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

[562955]

… probably no innertubes …

I like tubes too !! inner and thermionic

 

[foksieloy]

… bicycle or turntable?

 

[GumbyDammit223]

I like tubes too !! inner and thermionic

Off on another tangent - nixie tubes!

I broke down and got a nixie tube clock off of Etsy. The builder, based in Ukraine, actually delivered and I received it in less than a month! This is compared to the time I tried getting one from someone in China who sent me a piece of cloth... The clock works well, but has its peculiarities. One of the digit electrodes in the most significant hours tube behaves quite strangely. The '2' electrode will not illuminate immediately. At about 20:15, the lower part of the digit illuminates. Then, over the next 2-ish hours the illumination slowly creeps up the tube until it's completely illuminated at around 22:00. It stays solid until midnight when the '0' electrode illuminates fully. The '1' electrode illuminates correctly as well.

My question is by what mechanism can this type of behavior occur? To the best of my knowledge, at the appropriate time, a constant voltage is removed from one pin on the tube and applied to another to switch digits. Nothing special, just switching the same voltage to a different pin. That potential is applied uniformly across the entire plate. Very little, if any, heat is being generated, so there shouldn't be any convection occurring in what little neon is in there. I tried turning the clock upside down to see if anything changed. Nope. I also took a strong Nd magnet and waved it across the face of the tubes to see what would happen. Nothing.

This group has the widest experience base I've seen so I thought I'd pose the question. I'd love to see what you guys have to say! Thx for indulging me!!

Edit - my friend Wikipedia just enlightened me on the phenomenon I've been seeing. Now to see if I can experience photoionization tonight...

 

[dstrimbu]

Sitting here waiting for the message from @Jason Stoddard ...

...that tells me that Urd will be available for order on June 1st.

That's tomorrow.
(A guy can hope, right?!?)

 

[valiant66]

Edit : How can I remember lyrics from 30 years ago, but not why I went to the refrigerator?

Lol. Or why you took the phone out of your pocket...
.

 

[GreyOldMan]

New topic (I think) for the sine wave.

Now that I have my schiit kit, I want to feed my Modius E from my iPad.
Using a standard cable works fine with the iPad->Apple Camera Adaptor->USB-A-cable-USB-C->Modius.
The problem is that the longest known working cable I can find that says it works with Apple kit is 2m/6ft and I'd like 3-4m/9-12ft.
If I can get a longer cable then I can route it out of sight under the furniture and also keep it away from mains/other cables, and I don't have to get up to select or search for the next track on the iPad.

There's any number of vendors on Mr. Bezos's site, but the long cables don't mention Apple in the "works with..." section.
Does anyone have a long, known working cable connecting their iPad/iPhone and the USB-C on Modius / other Schiit device that they can recommend?

Just to say thanks to all the people who chimed in on this; corndog71, ludvigrollover, golfbravobravo and Clifh93.

I didn't go with the Wiim streamer although that would have done the job; I wanted a long cable that would stretch from the listening chair, facing the speakers (and Schiit kit) or could be pulled sideways to where I can listen horizontally on the long sofa through headphones.

Once I'd established that only an Apple Camera Adaptor will feed music from the iPad/iPhone without going through the on-board DAC (as per Schiit advice), then it was a case of searching harder for long USB-C (for Modius) to USB-A for adaptor and long USB-A (for Apple powerbrick) to Lightning (to power the iPad through the camera adaptor), and a long USB-C to USB-C for the Mac as an alternative source.

The original question was about sourcing long (>2m / 6') cables that were Apple compliant. There were many that were longer but they specifically did not state that they worked with Apple kit, only Android / Google gear, so as Apple compliance was notably missing from their spec sheets then I wasn't going to risk trying them.

Even though they didn't say that they worked with Apple, I did expect them to work as I'd used long (15'/5m) Din to whatever cables to connect source to Armstrong 621 amp and amp to headphones (Wharfedale Isodynamics, so powered out of the speaker ports) without issue, so I knew that the Apple sources could send a signal over those distances, but their explicit omission of Apple had me wondering.

Anyway, problem solved, I searched harder on Amazon, found cables that had Apple compliance and 15'/ 5m length and now am a happy (horizontal) Schiitizen.

So, thanks to those of you who took the trouble to chip in on this, your help is appreciated. PM me if anyone wants the links to the cables I bought.

 

[adias]

Just to say thanks to all the people who chimed in on this; corndog71, ludvigrollover, golfbravobravo and Clifh93.

I didn't go with the Wiim streamer although that would have done the job; I wanted a long cable that would stretch from the listening chair, facing the speakers (and Schiit kit) or could be pulled sideways to where I can listen horizontally on the long sofa through headphones.

Once I'd established that only an Apple Camera Adaptor will feed music from the iPad/iPhone without going through the on-board DAC (as per Schiit advice), then it was a case of searching harder for long USB-C (for Modius) to USB-A for adaptor and long USB-A (for Apple powerbrick) to Lightning (to power the iPad through the camera adaptor), and a long USB-C to USB-C for the Mac as an alternative source.

The original question was about sourcing long (>2m / 6') cables that were Apple compliant. There were many that were longer but they specifically did not state that they worked with Apple kit, only Android / Google gear, so as Apple compliance was notably missing from their spec sheets then I wasn't going to risk trying them.

Even though they didn't say that they worked with Apple, I did expect them to work as I'd used long (15'/5m) Din to whatever cables to connect source to Armstrong 621 amp and amp to headphones (Wharfedale Isodynamics, so powered out of the speaker ports) without issue, so I knew that the Apple sources could send a signal over those distances, but their explicit omission of Apple had me wondering.

Anyway, problem solved, I searched harder on Amazon, found cables that had Apple compliance and 15'/ 5m length and now am a happy (horizontal) Schiitizen.

So, thanks to those of you who took the trouble to chip in on this, your help is appreciated. PM me if anyone wants the links to the cables I bought.

And to complete the cycle would you be so kind to post the cable maker/type/source? It's perfectly fine to do so as Schiit Audio does not sell those cables.

 

[tin-ear]

"Then again we may die trying to turn on our windshield wipers"

There is a very real issue with airplane safety, and real accidents have occurred when a new version of a plane with controls in a different place was flown by a pilot who had many hours flight experience with the older version.

AND, now for something completely different, highly relevant to audio:

“It’s the wild colour scheme that freaks me,” said Zaphod whose love affair with this ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight, “Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls that are labelled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you’ve done it. What is this? Some kind of galactic hyperhearse?”​

​

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

 

[bcowen]

Off on another tangent - nixie tubes!

I broke down and got a nixie tube clock off of Etsy. The builder, based in Ukraine, actually delivered and I received it in less than a month! This is compared to the time I tried getting one from someone in China who sent me a piece of cloth... The clock works well, but has its peculiarities. One of the digit electrodes in the most significant hours tube behaves quite strangely. The '2' electrode will not illuminate immediately. At about 20:15, the lower part of the digit illuminates. Then, over the next 2-ish hours the illumination slowly creeps up the tube until it's completely illuminated at around 22:00. It stays solid until midnight when the '0' electrode illuminates fully. The '1' electrode illuminates correctly as well.

My question is by what mechanism can this type of behavior occur? To the best of my knowledge, at the appropriate time, a constant voltage is removed from one pin on the tube and applied to another to switch digits. Nothing special, just switching the same voltage to a different pin. That potential is applied uniformly across the entire plate. Very little, if any, heat is being generated, so there shouldn't be any convection occurring in what little neon is in there. I tried turning the clock upside down to see if anything changed. Nope. I also took a strong Nd magnet and waved it across the face of the tubes to see what would happen. Nothing.

This group has the widest experience base I've seen so I thought I'd pose the question. I'd love to see what you guys have to say! Thx for indulging me!!

Edit - my friend Wikipedia just enlightened me on the phenomenon I've been seeing. Now to see if I can experience photoionization tonight...

I really have no idea (sorry) but are you able to swap tubes between sockets? My guess would be it's simply a bad tube.

Never had an issue like that with my clock that has been on nearly 24/7 for the last ~20 years. I got two extra full sets of nixies when I bought it 'cause I had no idea how long they'd last, but the original tubes just keep on truckin'. Not sure what size your nixies are, but I'd be happy to send you one if they match up.

 

[fendermke]

Tonight's Syn-full song recommendation: ( Not yacht rock. )

Easy Livin'.....Uriah Heep

Definitely a great song!

I was playing some Uriah Heep a couple of months ago during my Thursday Whiskey & Vinyl sessions with a couple of friends. I think I am only missing a couple of albums of theirs to fill my collection.

I did grow up listening to yacht rock until we got better radio stations to listen to and got old enough to hang out with the older kids in the neighborhood and discover hard rock!

 

[artur9]

Welp, I just ordered a pi2aes. I plan to continue running mpd on my server and use mpd on the pi in proxy mode, so both the files and db will live on the server, with i2s out from the pi2aes to the DAC. Mustn't. Pay. Subscription. Fees.

You mean sending the audio stream from MPD running on the server to something on the pi? I forget if MPD can receive as well as send so if it's not MPD what is the something?

 

[jonathan c]

Welp, I just ordered a pi2aes. I plan to continue running mpd on my server and use mpd on the pi in proxy mode, so both the files and db will live on the server, with i2s out from the pi2aes to the DAC….

…. are commandeering this thread …. from to ….

 

[artur9]

FTFY

This reminds me.

I must offer my appreciation to this thread for introducing me to the concept of yacht rock. Literally a day or two after it being mentioned here, I read a zone amplifier review that used yacht rock as its "music" selection. If not for this thread, the reference would have left me at sea. It even said something about Michael McDonald!

any yacht rock song worth its salt has Michael McDonald on it

Again, thank you all for the amazingly educational nature of this thread!

 

[theeclone]

You mean sending the audio stream from MPD running on the server to something on the pi? I forget if MPD can receive as well as send so if it's not MPD what is the something?

Nope, it's just a matter of taking a remote fileshare a step further and also making the database hosted on the same machine as the fileshare, basically installing mpd in both places (server and pi). It's called "satellite setup":

https://mpd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/user.html#satellite-setup

"One approach for optimization is running MPD on the file server, which not only exports raw files, but also provides access to a readily scanned database."

 

[artur9]

Why would you ever choose streamer -> DAC -> A/D -> room correction -> amps?

Because the internal processing of the room correction is better when it's fed better analog. At least, that's the theory. The room correction effect seems to swamp it, though, not least because room corrected audio is quieter than uncorrected for headroom protection reasons.

Personally, I'm mostly annoyed that my room corrector has an inferior DAC versus my streamer and my Gungnir MB.