTW...what is a "fair" markup?
And now for something completely different.
A friend in Minnesota helped me acquire this old working Eico sweep generator, ease of operation is sublime. Inside are various tubes including a 6sn7 made by GE for Eico, same tube used in Lyr 3, still working well after all these years but I can only plug it into an audio amp for testing. @sam6550a should appreciate this.
Well, I am posting this after reading all of @Jason Stoddard’s and Mike’s posts.
First off, I’d like to thank Jason and Mike for posting some great info on the site - both we, and they, are better for it. We get to see “behind the curtain”, and they get to receive real-user comments and feedback - something other companies really do not want to give or receive.
Other thoughts:
Jason, you have ruined a part of this hobby for me, specifically with regard to what a piece of equipment is worth and what it costs. Is the $2K DAC I have worth $2K? It surely did not cost that to manufacture, even with a fair markup to the maker. But, I did buy it, so at the time, yes, it was worth it. Would I buy it today with the knowledge I now have on how the industry prices hardware? Maybe not.
I look at speakers, amps, etc… that I’d very much like to have, but when I look at the price tag and divide it by 4 to get an idea of it’s “cost”, I walk away. Kind depressing, actually, but there are solutions - follow Schiit’s lead and search for companies that do direct sales. There are a few out there.
So, now I want to buy some new Schiit, but I do not actually need anything. I really just want to support them and see what they are about for myself. So, I decided to buy the bottom of the barrel, cheapest thing they sell - the Fulla 2. B-stock, even. Costs me about $90 with shipping. My thinking was this: let’s take the cheapest thing they sell and how good it is, thereby (unfairly) reflecting on them as a company as a whole. Is the same time/effort put into even the lowliest product?
Opening the box was surprising - it is pretty heavy. Nice.
Lots of I/O on it. Nice.
Big knob on top, aluminum over plastic. Nice.
Cable needed was included. Nice.
How does it sound? Very good, actually. Does my other DAC sound better? Well, yes, thankfully it does (because if it did not, I’d be a bit upset by that. No shocked, but upset). But, the Fulla actually sounds very good, way better than it has a right to.
So, now I wait until I need something and will check the Schiit site - especially when Sol and the Transport arrive. I am looking forward to that.
OK Tom, you are ringing my chimes! I have one of these Eico 377 Sine/Square Generators, and use it often for all sorts of testing. I bought mine new in 1962 as a kit, and have rebuilt/modified it more than twice. PM me and I will share a wealth of info on this fine product with you. One instant observation---the tube near the output terminals appears to be a EL34---it should be a 6SK7. The cathode follower will not support a EL34, nor will the filament supply. As for the 6SN7, I put my "worst" 6SN7 in the 377, since it it only employed as a sine to square converter. Save the good 6SN7 for audio! This is a great find---the circuit design is accurate and robust, the Eico implementation is excellent, and the condition of your unit is very, very good.And now for something completely different.
A friend in Minnesota helped me acquire this old working Eico sweep generator, ease of operation is sublime. Inside are various tubes including a 6sn7 made by GE for Eico, same tube used in Lyr 3, still working well after all these years but I can only plug it into an audio amp for testing. @sam6550a should appreciate this.
It seems like the development cost is always ignored in sale price calculations.My company sells a product for $650 to integration companies who then mark it up when they sell to their end customers. The cost for said product is $14.32 for the materials in the BOM and about 1/2 hour labor time for assembly. So the $650 price is one heck of a markup. Why? Because we will need to sell about 4500 of them to break even on covering our development costs. We hope to do that in about three years - and hopefully the tool it is used in will not become obsolete before we make money.
OK Tom, you are ringing my chimes! I have one of these Eico 377 Sine/Square Generators, and use it often for all sorts of testing. I bought mine new in 1962 as a kit, and have rebuilt/modified it more than twice. PM me and I will share a wealth of info on this fine product with you. One instant observation---the tube near the output terminals appears to be a EL34---it should be a 6SK7. The cathode follower will not support a EL34, nor will the filament supply. As for the 6SN7, I put my "worst" 6SN7 in the 377, since it it only employed as a sine to square converter. Save the good 6SN7 for audio! This is a great find---the circuit design is accurate and robust, the Eico implementation is excellent, and the condition of your unit is very, very good.
Good luck!
It seems like the development cost is always ignored in sale price calculations.
My answer to this is, it's not a matter of bandwidth as the digital audio data flow is maybe 1-2 MB's for up to 192KB sample rates.Fiber has many times the bandwidth of coax, terabytes vs gigabytes, why does coax perform better? Is the Toslink implementation poor?
I think the direct link you meant is (it was the last listed post of 3 pages):
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wha...n-robert-hunter.784471/page-126#post-13240788
My answer to this is, it's not a matter of bandwidth as the digital audio data flow is maybe 1-2 MB's for up to 192KB sample rates.
In my case I run at 44.1 and the data rate is in the low KB range.
Optical can have massive jitter problems which seems to be at the heart of it's poor SQ when compared to the other digital audio formats.
And I thought it should be superior due to its electrical isolation and lack of electrical 'reflection' back down the wire(s).
But using an EITR, with a usb feed, should prove to be a vast improvement over optical.
JJ
Huichol beadwork (on a beeswax base) is absolutely beautiful! (Keep it out of the sun...)A Huichol Dia de Los Muertos skull. Beautiful.
I can see where this approach could work really well, for a couple of reasons.For me it’s a bit different. I run a line from my office to my stereo cabinet in another room. It’s about a 40’, and I use it only when I DJ parties at my house. (Streaming to my Apple TV, which I often use for music listening, has too much lag for live DJing.)
The static and other noise is horrible.
A 40’ toslink cable is trouble free, no lag, and solves the problem completely.
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