audio philestine
100+ Head-Fier
But, since it should be 6dB "better" it's actually 4dB worse
JC
Or the SE is 4dB better than it should be...
Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up
- Thread starter Jason Stoddard
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- schiit audio schiit-audio
Or the SE is 4dB better than it should be...
bboris77
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I have gone between the subjective and objective approach so many times since I got into this hobby 7 years ago that it is starting to hurt my head. All I know is that every time I decide to trust what my ears are hearing, I am happier and I enjoy my music more.
Every time that I purchased something solely based on how well it measured, it was a fear-based decision. Fear of what? Fear of being taken advantage of by manipulative audio designers/engineers that pander to the audiophilia nervosa crowd by shilling various kinds of snake-oil claims and marketing. This is the essence of the hardcore objectivist claim - audio companies are taking advantage of naïve enthusiasts by designing substandard-measuring products and making all kinds of magical thinking claims about how they perform. Keep in mind that, at the same time, those hardcore objectivists absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there may even be a possibility that there may be something else that we are not measuring now that accounts for audible differences between different equipment. They also think it is pointless to listen to gear when reviewing it because measurements tell you all you need to know. Kind of silly, right?
What I found out from actual experience is that I tend to get bored listening to the gear primarily designed to measure well and eventually go back to equipment that is designed to sound great and measures good enough. This kind of makes sense if you accept that measurements are a useful starting point to ensure that nothing is broken with your design. After that, it would be extremely arrogant for a designer/engineer not to even bother to listen to how their amplifier sounds with a wide variety of headphones/speakers. It is like a chef who refuses to taste his/her food because they are so confident in their recipe/process. Anybody intelligent and experienced is usually humble enough to admit that they may not know everything that there is to know about any given subject and that there may be things that are yet to be discovered/measured.
This is why I recently went back to Schiit products - I got a Bifrost 2 and a Jot 2 for my primary rig, and a Magni 3+ for my gaming rig. Could not be happier with the improvements to my overall level of enjoyment. Jason and Mike design products that they themselves listen to, and it shows.
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saw a really crazy quote on there that stuck with me, talking about the bifrostt
sitting here surrounded by tubes, analog and vintage stuff that sounds great but doesnt measure clean, i almost feel like this is a trick question or sarcasm
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JohnnyCanuck
Headphoneus Supremus
Makes me wonder how an objectivist would describe the differences between 6 string and 12 string acoustic guitars. THD?
JC
JC
Ableza
Headphoneus Supremus
Well a 12-string definitely produces more harmonics...
You can always tell when a company dogfoods.
No matter the size, product, or service.
Without fail.
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Jason Stoddard
Sponsor: Schiit Audio
Hey all,
Just a quick update, and a note that the price of Asgard 3 has increased to $249.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" some of you are crying. "What happened with Asgard 3? That's a healthy increase! Does this foreshadow a whole raft of price increases across the line? Are you guys using the "inflation" excuse to raise prices? Is Asgard 3 really worth that much money?"
Okay, in order:
What happened to Asgard 3? Asgard 3 has always been "thin" in terms of margin. I noted this when we introduced the product, and said there might be an increase in the future. Well, prices went up on chassis and transformers (especially transformers) since then, and Asgard 3 can't sustain it. So the price goes up.
That's a healthy increase! Yep, we'd rather do this once than a death by a thousand cuts.
Does this foreshadow more price increases coming? We don't think so. Everything else seems pretty good. We did increase the price of Freya+ recently, but that's about it.
Are you using the inflation excuse to raise prices? On two products out of 26? Yeah, then we're doing a pretty crappy job of it. But if we end up in a world where a Big Mac is $25, yeah, hey, no guarantees.
Is Asgard 3 really worth that much money? We don't know. You will decide, as you do in the end on all things. I will say this: Asgard 3 goes up to the price of the original Asgard, by the way, which had no gain switch, no preamp output, less than 1/3 the power output, no DAC module capability, and was introduced in 2010.
Oh, and of course the price increase doesn't hit any products in backorder. If you're waiting for an order, it's the old price.
Beyond that, everything is coming together on the PCB assembly front--in a couple of weeks, that will no longer be our limiting factor. From there, it will be parts shortages (still dealing with those, but no showstoppers yet), and brushed aluminum finish. Black is wayyy easier (I said about a billion times that if I could go back in time, I'd tell myself in 2010 to paint everything). So don't be surprised if silver is (a) more scarce, (b) more expensive--we have considered raising the price, or (c) replaced by a silver powder akin to the black, but, like, silver.
Thanks again for your patience. New chapters are coming, but I don't know what the timing is like yet. Things are still very busy here.
All the best,
Jason
Just a quick update, and a note that the price of Asgard 3 has increased to $249.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?" some of you are crying. "What happened with Asgard 3? That's a healthy increase! Does this foreshadow a whole raft of price increases across the line? Are you guys using the "inflation" excuse to raise prices? Is Asgard 3 really worth that much money?"
Okay, in order:
What happened to Asgard 3? Asgard 3 has always been "thin" in terms of margin. I noted this when we introduced the product, and said there might be an increase in the future. Well, prices went up on chassis and transformers (especially transformers) since then, and Asgard 3 can't sustain it. So the price goes up.
That's a healthy increase! Yep, we'd rather do this once than a death by a thousand cuts.
Does this foreshadow more price increases coming? We don't think so. Everything else seems pretty good. We did increase the price of Freya+ recently, but that's about it.
Are you using the inflation excuse to raise prices? On two products out of 26? Yeah, then we're doing a pretty crappy job of it. But if we end up in a world where a Big Mac is $25, yeah, hey, no guarantees.
Is Asgard 3 really worth that much money? We don't know. You will decide, as you do in the end on all things. I will say this: Asgard 3 goes up to the price of the original Asgard, by the way, which had no gain switch, no preamp output, less than 1/3 the power output, no DAC module capability, and was introduced in 2010.
Oh, and of course the price increase doesn't hit any products in backorder. If you're waiting for an order, it's the old price.
Beyond that, everything is coming together on the PCB assembly front--in a couple of weeks, that will no longer be our limiting factor. From there, it will be parts shortages (still dealing with those, but no showstoppers yet), and brushed aluminum finish. Black is wayyy easier (I said about a billion times that if I could go back in time, I'd tell myself in 2010 to paint everything). So don't be surprised if silver is (a) more scarce, (b) more expensive--we have considered raising the price, or (c) replaced by a silver powder akin to the black, but, like, silver.
Thanks again for your patience. New chapters are coming, but I don't know what the timing is like yet. Things are still very busy here.
All the best,
Jason
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JohnnyCanuck
Headphoneus Supremus
Yeah, but I was wondering more how they reconciled the amount of second harmonic
JC
My two cents:
Please, don't. More than happy to pay extra for bare aluminum, but PLEASE no silver powder coating. Looks cheap (as in: less nice / industrial), and where I live it's hot enough in the summer, I don't really need to have the heat dissipation properties of the aluminum reduced more than need be by the coating.
(Context: Come late afternoon, I already have a hard time keeping one of my two mono-Aegirs from tripping and can barely touch even the volume knob of my Mjolnir 2. Yes, AC is available, and running, but can barely keep the place at 80 degrees Freedom.)
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tin-ear
100+ Head-Fier
As a young man I acquired a book by A. N. Whitehead, Symbolism: It's Meaning and Effect. (it's easily found free on the internet). I was for decades, intimidated by the reputation of a Great Philosopher. In other words, I assumed I was not smart enough to understand it. About 15 years I stumbled on the book and simply started to read it, and found it took some thinking, but that's all.
One of the terms Whitehead uses is "presentational immediacy." In plain English it means "our immediate perception of the contemporary external world." Or, reality as we, a living organism, experience it. Measurements are symbols which stand it for things. Symbols can of course be quite useful. But modern scientific skeptics in a lot field use symbols as clubs to basically say: what people experience directly can't be trusted. (I suspect that some skeptics wish that they could just get rid of those pesky living organisms that mess up their clean understanding of things.)
But, back to music. Prior to the invention of electronics, all of our music, including the musical instruments humans invented, not to mention the use of the human voice in music, were invented without electronic measurements. The tubas, woodwinds, strings, tympani, sitar, gamelan-- our human direct human hearing was fine enough to create and improve all those instrument. We didn't need electronic measurements.
James Boyk in a blog, paraphrasing, once posted that, as an expert in the piano (he was the Caltech Professor of piano for many years), he is expected to be able to tell when a piano is in out out of tune, or malfunctioning, or to tell one from another or maybe even recognize a particular piano or person playing, all by ear. But the moment someone sticks a microphone into the equation, his expertise no longer has any value.
Suggested listening. Steve Guttenberg Accuracy, does it exist? In audio or recordings?
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sch...lds-most-improbable-start-up.701900/page-5370
Eno: The Studio as a compositional tool
Eno gave several lectures in circa 1979 by this title. There is a poorly recorded youtube lecture by this title (voice only, no video)
Here is print version, the two examples overlap
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/downbeat79.htm
"We've spoken of the transition from the '50s concept of music to the contemporary concept of mixing. If you listen to records from the '50s, you'll find that all the melodic information is mixed very loud - your first impression of the piece is of melody - and the rhythmic information is mixed rather quietly. The bass is indistinct, and the bass is only playing the root note of the chord in most cases, adding some resonance."
The above largely was due to the influence of the classical music world, with a large focus on melody.
One of the terms Whitehead uses is "presentational immediacy." In plain English it means "our immediate perception of the contemporary external world." Or, reality as we, a living organism, experience it. Measurements are symbols which stand it for things. Symbols can of course be quite useful. But modern scientific skeptics in a lot field use symbols as clubs to basically say: what people experience directly can't be trusted. (I suspect that some skeptics wish that they could just get rid of those pesky living organisms that mess up their clean understanding of things.)
But, back to music. Prior to the invention of electronics, all of our music, including the musical instruments humans invented, not to mention the use of the human voice in music, were invented without electronic measurements. The tubas, woodwinds, strings, tympani, sitar, gamelan-- our human direct human hearing was fine enough to create and improve all those instrument. We didn't need electronic measurements.
James Boyk in a blog, paraphrasing, once posted that, as an expert in the piano (he was the Caltech Professor of piano for many years), he is expected to be able to tell when a piano is in out out of tune, or malfunctioning, or to tell one from another or maybe even recognize a particular piano or person playing, all by ear. But the moment someone sticks a microphone into the equation, his expertise no longer has any value.
Suggested listening. Steve Guttenberg Accuracy, does it exist? In audio or recordings?
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/sch...lds-most-improbable-start-up.701900/page-5370
Eno: The Studio as a compositional tool
Eno gave several lectures in circa 1979 by this title. There is a poorly recorded youtube lecture by this title (voice only, no video)
Here is print version, the two examples overlap
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/downbeat79.htm
"We've spoken of the transition from the '50s concept of music to the contemporary concept of mixing. If you listen to records from the '50s, you'll find that all the melodic information is mixed very loud - your first impression of the piece is of melody - and the rhythmic information is mixed rather quietly. The bass is indistinct, and the bass is only playing the root note of the chord in most cases, adding some resonance."
The above largely was due to the influence of the classical music world, with a large focus on melody.
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bboris77
100+ Head-Fier
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It is. This is speaking from personal experience. It is the one piece of equipment that I regret selling.
And it is not like this price increase was not foreshadowed a long time ago.
bboris77
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- May 27, 2005
- Posts
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I had to look up what doogfooding something means. English is such an awesome and malleable language.
Seconded. The brushed metal look is a big part of what drew me to Schiit and I'd definitely pay a premium to get that version, just like I paid a premium to get a piano black version of my subwoofer.
If you do go black only, please use black everything, including knobs and buttons, instead of that cheap looking matte silver volume knob (that's judging based on pictures) and the standard gray steel bottom.
Black Lokius looks pretty slick, I have to say (based on pictures). Black Ragnarok 2 looks only marginally more sophisticated than this to me:
Okay, I'm exaggerating, but you get my point.
