[kstuart]

Quote: "Now amongst the up and coming stereo people there is rightly a belief that spend most of the budget on transducers... then the amps... then the source..."
 
Like most beliefs of human beings, this is entirely wrong.

 

[valiant66]

  I would prefer speakers with the amps outside... even if they were active... The moment you put amps inside speakers you need to add design criteria that does not go towards sound quality... And you probably can't stretch the last bit from the drivers in a home setting... just because the amp has components which may not like vibration, and the amp has stuff that will ring with vibration, more than a dedicated well designed speaker box... which may or may not be an issue for you. And even though I think this can be overcome, i like my trade-offs elsewhere, but obviously the other thing is, now you have RCA's and powercables going to the speakers...

As Mr Tonykaz said somewhere (I can't find the post), the best sound most people ever hear is in their car, and auto manufacturers use the absolute cheapest speakers they can get away with BUT they make them sound awesome with digital processing. Some cars even run the exhaust "note" through the audio system to make the car sound better to the operator while still meeting noise bylaws (yes, even if your radio is "off").
 
The advantage to combining the transducers and amplifiers into a single box (well, two for stereo, you know what I mean) is that the amp can be digitally tweaked to overcome acoustic shortcomings in the tweeter, mid, woofer and cabinet. The result is far more controlled than it could ever be with separates.
 
That doesn't overcome the room effect, of course, but even that can be compensated for with a few assumptions (i.e. bookshelf speakers will be against a wall, etc.).
 
And with modern surface mount technology, vibration is much less of an issue than it used to be (trickle down from cars, doncha know).
 
The reality is, AT A GIVEN PRICE POINT you are much more likely to get great sound from a pair of well-designed active speakers than from separates. And that price point can be pretty much anything you like, from Emotiva's baby speakers to Meridian's wallet-shockers.
 
As for me, I am old and crotchety and like my speakers and power amps: but if I was starting from scratch I'd go active.
 
Now get offa my lawn ya goddamkids! 
 

 

 

[AudioBear]

Active speakers, as has been noted above, can be a big improvement over the traditional expensive boxes and amps that a lot of audiophiles seem to love to pour money into.  Granted it's nice furniture and the amps are jewelry but it's inherently difficult to make them sound as good as a well-designed active speaker--as noted above the designer can do a lot more to address some of the inherent problems in speakers and amps when they interface and control both.  Not the least of which problems is that passive crossovers suck.  My Emotiva Airmotive 4S speakers sound to me a lot better than many very expensive speaker set-ups I have heard.  If you're a DIYer you can easily buy the parts, boards (amps, active or digital crossovers--see MiniDSP) and drivers to build your own time-aligned, phase-coherent, flat frequency, low distortion, room correction applied active speaker system.  Take a look at what @TubemanR@ is doing over at the Schiit Gungnir DAC thread.  Awesome speaker system if a little bit extreme.  I once built an open baffle system using a DEQx box and Dynaudio drivers that made the jaws drop on everyone who heard it.  It was unreal life-like.  I used several different good quality amps and they didn't seem to make any real difference on a two-way or three-way speaker using 3 amps fed by digital cross-overs and correction because the speakers just sounded so good.
 
The point being that there are many solutions to arrive at better sound from speakers,  One is to spend a lot of money for some big boxes and if you like the speakers--which you better if you're plonking down thousands on them--that's one solution.  You can then play with which amp sounds best with them or not, it's your choice.  This is a pretty traditional way to go since it can be aesthetically pleasing and it requires little DIY,  tinkering, and no knowledge of electronics, etc.  Schiit's problem with this is that as a company they want to add value with each new product they produce.  There are a hundreds of amps on the market in every size, power, design and price-range that can be imagined.  Schiit has to ask the question how does another amp do something that customers want or need?  High quality for less $$$ is one answer but there are a lot of low cost producers high quality out there like Emotiva,  That may not be Schiit''s best opportunity.  Or it could be an interesting challenge.
 
There's not a lot they can do for all in one box active speakers unless they want to manufacture amp boards for other manufacturers.  They've already said that they won't build transducers.  It might be useful for hobbyists if they sold a bunch of little high quality mono-blocks or boards of varying powers with which multiple amp systems could be powered but I doubt that's a significant market.
 
So here's my challenge to Schiit.  You design great amps and great digital processors. As noted above, active speakers with built-in DSP can be made to sound very good indeed.  If you design a speaker with an open-baffle design, multiple amps, and Mike Moffat's DSP magic you aren't really in the traditional speaker building business and you don't have to play with tuning speakers in a box.  You are using 21st century technology to improve the quality at a given price point.  Is there a market for a Schiit active speaker that does at $1200 what Meridien does at $12,000?  That's for Schiit to decide. 

 

[kstuart]

The new generation listens to headphones for almost all their listening (which is why this site is so successful).
 
When they want to listen without headphones, they don't bother with living room setups they cannot afford, instead they simply go to where they can listen full volume:
 

 

[reddog]

The new generation listens to headphones for almost all their listening (which is why this site is so successful).

When they want to listen without headphones, they don't bother with living room setups they cannot afford, instead they simply go to where they can listen full volume:

Well said sir the way people listen is changing. This is one of the reasons I might try to open up a small headphone store.

 

[AudioBear]

No argument here.  I go to a lot of concerts and I own a half dozen phones, a few IEMs and cIEMs, some players, days, and amps.  That's why I'm here.
 
Schiit has done well in this market.  Some have asked Schiit to branch out into the more traditional (or should that read out and out-dated?) box and speaker market.  Ragnarok sits right on the fence--it drives speakers very well.  For me it's fun to consider how they might change the game in what's left of that market.
 
Great photo KStuart!

 

[tonykaz]

Somebody in Japan is showing a 32 Bit capable headphone Electronic thing.
 
Hmm, if most of the Universe is listening and quite happy with the music from their phones and I seem to be delighted with my vast collection of 16/44 RedBook playing on my losses iMac,
 
who needs 32 Bit?, more importantly, for me, do I?
 
Why in the world would anyone want to waste all that storage for this format? 
 
Am I wrong in my thinking that 32 Bit is a giant Box to hold something considerably smaller.  Seems like a Railroad Car to hold a shoebox. 
 
Can anyone elaborate on the useful importance of this Infinity approach? 
 
Tony in Michigan
 
ps.  does 32 Bits make the Yggy obsolete, already ??? or is something fishy  ><)))'>  in Japan land? 

 

[Jason Stoddard]

Already commented on this many times in the book, in the product FAQs, etc. Bottom line: there will never be meaningful 32-bit music. Why? Because physics.

 

[Ableza]

32 bit = 16 extra zeroes.

 

[jfoxvol]

That confounded thermal noise.  

 

[tonykaz]

Mr. Stoddard,
 
Yes, of course, you and every other responsible person in the Industry points this out. 
 
I plead guilty of tossing crazy nonsense into the general discussion about loudspeaker amplification.  Active Loudspeakers are the Engineered success story the Super Pricy folks don't want being told, a clear & simple path to Room filling sound is counter-productive for selling $88,000 Amps and $50,000 Monkey Casket loudspeakers.  Geez, not to mention the multi-thousand dollar cabling that my old friends at MIT & Transparent need to entice customers with, nice 50 Point accessories for the dealer networks.  
 
The Recording & Mixing firms seem to make-do with Genelec Actives.  The Golden Ear Mastering guys seem to have the Lipinski's, the Eggleston Ivy's with 3,000+ watts per channel and the like.  I can accept this to be the ideal progression for Gear. 
 
My wife's decorator/designer recommends that I keep my Audio stuff well away from her work.  Wireless Sennheisers are a happy solution in her mind!, and mine.
 
Tony in Michigan

 

[valiant66]

  If you're a DIYer you can easily buy the parts, boards (amps, active or digital crossovers--see MiniDSP) and drivers to build your own time-aligned, phase-coherent, flat frequency, low distortion, room correction applied active speaker system.  Take a look at what @TubemanR@ is doing over at the Schiit Gungnir DAC thread.  Awesome speaker system if a little bit extreme. 

 
I searched head-fi for a user called TubemanR but got no results. Do you have a link to that specific thread?
 
Thanks.

 

[nicolo]

  So here's my challenge to Schiit.  You design great amps and great digital processors. As noted above, active speakers with built-in DSP can be made to sound very good indeed.  If you design a speaker with an open-baffle design, multiple amps, and Mike Moffat's DSP magic you aren't really in the traditional speaker building business and you don't have to play with tuning speakers in a box.  You are using 21st century technology to improve the quality at a given price point.  Is there a market for a Schiit active speaker that does at $1200 what Meridien does at $12,000?  That's for Schiit to decide. 

 
 
That's a pretty good idea. Have an active speaker with an in-built DAC based on trickle down Yggdrassil tech. Maybe source the drivers from somewhere else.

 

[n-a]

Hi Jason.
First i have to say i have bought the Schiit Wyrd and Schiit Vali. I like both of them. 
I had the Theta Gen V-A also and it was awesome dac, wonderful 3D sound with hint of warmth.
 
So about the warmth...
I believe you have made the Yggdrasil to produce the signal as truthfully as can be, and i like that. That is the way it should be in my opinion. However i read some article where the famous mr. Nelson Pass say something like"...The ear is not a microphone, the brain is not a tape recorder, and measurements are limited in describing subjective quality". So i guess what i am trying to say is that sometime the truth hurts
 
So why don´t you guys at the Schiit factory make... Schiit Tube Buffer! You know, a good one
Just an idea...
 
Best regards,
n-a

 

[Ableza]

You really couldn't create any thing like you describe that would likely sound good for $1200 retail unfortunately. But at $5k it might be possible. Heck if Schiit's interested I'll design it for them as long as I get serial number one.