[Ableza]

Excellent post Jason.  It made me have two thoughts:
 
1) While my world no longer contains a subjective component since I left the audio business 20 years ago, concepts like TIM have meaning to our current designs since we are controlling variations at 10-7 volts and 10-3 amps.  Thermal noise?  That's where we live.
 
2) You have a Video Toaster still?  Cool!  Mine is in the garage somewhere...

 

[J&J]

Headfi tease that's what you guys are

 

[Yethal]

   
 
Mystery 1. Expect to wrap your mind around a couple of new concepts with this one. It’s really hard to say anything more about this…but consider that one component of it will be compatible with some of our other products.
 
Mystery 2. I’ve said I’ve been working on a new balanced topology, and that will be incorporated into one of the planned mystery products. It does not replace anything we’re currently selling, but it does take us in some surprising new directions. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
 
Mystery 3. And expect something that nobody is expecting from us. I can’t say more.
 
 

Let's start a betting game!

Mystery 1 - Tube buffer for solid state amps
 
Mystery 2 - Frankly no idea, maybe another balanced dac/amp stack but smaller?
 
Mystery 3 - Pair of headphones, or a battery powered stuff, or an ADC.
 
Anybody else wants to enter the bid?

 

[StanD]

  Mystery 1. Expect to wrap your mind around a couple of new concepts with this one. It’s really hard to say anything more about this…but consider that one component of it will be compatible with some of our other products.
 
Mystery 2. I’ve said I’ve been working on a new balanced topology, and that will be incorporated into one of the planned mystery products. It does not replace anything we’re currently selling, but it does take us in some surprising new directions. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
 
Mystery 3. And expect something that nobody is expecting from us. I can’t say more.
 
And, of course, there are a couple of wild cards, too…we’ll see what happens with those as we get further along in development.
 
And with that, we are fully up to date, and this book is complete…but I hope you put up with me posting new stories from time to time…about every other week. 

#1: Sound processor, either digital goes ahead of the DAC or analog between DAC and Amp. Including some sort of EQ in there would be interesting? Parametric would be nice.
#2: Balanced output stage that can follow an Asgard 2, Magni or any SE amp.
#3: Something video related.
My guess is as good as anyone's

. 

 

[Ableza]

I have it on good authority that Mystery 3 is a hand-held computing device.  Here's a spy shot of the prototype:
 

 

[Eee Pee]

#2 could be a tubed circlotron style topology?  Tubed Mjolnir hybrid kinda thing?  That'd be neat.

 

[Shembot]

This entire book was fantastic. The last chapter definitely has me wondering, and I'm really excited to see what Schiit is in store for us next year.
 
That said, I'm sure whatever is released next year will make me regret just having bought a Gungnir/Mjolnir stack at the end of this one. For what some consider a relatively mature field of electronics, things are still moving fast! Glad to have you guys as pioneers.

 

[Pirakaphile]

Looking forward to these new releases in 2015! Even if I won't get em, I can always read the FAQ for a good laugh. Keep up the insane work, I'll be interested for quite a long while

 

[sagittarius1273]

Jason, 
I am glad you mentioned you might consider traditional pre-amps. I have been thinking about writing a post requesting you to consider building one for sometime. The reason for this is that I think you already have many of the necessary pieces to build a very good one. In addition, surprisingly most other manufacturers do not pay much attention to the importance of varying gain to better fit a component in an audio chain with other components of various sensitivities. I hope you can make the volume control as a gain control in that preamp or build the the preamp with several gain levels and the volume control would move between changing gain levels and cutting the signal in between the gain levels seamlessly to the user. Since Mike mentioned that Yiggi's DAC modules (if I remember correctly) output "VOLTS", it would be good if there is a special link to carry that high signal level without attenuation to such a pre-amp.
  Other than that, my wish list/guess list would be:
Headphone amps: not much.. but hey.. Mjolnir seems to be the only one left in the lineup without gain switching.. you ain't gonna leave it like that, are you?

 
Digital: 
- Mainly hoping Yiggi turns out to be a game changer. 
- I hope/think Mike will surprise us with a state of the art standalone USB or ethernet interface. Thinking of something that can challenge a Berkeley Design Alpha USB at around 1/3 the price. 
-  A proper 8-channel digital crossover and DSP that can work with input signals up to 24/192 and have high quality digital to analog conversion. The software side can be daunting but if you can team with somebody like Accourate or other filter software companies to make the filters directly uploadable to the DSP, it would make things easier. I doubt you get all of the above in one product from anybody now. But I know this is likely a low volume product.
 
 
Swiss army knife products: which in my mind include SYS and Wyrd:
- A version of SYS that switches between several input signals (more than 2) and have bypass-able volume control.
- An analog or digital equalizer, preferably PC/MAC programmable in case of a digital one and may be also uses off-the-shelf software like fab filter. All headphones need some sort of equalisation. 
- High quality power supply with various output voltage levels mainly to be used in place of switching power supplies for a laptop / windows tablet / MAC mini used as a music file server and also to power usb-powered devices.
 
 
2016 onwards: 
- If you can build a statement DAC, why not  build a statement ADC as well for the recording industry? It is equally as important.
- There are/will be some clearly large price gaps in the product line up that will be waiting to be filled
 
 
Other: Since you mentioned something nobody is expecting from you in Mystery 3, please think twice before you get tempted into spreading yourself too thin. I hope you wont go into mechanical stuff (headphones, speakers, turntables, etc) and keep refining and building better electronics.
 
Enjoy the holidays.

 

[madwolfa]

  - If you can build a statement DAC, why not  build a statement ADC as well for the recording industry? It is equally as important.

 
I think making a consumer product is completely different to making a professional product. Not sure Schiit would like to venture into that at this point.

 

[sagittarius1273]

   
I think making a consumer product is completely different to making a professional product. Not sure Schiit would like to venture into that at this point.

Yep..That is why I put it under 2016 onwards..

 

[madwolfa]

  Yep..That is why I put it under 2016 onwards..

 
And probably under a different brand. 

 

[sagittarius1273]

   
And probably under a different brand. 

LOL

 

[Shembot]

As foreshadowed by Jason, I predict a Schiit Toasta, an amp that runs so hot you can actually toast bread on it. You actually can indeed plug your DAC into a Toasta.

 

[StanD]

Hmmm, how about a Class A home heating system?