Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up

[Ableza]

I guess I will piss off the lot of you then when I get my black Lokius and replace the boring black knobs with nice machined aluminum knobs in silver.
Silver knobs on black components reminds my of the Mark Levinson & Counterpoint gear of the late 80's/early 90's.

As Shock-G said, "Doowutchyalike"

 

[turtlerod]

I guess I will piss off the lot of you then when I get my black Lokius and replace the boring black knobs with nice machined aluminum knobs in silver.
Silver knobs on black components reminds my of the Mark Levinson & Counterpoint gear of the late 80's/early 90's.

As Shock-G said, "Doowutchyalike"

 

[Ableza]

Pics?

Nothing exciting. I just literally covered the front and about 2-inches of the top with adhesive flat black vinyl so it disappears into the rack. I don't need any LEDs and I don't ever change the input type so no need to access the button.
(looks like I need to dust.)

 

[Rensek]

there IS such a switch on some Schiit amps that use discrete gain stages (e.g. Magni 3+, Asgard 3, Lyr 3, Jotunheim 2, Ragnarok 2). Its called the gain switch (changes the amount of feedback) and therefore the overall gain. If you look at the APx reports, the lower gain settings (which use more feedback) are typically accompanied by lower THD values, but many users prefer the middle or higher gain settings where less feedback is employed.

I prefer low gain on most of my Schiit for HP use. 2 Exceptions.

Saga as tube pre into high gain on Magni 3 or Asgard 2.

Ragnarok 2 and Balanced HD6XXs, high gain, Veil Shattered. I didnt even believe the HD6XXs had a veil until Rag 2 came around.

I do seem to like ECM jazz with my LRSs on low gain though. Just a relaxing sound. Detailed, clean, spacious, ethereal. Goes well with dimmed lighting and scotch or bourbon.

 

[Yethal]

I think you just reinforced Jedi's point (inadvertently?). Schiit will sometimes create something to fill a niche where nothing else exists (e.g., custom Jotunheims for esoteric headphones -- especially ones Jason likes ), but they tend not to bother with stuff where there are already a plethora of good, established, and inexpensive competitors (e.g., plug-in DACs).

I agree but there actually aren't any products on the market to fit this very specific niche, i.e dac/amps that fit inside one of the slots in the laptop to become a permanent part of it instead of sticking out on the side.

 

[cschock]

I am looking to replace my vintage (still working though!) Hafler preamplifier and amplifier with new components to match new Zu Omen loudspeakers. I've more or less decided to get the Schiit Aegir amplifier, but I am not sure what to do with the preamplifier. I would match it with the Freya + but I really want to stick with solid state. Other than trolling the internet hoping to pick up a used Freya S, does anyone have any suggestions for this pairing? I've thought about the Jotunheim, but with only two inputs and no remote it isn't really designed for my usage scenario.

 

[Rensek]

I am looking to replace my vintage (still working though!) Hafler preamplifier and amplifier with new components to match new Zu Omen loudspeakers. I've more or less decided to get the Schiit Aegir amplifier, but I am not sure what to do with the preamplifier. I would match it with the Freya + but I really want to stick with solid state. Other than trolling the internet hoping to pick up a used Freya S, does anyone have any suggestions for this pairing? I've thought about the Jotunheim, but with only two inputs and no remote it isn't really designed for my usage scenario.

Ragnarok 2 Just an Amp would be a strong component, as a preamp into Aegir, depending on your budget. Or all by itself as well.

Rag 2 with my Zu Omen DW is quite nice, but i have dreams of hearing the Zu with Aegir as well.

 

[lemp]

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

Maybe he's right if what floats your boat is listening to music made up of sequences of sine waves. I just don't know of much music made out of test tones.

 

[Ableza]

I am looking to replace my vintage (still working though!) Hafler preamplifier and amplifier with new components to match new Zu Omen loudspeakers. I've more or less decided to get the Schiit Aegir amplifier, but I am not sure what to do with the preamplifier. I would match it with the Freya + but I really want to stick with solid state. Other than trolling the internet hoping to pick up a used Freya S, does anyone have any suggestions for this pairing? I've thought about the Jotunheim, but with only two inputs and no remote it isn't really designed for my usage scenario.

https://www.audioadvisor.com/products.asp?dept=12

 

[Roy G. Biv]

Love the bass management options of the Parsasound P6... (haven't heard it, yet)

 

[A Jedi]

Other than trolling the internet hoping to pick up a used Freya S, does anyone have any suggestions for this pairing?

You could troll the internet for a Saga S

 

[cschock]

You could troll the internet for a Saga S

True that!

 

[Pondoro]

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.

I build and play acoustic instruments. This is a very "analog" world, where a few thousandths of an inch in a sound board changes sound, where wood from different trees of the same species has an effect on sound, and where the way you hold the instrument can affect sound. I find it difficult to believe that two measurements (THD and noise) can adequately describe any device. I also agree with Mike Moffatt, that hearing is integrative. I can play a new instrument and pick up differences in the sound (versus other instruments), but after playing it for a few days or weeks other differences become apparent. I'm not a DAC or amplifier expert, but I can easily believe that people who spend their lives listening to them can detect subtle differences that an expensive analyzer may not detect, because those subtle differences are not related to THD or noise. When I hold a drum and hit it, then change my grip and hit it, there is zero THD both times, but the sound is different. My friends might say there is a lot of noise!

 

[tincanear]

I am looking to replace my vintage (still working though!) Hafler preamplifier and amplifier with new components to match new Zu Omen loudspeakers. I've more or less decided to get the Schiit Aegir amplifier, but I am not sure what to do with the preamplifier. I would match it with the Freya + but I really want to stick with solid state. Other than trolling the internet hoping to pick up a used Freya S, does anyone have any suggestions for this pairing? I've thought about the Jotunheim, but with only two inputs and no remote it isn't really designed for my usage scenario.

Freya+ has solid state mode (not sure if you can run this unit without tubes installed, but i think it powers down both the plate and filament voltages when in passive or SS modes)

if you are patient, and check this thread daily, and also schiit's website, Jason mentioned that they had found some additional metal (how many pieces, he didn't specify) for Freya S, and were planning to do a limited run sometime (later this year???).

otherwise, for Schiit preamps with more than two analog inputs:

Jotunheim has an XLR input (which can take an SE input, with negative phase grounded through a suitable source impedance matching resistor being a fully balanced differential input), one SE RCA input, and if they are still available (you can email schiit about availability) there was an RCA input board that could fit in place of the DAC module for a third analog input.

 

[A Jedi]

I build and play acoustic instruments. This is a very "analog" world, where a few thousandths of an inch in a sound board changes sound, where wood from different trees of the same species has an effect on sound, and where the way you hold the instrument can affect sound. I find it difficult to believe that two measurements (THD and noise) can adequately describe any device. I also agree with Mike Moffatt, that hearing is integrative. I can play a new instrument and pick up differences in the sound (versus other instruments), but after playing it for a few days or weeks other differences become apparent. I'm not a DAC or amplifier expert, but I can easily believe that people who spend their lives listening to them can detect subtle differences that an expensive analyzer may not detect, because those subtle differences are not related to THD or noise. When I hold a drum and hit it, then change my grip and hit it, there is zero THD both times, but the sound is different. My friends might say there is a lot of noise!

You're mixing things up here. There's no point in measuring THD or whatever on your drums. Because that's the real, sound producing "thing". Measurements are meant for *reproduction*. If the reproduction has too much THD, you will not be able to tell the difference in sound between the two different grip drum hits on your system.

What level of THD matters? I don't know. What are we not currently measuring that would explain certain attributes of a piece of gear and how they correlate to its sound? I don't know that either.