Chapter 40:
Schiit Goes Vinyl
Vinyl? Yes, vinyl. As in those round spinny plastic things that you scratch a hunk of rock across to make music, treat with kid gloves in a HEPA-filtered environment to keep some of the inevitable pops at bay, and go mental with tracking force gauges and alignment diagrams and VTA adjustment to get a few hundred more hours on a stylus.
Sounds sexy, doesn’t it?
So why, in this futuristic year of almost-2015, when we should be shopping for flying cars and taking vacations on the moon, do people still mess with this crazy, neurotic format?
And why, in almost-2015, are vinyl records the only physical medium to show any growth in sales? And not just tepid growth…strong growth?
It’s funny. I probably shouldn’t be writing this chapter at all, because I’m really, at the core, a digital guy. A convenience guy. I rejoiced when I first went CD (from cassettes, yeah…I was a car audio guy before that), I was thrilled when I was able to put all those CDs on a hard drive, and I was overjoyed when Tidal showed up on the scene with uncompressed streaming.
So blame it all on Mike.
Yes, Mike, the father of “digital audio done right.”
Mike Comes Out of the Closet?
Well, not exactly. Mike has always been into analog from the very beginning—his first products included a tube phono preamp (the first to use 6DJ8 tubes). If you’ve been following his side of the story here, you’ve heard him say that his first goal with digital was to get it sounding as good as analog.*
*Aside: those of you who have grown up with relatively mature digital audio may think this means “going backwards to soft, distorted, noisy analog sound,” but the reality is very far from that. Early digital had big problems. It really did sound like butt.
And, Mike has always maintained a record collection and has almost always had a turntable around. So, it’s not surprising he’d eventually turn back to analog.
What is surprising is how he did it.
One day, out of the blue, Mike showed up carrying a small green board, the same size as what we use in Modi and Magni. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, thinking it was just another DAC variation he was playing with. When I finally noticed it and asked what it was, Mike laughed.
“It’s a phono stage.”
I blinked, thinking I hadn’t heard him right. “A phono stage? Like for records?”
Mike laughed. “Like exactly for records.”
“Vinyl?”
Mike nodded, even more amused at my flabbergasted reaction. “Vinyl.”
“For us?” I was still trying to wrap my mind around it.
Mike crossed his arms. “I knew you’d have some trouble wrapping your head around it. But believe it or not, there was analog music before digital, and no matter what they say, all music starts out as analog.”
“Except techno,” I said, unable to think of anything else to say.
Mike made an expression like he’d just bit into a lemon. “That’s not music. That’s someone standing up on stage and pressing ‘play.’”
“I think some people would argue you on that one,” I told Mike.
“Whatever. It’s experiential. Not performance-based,” Mike said, dismissing it as easily as you can shake a cane and say, ‘Get off my lawn!’
“But… a phono preamp?” I said, struggling back to the subject. “It must be an inexpensive one, if you’re using the Magni/Modi size.”
“Yep!” Mike said, grinning. “Under a hundred and fifty bucks, I expect.”
“Discrete?”
Mike shook his head. “No. Ultra low-noise op-amps.”
“Op-amps,” I said, curling my lip.
“I know, I know, you can do better,” Mike said. “But can you do better for a hundred and fifty bucks retail?”
“I—“ I began, but Mike cut me off.
“And don’t answer until you’ve heard it.”
I sighed.
Okay. Fine. I was playing with some decent op-amps for what would eventually become Fulla. I was willing to admit that, in some cost-constrained cases, op-amps could be OK. But I was also working on an all-new discrete, inherently balanced topology that was unlike anything else out there, and it was
insane.*
*Aside: Cease the heavy breathing about possible new products. All-new, never-before-done stuff takes a lot of baking time. It’ll be done when it’s done. That’s all I can say for now.
I sighed. “So let’s hear it.”
But, for some reason, we didn’t hook it up that evening, and we both ended up getting distracted. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I went up to Mike’s house for a prototype-swapping session that I actually heard what was going to become the Mani.
And before I get into that, let’s talk about the whys and wherefores of a phono preamp.
It’s the Curve, Stupid
Well, actually not entirely. It’s the gain and the curve. Doing both at low noise is what’s important for a RIAA phono preamp.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first talk about why we’re spoiled in this modern age, and then let’s get into details about what a phono preamp actually does.
Why are we spoiled today?
- Pretty much every digital component on the planet puts out “line level” outputs, which is typically 2V RMS for full-scale output from RCA jacks.
- Pretty much anything that isn’t line-level is close. For example, a smartphone may only put out 1V RMS full-scale. But this is only 6dB less than the typical output. Not a deal-breaker.
- Pretty much everything has frequency response that is flat from 20 to 20kHz…and frequently well beyond.
The upshot? Pretty much everything is predictable, consistent, and easy to integrate with other components. Nothing requires huge amplification or frequency shaping. Take a line-level signal, run it through an amp with 20-30dB gain, and you’re at speaker output levels. Done.
Why is vinyl different?
- Depending on the cartridge, you’re looking at signals that range from the microvolt levels to handfuls of millivolts—40 to 60dB below line level, or, in more understandable terms, 100x to 1000x smaller than that nice standard 2V RMS. Remember, this is a signal formed by running a diamond through a tiny groove and having it generate electricity via wiggling magnets and coils.
- Different cartridges can be wildly different. Deccas are very high output. They may need only 30dB of gain. Some inefficient moving-coil designs could demand up to 60dB. Want more fun? Some perform better at different cartridge loads.
- And, to make it more complicated, all phono preamps have to accurately apply an “RIAA curve” to the output…essentially a filter that boosts bass and cuts treble, to compensate for the way the records were cut (with less bass to reduce the chance of tracking errors, and more treble so that the RIAA filter would act as natural noise-reduction.)
The upshot of this is that designing a low-noise amplifier with 100 to 1000x gain is difficult…and creating an accurate RIAA filter is no easy feat, either.
So why bother with the demands of a format that was engineered over half a century ago to sound its best with the archaic technology of the time?
Because, when done right, vinyl can sound very, very good.
Yes, there, I said it.
It’s Missing Lots of Pieces
When I finally went up to Mike’s house to hear what would become Mani, Rina came along. This is important because there are some times I think she knows it all…and this was going to be one of them.
Now, I have to preface this by saying that this was the first time I’d heard analog since the Sumo and Theta days. I was only too happy to leave vacuum-platter turntables, record washing machines, VTA alignment gauges, ground wires, and all those other neuroses in the 20
th century, where I thought they belonged.
But eventually, Mike had it cued up (using one of his Ariston turntables, I believe, and probably a Nagaoka cartridge) and handed me the headphones. I put them on, trying not to roll my eyes. I guess I expected old-style, rolled-off, fluttery, distorted sound—perhaps I’d been partially assimilated by the objectivist Borg.
And yeah, the first thing I heard was the subtle crackle and pop of groove noise.
Yeah, just like I remembered, I thought…
And then the music started. My eyes opened up. Because this wasn’t mushy, rolled, distorted, or otherwise clearly inferior to digital. It sounded very good, clean, and dynamic. And…it had a real sense of weight and space, something I hadn’t heard with a DAC and the same headphones. Something, something almost indefinable, was more real, more alive, more
right.
Mike laughed as I shook my head and handed the headphones over to Rina. “You have to hear this,” I told her.
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I know what vinyl sounds like.”
“Just listen,” I said, pushing the headphones at her.
Rina sighed, took the headphones, and put them on. She closed her eyes for a while, then opened them and shrugged. “Yep. Analog.”
“But doesn’t it sound great?” I asked.
Rina laughed. “Of course. It’s analog. Did you guys forget what analog sounds like? Or did you forget I used to do live sound? Analog always sounds better. Digital has all those pieces missing.”
Mike and I looked at each other. I swear, in that moment, I could pretty much hear his thoughts, because I was thinking the same thing.
Well, it’s not quite accurate that there are pieces missing, because Nyquist…Mike and I were thinking.
And our jaws both dropped open at the same point, because we both had the same epiphany at the same time:
…but Nyquist relies on an ideal brickwall filter, and it doesn’t take into account quantization error…so saying “It’s missing a bunch of pieces” wasn’t so inaccurate after all.
I tried for a while longer to get Rina to admit that we’d just heard something special, but she refused to me moved, like a picky dog that really doesn’t want to eat what you’re trying to feed it.
“Why is this so amazing to you guys?” was all she’d say. “Of course it’s better. It’s analog. It’s the whole thing, not bits.”
Sure. Fine. Whatever.
I wanted to remind her how archaic, how truly stone-age the technology was (I mean, really, dragging a diamond over plastic, come on, we have iPhones now,) and how much signal processing it had to go through, and how that it was completely dependent on the engineer who’d cut the record, and how it’d wear out eventually, and how the stylus would wear out eventually, and how we’d all go insane trying to tweak the last 1% of performance out of it.
But you know what? I gotta admit…it sounded
great.
And that’s how we decided to do a phono preamp.
The Most Boring Production Story, Ever
We decided to do a phono preamp, did two prototypes, and then put it into production, and began shipping in September 2014.
Yes, it was about that simple, and about that boring. The only real delay came in locating some of the hard-to-find precision capacitors for the RIAA filter. Mike was insanely specific about those, because an accurate RIAA curve really is 95% of the difference between phono preamps…and Mani has one of the most accurate curves out there.
Aside: Of course, he was also insanely specific about many other things, like topology (a fully passive RIAA network), the power supply, the low-noise op-amps, etc…made even more challenging because this was intended to be a fully surface-mount product for low cost. I’m really short-changing the design here, because I wasn’t involved very much with this one. Hopefully Mike will chime in with some details.
And, of course, there were a couple of other delays, too…late metal, and difficulty finding a decent ground post that didn’t cost stupid amounts of money.
But other than that, Mani was boring as can be. And, like I said before, that’s the kind of boring you like. Because “interesting” product launches are usually only interesting in very, very bad ways.
And, after several easy, flawless launches in 2014, Mani was beginning to seem almost, well, normal. Like we knew what we were doing. Like it wasn’t just luck.
(But then there was Fulla, but I’ll get to that next week.)
So Vinyl Earns Another Convert?
No. Sorry. I’m still really, really lazy. I’ll enjoy a good record at Mike’s place, but it’s mainly files and Tidal at home. If this makes me a terrible audiophile, so be it. Feel safe and happy that Mike is heading up the vinyl side of things.
So, yeah, I’ll take my bits, please. Even if it is bits, and not the whole thing.
But I’m pleased to say Mani is selling briskly. In fact, we’re currently out of stock for a few days as the next run ramps up. Early indication is that it’s a winner—but that’s up for our customers to decide.
Business Lessons and Alternate Histories
So, what business lessons can we learn from this?
That being the part of a revival of a dead technology can be interesting and fun? Sure. Mike did that before. He’s one of the first to bring tubes back from the dead, at the height of the transistor era.
But will this current interest in vinyl last? I have no idea. It might fade away once again. Or it might get even bigger. It really comes down to the type of sound you like, and the amount of time and inconvenience that you’re willing to put up with in order to get it.
I will say that both analog and digital can sound amazing, but I suspect I’ll be happier with an Yggdrasil in the end. But I am very lazy, as I’ve said before.
I think the main business lesson comes down to: be willing to be surprised by what an “outmoded” or “outdated” technology is capable of.
What do I mean by that?
Well, it’s kinda like this. Today, we look back on the first Apollo landing on the moon in 1969 and think, “Yeah, that’s pretty cool.” But I think that future historians will look back and say something more like, “HOLY FRIGGIN CRAP THESE GUYS WENT TO THE DAMN MOON WITH SLIDE RULES AND VACUUM TUBES! No nanotechnology, no mature information technology, no advanced biotech, none of what we have now, just THREE GUYS IN A TIN CAN. They were completely FRIGGIN NUTS! Are you KIDDING ME????”
To think that a technology so profoundly ancient and compromised as vinyl records can transport someone into an immersive environment that gets damn close—or even edges out—the best of our wangle-dangle, fully-buzzword-compliant, step-right-up-and-put-yer-money-on-the-table 160X DSD or 45-bit SUPER REFERENCE DIGITAL recordings is kinda like that. Not just pretty cool, but really over-the-top insane.
I mean, yeah, I make fun of it as scratching a rock over plastic, but it’s even worse than that. Witness the RIAA curve. The imperfections of the cutting of the masters. The imperfections of the press. The fact that the stylus has built-in tracking error on all but one point on the record. I mean, this is really lowest-common-denominator, built-to-a-price-point, ultra ho-dad stuff. But the performance you can pull out of it speaks for itself.
But there’s another alternate history to think about…one that might really bake your noodle.
Fact: laserdiscs (as in, those big shiny 12” things that a few stupid people like me used before DVDs) were not digital. They were analog. Yes. Analog video. On a shiny disk.
Question: what if the recording industry, way back in the dim days of 1982, had chosen analog as the format for their shiny disk format known as “CD?”
Yes.
What if CD had been analog?
Well, copying would certainly be a ton tougher. If it was possible, it might easily involve generation loss, too. It wouldn’t be just bits that could be stored on a computer…and shared…and downloaded…
Makes you think about where we’d be now, hmm?
