Ultimateaudioslave
Head-Fier
I think I saw a vid somewhere. Will update you soon.
Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up
- Thread starter Jason Stoddard
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ashirin
100+ Head-Fier
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I’m definitely not arguing that planned obsolescence hasn’t been a factor in AV gear, but I do think it’s worth noting that many of those upgrades were significant. Anyone can easily tell the difference between a 480p DVD which holds 4.7/9.4GB for single/dual layer and a 1080p blu-ray which holds 25/50gb for single/dual layer. I will admit that UHD blu-ray isn’t nearly as big an upgrade on most screen sizes / normal home viewing distances, but HDR on an appropriate TV allowed by the 66/100GB dual/triple layer UHD disks is also significant. Physical media is dying, of course, but these same upgrades are being implemented with streaming as well (where the main fight now will be to lower compression as much as possible).
Past the compression issue, I think we’re definitely going to start seeing serious diminishing returns in video gear as well from now and it will be interesting to see how the market responds. Up until now, I really do think there’s been something important to gain with each upgrade cycle in a way that isn’t the case (as much) for 2ch gear.
There are some interesting TV technologies coming at least, with OLED getting cheaper, and Micro LED on the horizon. But the benefits of those are hard to explain to consumers so I’m sure we’ll see those marketed with features that aren’t actually important (like 8K).
No matter what video gear I have though, I can tell you that the audio is going through Schiit gear (there, I made this rant topical)
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Except they are going to offer a trade in for the XMC-2 at a smoking deal with a brand new warranty...
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ImagesbyMurray
500+ Head-Fier
Reading Baldr's thread and here, it's my understanding that Schiit have gone with their own "silicon" as opposed to using off the shelve USB chipsets/firmware.
Mike mentions that the Transport will actually use this to communicate with Schiit DAC's. This is pretty significant. Remember this is ALL based on a years old spec (2006):
https://www.usb.org/document-library/audio-devices-rev-20-and-adopters-agreement
From Mike's thread - I'm thinking he may well be looking at is [3.10 Clock Domains], in file [Audio 20 final.pdf]. It's pretty vague, but I can well imagine strictly implementing a master clock could be huge.
Also, a CD transport with a USB interface would allow us to rip our existing CD's - brilliant.
All speculation on my part.....
/john
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Jason Stoddard
Sponsor: Schiit Audio
Hey all,
Interesting discussions about obsolescence. We have a FormLabs Form2 3D printer, which was recently replaced by the Form3. When this happened, there were the usual questions about support for the older product. And FormLabs was forthright, saying they would support the Form2 until 2023 at least.
Cue the howling. "Oh my gawd, are you kidding, only four more years for a 3D printer I spent $3500 on? That's completely mercenary/unfair/horrible and you are the worst people on the planet!"
And yeah, in some ways, I get it. If I'd just bought a Form2 and was a very, very light user of it, and I was unaware of what usually happens when companies say "at least," and didn't have any experience with 3rd party support, I might be miffed.
But we bought ours to use it. It's been a year and a half, and it's already getting full of spilled resin, the sensors aren't connecting to the tank all the time anymore and need to be cleaned and re-set regularly, and I know that by the time 2023 rolls around, we're gonna have an obsolete printer half-full of partially cured resin and limping along on percussive maintenance and a prayer. And even then, I bet there will be resins, tanks, and other stuff available well past 2023, and there will probably be a company or two who make parts for it in 2033, given the 50K user base.
"So what does this have to do with audio?" you might ask.
Good question. Here it is, bald as Kojak: even Schiit can't guarantee infinite upgrades indefinitely.
Yep. I'm saying it. At some point in the future, we won't be able to continue upgrading our platforms. The platforms themselves will have to change. Hell, we've already made some huge and unplanned changes to platforms to ensure upgradability, like when Bifrost Multibit came out. Bifrost Multibit, in many cases, required a new motherboard, as well as an analog board. This is a big, big change.
Why? Simply because it's impossible to predict everything that might come up in the future. You cannot create an infinitely protean system, at least without infinite time and infinite cost. You will bump up against the constraints of the system as designed.
Want an example? Well, back when I had an agency, it was common for companies to come to us and say something like, "I want a website that can accommodate all of our growth and changes for the next decade."
In 2001.
Yeah. Smart companies run away from such requests, because they know this is impossible. You don't know what the company has planned for the next decade, because they probably don't know. And even if you did, you don't know what the future would hold. In 2001, the idea of embedding was completely alien. The financial crisis was 7 years away. You. Had. No. Idea.
Want a more topical example? Our DACs. We designed them for the upgrades we could foresee. Did we design them for all upgrades possible, forever? Of course not. Hell, the back chassis have fixed holes. We couldn't add another input without chassis changes. This isn't impossible, but this isn't ideal. And heck, do we know every single permutation of DSP and DAC we might come up with? No. Progress might break our own assumptions.
"Oh holy hell, this is Jason saying there will be no more upgrades!" someone will cry.
In short: no. We will continue upgrading DACs as meaningful changes can be made. We've made a few changes we don't consider meaningful. At least not in the "buy another $500 upgrade" level meaningful. But when there are major changes, of course we will offer upgrades, as long as it is possible to do so. We're going to be especially careful to protect your investment in Yggdrasil, because this is an expensive DAC (the bleating of the car-price DAC makers notwithstanding).
However, we're going to be more careful as to the timing of upgrades, to make sure you don't have to deal with them all the time, and we're going to be trying to make sure the majority of upgrades don't require sending the DAC back to us. These are both reasonable requests, that we have screwed up on in the past. We get it, and we're going to make it better.
I hope this helps clear a few things up on upgrades, in the absence of a complete chapter. Things have been pretty busy, with multiple prototypes running around here, so I've been distracted. We're very close on the release of Ragnarok 2 and four other products (which will make more sense as a group when it happens), so please bear with me...there's lots more of my blather coming.
All the best,
Jason
Interesting discussions about obsolescence. We have a FormLabs Form2 3D printer, which was recently replaced by the Form3. When this happened, there were the usual questions about support for the older product. And FormLabs was forthright, saying they would support the Form2 until 2023 at least.
Cue the howling. "Oh my gawd, are you kidding, only four more years for a 3D printer I spent $3500 on? That's completely mercenary/unfair/horrible and you are the worst people on the planet!"
And yeah, in some ways, I get it. If I'd just bought a Form2 and was a very, very light user of it, and I was unaware of what usually happens when companies say "at least," and didn't have any experience with 3rd party support, I might be miffed.
But we bought ours to use it. It's been a year and a half, and it's already getting full of spilled resin, the sensors aren't connecting to the tank all the time anymore and need to be cleaned and re-set regularly, and I know that by the time 2023 rolls around, we're gonna have an obsolete printer half-full of partially cured resin and limping along on percussive maintenance and a prayer. And even then, I bet there will be resins, tanks, and other stuff available well past 2023, and there will probably be a company or two who make parts for it in 2033, given the 50K user base.
"So what does this have to do with audio?" you might ask.
Good question. Here it is, bald as Kojak: even Schiit can't guarantee infinite upgrades indefinitely.
Yep. I'm saying it. At some point in the future, we won't be able to continue upgrading our platforms. The platforms themselves will have to change. Hell, we've already made some huge and unplanned changes to platforms to ensure upgradability, like when Bifrost Multibit came out. Bifrost Multibit, in many cases, required a new motherboard, as well as an analog board. This is a big, big change.
Why? Simply because it's impossible to predict everything that might come up in the future. You cannot create an infinitely protean system, at least without infinite time and infinite cost. You will bump up against the constraints of the system as designed.
Want an example? Well, back when I had an agency, it was common for companies to come to us and say something like, "I want a website that can accommodate all of our growth and changes for the next decade."
In 2001.
Yeah. Smart companies run away from such requests, because they know this is impossible. You don't know what the company has planned for the next decade, because they probably don't know. And even if you did, you don't know what the future would hold. In 2001, the idea of embedding was completely alien. The financial crisis was 7 years away. You. Had. No. Idea.
Want a more topical example? Our DACs. We designed them for the upgrades we could foresee. Did we design them for all upgrades possible, forever? Of course not. Hell, the back chassis have fixed holes. We couldn't add another input without chassis changes. This isn't impossible, but this isn't ideal. And heck, do we know every single permutation of DSP and DAC we might come up with? No. Progress might break our own assumptions.
"Oh holy hell, this is Jason saying there will be no more upgrades!" someone will cry.
In short: no. We will continue upgrading DACs as meaningful changes can be made. We've made a few changes we don't consider meaningful. At least not in the "buy another $500 upgrade" level meaningful. But when there are major changes, of course we will offer upgrades, as long as it is possible to do so. We're going to be especially careful to protect your investment in Yggdrasil, because this is an expensive DAC (the bleating of the car-price DAC makers notwithstanding).
However, we're going to be more careful as to the timing of upgrades, to make sure you don't have to deal with them all the time, and we're going to be trying to make sure the majority of upgrades don't require sending the DAC back to us. These are both reasonable requests, that we have screwed up on in the past. We get it, and we're going to make it better.
I hope this helps clear a few things up on upgrades, in the absence of a complete chapter. Things have been pretty busy, with multiple prototypes running around here, so I've been distracted. We're very close on the release of Ragnarok 2 and four other products (which will make more sense as a group when it happens), so please bear with me...there's lots more of my blather coming.
All the best,
Jason
Rensek
Headphoneus Supremus
Good post, hopefully it won't come as a shock to most of us.
Looking forward to the new gear.
wink
His amps are made out of recycled beer cans
and his source from tomatos.
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johnjen
Headphoneus Supremus
Yeah, but it's really GREAT blather…
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
JJ
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
JJ
No Schiit Atmos gear (yet, hah...).I’m definitely not arguing that planned obsolescence hasn’t been a factor in AV gear, but I do think it’s worth noting that many of those upgrades were significant. Anyone can easily tell the difference between a 480p DVD which holds 4.7/9.4GB for single/dual layer and a 1080p blu-ray which holds 25/50gb for single/dual layer. I will admit that UHD blu-ray isn’t nearly as big an upgrade on most screen sizes / normal home viewing distances, but HDR on an appropriate TV allowed by the 66/100GB dual/triple layer UHD disks is also significant. Physical media is dying, of course, but these same upgrades are being implemented with streaming as well (where the main fight now will be to lower compression as much as possible).
Past the compression issue, I think we’re definitely going to start seeing serious diminishing returns in video gear as well from now and it will be interesting to see how the market responds. Up until now, I really do think there’s been something important to gain with each upgrade cycle in a way that isn’t the case (as much) for 2ch gear.
There are some interesting TV technologies coming at least, with OLED getting cheaper, and Micro LED on the horizon. But the benefits of those are hard to explain to consumers so I’m sure we’ll see those marketed with features that aren’t actually important (like 8K).
No matter what video gear I have though, I can tell you that the audio is going through Schiit gear (there, I made this rant topical)
ScubaMan2017
Headphoneus Supremus
...and here I was (before reading Mr. Stoddard's latest musings), going to make a comment about my new toy's orange LEDs (the two indicator lights on the Valhalla's board, fore of the 6N1P sockets). It's a pretty aesthetic (that may or may not have a purpose). This a hot & heavy toaster.Just what this {forum} needs..... moar blather.........
Steve Guttenberg also hoping for a variation of the Loki
@ 3:30 onwards
CAPT Deadpool
500+ Head-Fier
My wife and I regularly practice "percussive maintenance" on our Keurig coffee maker (can't justify calling it a "brewer"). Damn thing clogs all the time even with regular doses of acidic preventive maintenance aka vinegar. I like your term of art.
Keurig is a pretty good company despite the issues with disposing of all of those plastic K-cups (unintended consequence, but you can always use the San Francisco brand that biodegrade). They sent me a bunch of free nice coffee makers (they clogged too, requiring cleaning and percussive maintenance, but then again so did the venerable M-16 or M-60) and about $1200 of K-cups when I was in a hot sandy place a few years back.
US Blues
Headphoneus Supremus
"Percussive maintenance."
So good, Imma gonna steal that phrase. Thanks for the update regarding, er, updates.
So good, Imma gonna steal that phrase. Thanks for the update regarding, er, updates.
RCBinTN
Headphoneus Supremus
What the Gumby adds over Modi MB is the Gen5 USB and full hardware-balanced design.
My goal was to get to a balanced rig, so I sold my original BiFrost (before the MB option was available for it).
Plus, the Modi MB wasn't born when I bought my Gungnir and its MB upgrade.
I recently heard the Modi MB (+ Magni3) and it does have very fine sound for its price point
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Rensek
Headphoneus Supremus
Steve Guttenberg also hoping for a variation of the Loki
I like the two pieces of Schiit behind steves left shoulder. Guy has audio equipment everywhere.
