[liamo]

Kudos to all the Steven Wilson recs, where the heck have I been as this time period and his product is right in my wheel house. Always something old/new to discover.

 

[saddleup]

Speaking of Steven Wilson all of the Porcupine Tree his former band and his solo music kicks arse. Saw him in a small venue in 2018. Stood about 20 feet away from him. Awesome show, they rocked. I own most of his solo work on Blu-Ray also. I've really grown to love live albums as of late and three of my favorites are Porcupine Tree's Arriving Somewhere, Steven's Get What You Deserve and Home Invasion. They all get regular play on CD and Blu Ray.

 

[Balthazar B]

@Jason Stoddard you guys need to make a DAP and call it the schiit box.

And either a rack or a super-integrated (transport/DAC/preamp/amp) component and call it the Uthus...

 

[Ripper2860]

Jason Stoddard:
Ripper - What brought you to this lowly state? Please tell us, no matter how much it hurts. What did we DO?

Ripper:
Look, I can't.

Jason Stoddard:
Oh, please, Ripper. Please. I must know what we did. What brought you to this?

Ripper:
It... it was...

Jason Stoddard:
Yes? ...Yes?

Ripper:
It was... It was the Schanitize hand-held UV-C Sterilizer Wand!!! **




** I may have made all or part of this up.

 

[Gazny]

Jason Stoddard:
Ripper - What brought you to this lowly state? Please tell us, no matter how much it hurts. What did we DO?

Ripper:
Look, I can't.

Jason Stoddard:
Oh, please, Ripper. Please. I must know what we did. What brought you to this?

Ripper:
It... it was...

Jason Stoddard:
Yes? ...Yes?

Ripper:
It was... It was the Schanitize hand-held UV-C Sterilizer Wand!!! **




** I may have made all or part of this up.

Quality Schiit post

 

[roadcykler]

Strictly an opinion question, but given the same source, cables, etc, would the average person notice a difference between an AK4490 card and the Multi-bit?

 

[tincanear]

Strictly an opinion question, but given the same source, cables, etc, would the average person notice a difference between an AK4490 card and the Multi-bit?

per Jason's shootout with the two Magni's back in dec 2019????, ability to do an A/B test depends on the rest of the system, including speakers/headphones. I think headphones would need to be >$500 to have sufficient resolution to tell the DACs apart. would also depend on source material quality as well.

thought there might have been a subsequent DAC shootout at the Schiitr as well (or maybe just planned and never happened due to COVID-19)

 

[Rensek]

Strictly an opinion question, but given the same source, cables, etc, would the average person notice a difference between an AK4490 card and the Multi-bit?

I think it's less of a question about the average person (with average ears) and more along the lines of can you get the average person to care enough to listen intently long enough to try and discern a difference.....

My family loves music, im the only one who wants to go back and forth between dacs and speakers and headphones and everything else.. everyone else just wants to talk about and listen to their favorite part/band/song/genre. Generally speaking, they couldn't give two Schiits about dacs (and everything else), As long as the gear is decent enough to allow them to listen to the music.

I own three Schiit D/S dacs, two multibit. They all play music very well, and very enjoyably.

I would also add that if your cable and source are low quality, the dac you use will matter less and less.. people are right when they say you don't need fancy pants cables, but cheap, crappy, low strand, high gauge wire off Amazon and likely elsewhere are terrible, and you will lose SQ on alot of those cables.

I don't think you want to do less then 20 gauge cable for ICs, 18 is better. 10-16 gauge for speakers, 18-20 for HPs and you should be safe.

Again just my opinion, and I'm still a noob learning my way through this stuff.

I do believe the Drop/Sennheiser HD6XXS are good enough to tell some of the differences between dacs.

 

[tincanear]

+1 about the average person wanting to listen long enough and carefully enough.

my $0.02:
for interconnects, aka IC's, lower capacitance and lower inductance are important, as well as good shielding. the cheapie IC's have a smaller outer diameter (typically 3 or 4 mm) which results in tighter conductor to conductor spacing and therefore increased capacitance; and with typically very small (high AWG) conductors, causing increased resistance and series inductance. These cable parasitics can, in conjunction with high source impedances, cause high-frequency roll off, and sometimes reduce the phase margin of the driving source, contributing to increased ringing.

Schiit, I believe, generally designs for 75 ohms (SE) preamp output impedance, which is pretty low, especially compared with tube-only preamps that can have output impedances 2 K - 50 K ohms.

for speaker wires, especially those with 4 ohm loads, I recommend going at least 13AWG or larger effective cross section. 16 AWG x4 (aka quad) speaker wire, with two conductors paralleled for each leg (red/ black) is the same as 13AWG.

Keeping cable runs short (both IC & speaker) improves performance.

for Headphones, I strongly recommend using the manufacturer's stock cabling, unless its completely the wrong length (either way too short or way too long), or prohibitively expensive (HD800 replacement cable are $400! really?)

Why would any respectable HP manufacturer skip on cabling that would sonically hinder their HP's performance, given that many demo using the factory-supplied cabling, esp when sourcing / evaluating via mail order?

 

[tafens]

I do believe the Drop/Sennheiser HD6XXS are good enough to tell some of the differences between dacs.

In my experience they are. I have heard differences between amps and dacs with them.

That said, there are other headphones that can be easier to hear differences with, depending on what gear you are comparing, what the differences are, and what - if anything - the specific headphones emphasise.

 

[r2muchstuff]

Someone ate the last cookie !

 

[Varejao17]

re: cables: along those lines, I was building a 12V DC cable to handle about 4 amps (peak around 6), to run from an external linear power supply to a 12VDC device. DC is a different beast from music cables (or even AC power cables), so I just thought some connectors on zip cord would work well enough.

Then I came across this thread:
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/31554-diy-dc-power-cables/

There's also voltage drop and power handling to consider:
https://www.calculator.net/voltage-drop-calculator.html

I ended up getting some Canare star quad cable (20 AWG conductors x 4 = 17 AWG x 2). Total cost was still minimal.

ed

 

[ScottFree]

Hey Jason.

Abyss Headphones recently ran over a pair of AB-1266 headphones to be used as a giveaway prize. Will there be any chance of Schiit doing something similar with one of your products, perhaps as a giveaway prize or perhaps as part of a charity auction?

 

[valiant66]

Hey Jason.

Abyss Headphones recently ran over a pair of AB-1266 headphones to be used as a giveaway prize. Will there be any chance of Schiit doing something similar with one of your products, perhaps as a giveaway prize or perhaps as part of a charity auction?

Did they run over them with a car or a steamroller? And who wants flattened headphones? Was it like a "will it blend" challenge for charity?
.

 

[ScottFree]

Did they run over them with a car or a steamroller? And who wants flattened headphones? Was it like a "will it blend" challenge for charity?d
.

Surprisingly they're still intact minus a few scratches