Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up
Nov 3, 2018 at 4:07 PM Post #41,356 of 145,578
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.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 4:48 PM Post #41,357 of 145,578
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.

Careful. You'll have me posting photos of my Tektronix 500 series oscilloscope collection. Lots of tubes in those. That they were all hand built on a production basis boggles my mind. My 547 is fully restored and functional, still has all the original tubes. Doubles as a space heater in the winter.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 4:57 PM Post #41,358 of 145,578
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.


BTW -- Welcome!!
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 5:24 PM Post #41,359 of 145,578
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.
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!
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 5:28 PM Post #41,360 of 145,578
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.
It seems like the development cost is always ignored in sale price calculations.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 5:34 PM Post #41,361 of 145,578
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 is a 6sk7 and the unit works well so it should be correct. I did the same thing on tubes, I put a less 6sn7 in the Eico. Somehow I knew you would be familiar, these things last forever.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 6:01 PM Post #41,362 of 145,578
It seems like the development cost is always ignored in sale price calculations.

Too true.

It is hard for the average person to realize this - another reason I appreciate this thread.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 7:00 PM Post #41,363 of 145,578
Fiber has many times the bandwidth of coax, terabytes vs gigabytes, why does coax perform better? Is the Toslink implementation poor?
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
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 7:06 PM Post #41,364 of 145,578
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

Thank you for the links. So, Toslink suffers from the implementation, not the idea of using optical transmission. I'm sure the comments are right, it won't be updated. At this point I'm stuck as my source has good USB and toslink, but my dac has good toslink and spdif. So, the only current path is toslink. However, all of my music is red book and I'm saving my pennies for a gumby. Maybe some day...
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 8:45 PM Post #41,365 of 145,578
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and whatnot...

About a month ago, in the middle of a whisky tasting party ... my 2nd Schiit ModiMB died. It had been slowly dying, but that night decided to give up the ghost for good in front of my friends. A little embarrassing, but I knew Schiit would take care of it.

It took about a month, but I recently received my repaired unit, and I have to say ... sometimes absence truly makes the heart grow fonder. Paired with my Leben ... the ModiMB is a sweet, sweeeeeet little DAC.

I also have to say ... unlike most companies, Schiit actually included a verification and repair report. I LOVE that they did this. Sometimes failures can make you feel like you're going crazy. It is so nice to have confirmation from Schiit, and a note as to the repair work they completed.

Now on my 3rd ModiMB, I may be happiest I've ever been with this DAC.

modimbrepair - Copy.jpg
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 9:10 PM Post #41,366 of 145,578
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

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.
.
 
Nov 3, 2018 at 10:29 PM Post #41,367 of 145,578
A Huichol Dia de Los Muertos skull. Beautiful.
Huichol beadwork (on a beeswax base) is absolutely beautiful! (Keep it out of the sun...)
 
Nov 4, 2018 at 3:29 AM Post #41,368 of 145,578
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.
.
I can see where this approach could work really well, for a couple of reasons.
#1 it's a long run which can tend to cancel some of the creation of jitter.
#2 the long run is probably mostly straight which helps with #1 because optical really likes straight runs and short runs usually curve quite a bit over the length of the run.

And for a party where the music is background or for dance, and not for focused listening, using optical makes sense, at least to me anyway.

JJ
 

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