Schiit Happened: The Story of the World's Most Improbable Start-Up
Nov 20, 2014 at 11:53 AM Post #3,842 of 169,998
 
A Philosophical Shift at Schiit , 
 Previously , all these little Cabling type things amounted to Black Magic , Magic Dusts and Carnival Pitch-men selling dubious solutions to the confused and hopeful .  Now , Cable interface technology moves the performance needle for our loved and admired Guru . This brings to mind the Age Old Maxim : "A wise man will change his mind but a fool never will"  .  
  This "P&A" ( parts and accessories ) is an established path to profitability , no company I'm aware of ever regretted taking it , do it right and it will pay all Overheads + .
  In for a Penny - In for a Pound 
 Tony in Michigan 


How do you get to that?  No where has Schiit stated anything of the sort.  They are building an active device that provides a stable non-computer power supply and a reclocked USB signal.  How is that "black magic and pixie dust"?
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 11:54 AM Post #3,843 of 169,998
   
Forgive me my stupid question, but how does one "cook the usb cables" and to what end would one "cook the usb cables".... Apart from dropping the formentioned cable into a pot of boiling water?

 
I prefer mine fried.  The crispier the better.
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 1:03 PM Post #3,845 of 169,998

Mr. Ableza & Mr. jacal01
Perhaps this new technology will find it's way into an already completed product ( if it's that important ) instead of being an additional $100 Part and/or Accessory ( P&A being a large part of my manufacturing world ) .  
 
It's just "Food for Thought" kinda thing , nothing at all to get excited about .   
 
I do admire you for trying to "Catch the Rocks" you seem to think are being thrown .  
 
As for jacal01;
Fava , yuk , I always thought of you as having Gourmand sensibilities , I hope I don't have to re-calibrate my measure of you .  
 
Tony in Michigan 
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 3:39 PM Post #3,848 of 169,998
Jason,
I wonder if you tried measuring the changes in sound not with AP but using diff maker, comparing the reproduction with and without Wyrd to the original file? Or is this not scientific enough somehow?
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 3:55 PM Post #3,849 of 169,998
 
Mr. Ableza & Mr. jacal01
Perhaps this new technology will find it's way into an already completed product ( if it's that important ) instead of being an additional $100 Part and/or Accessory ( P&A being a large part of my manufacturing world ) .
 
It's just "Food for Thought" kinda thing , nothing at all to get excited about .  
 
I do admire you for trying to "Catch the Rocks" you seem to think are being thrown .
 
As for jacal01;
Fava , yuk , I always thought of you as having Gourmand sensibilities , I hope I don't have to re-calibrate my measure of you .
 
Tony in Michigan

 
No rocks.  We're all aware of the controversy around cable upgrades, much less the assorted accessorized system mummery you'd alluded to.  Are there kernals among the chaff?  And actually, I'm kinda curious about 'cooking' cables myself.  Cryo treatment I'm familiar with...
 
Au contraire.  I happen to prefer chardonnay with my favas.  And toasted liver.
wink.gif

 
Nov 20, 2014 at 4:16 PM Post #3,851 of 169,998

Ahhhhh , phew , I was a bit worried , only Hannibal seemed to seek out favas for his "special" event dinning .  
 
I have seen those (Cyro) Shunyndra things in Mastering Studios an in Research Labs .  These places have budgets and technical requirements beyond us "salt of the earth types" .   
  Personally , I can only afford engineering remedies like star grounding and other "traditional & effective" solutions to problem solving .  
 All interfaces have a different "sound" , it's just a matter of : can a person perceive any difference ? 
 Often times , suggesting that a "Diamond" Cable to be better is enough for a well heeled consumer to give himself a nice little gift , nothing wrong with that , certainly it won't do any harm .  So it's good for sales which pays rent and buys "Toasted Liver" ( occasionally ) .  
Bon Apetite ,
Tony in Michigan
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 4:30 PM Post #3,852 of 169,998
I am surprised that so few of you seem to have 'cooked' your cables. This is standard practice here in blighty-land. Most English audiophiles do this every year or two. You have to disconnect all of your cables, and put them all together into your microwave. You then select full power, preferably 850W or more, and then set it to run for 10 minutes. You can certainly hear a big difference, apparently it realigns the electrons, which is why you have to do all of the cables together.
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 4:36 PM Post #3,853 of 169,998
  If Schiit was a purely subjective company, the dilemma of having a product that made stuff sound better, without having any rational explanation as to why, wouldn’t be a dilemma at all. We’d wrap it up in nice flowery language, throw in some pseudo-meaningful charts that showed the difference in power supply noise levels, and call it a day.
 
If Schiit was a purely objective company, the dilemma might not be a dilemma at all. Because we might have convinced ourselves that, even though there was a difference, there really was no difference, and so why bother making something that didn’t make a difference?
 
But as a company that uses both objective measurement and subjective listening, it’s not so clear. We could do the pure subjective thing with the words about how you’re transported in space and time to a wonderful world where unicorns dance and crap like that. Sure. We could.
 
But that isn’t us.
 
And that isn’t honest. Because, you know what? We’re really talking about small differences here. It might not be important to a lot of people. It can be easily dismissed.
 
But for other listeners, it might be big enough to be significant.

 
 
   
Not to spend too much time on the "objective" side of this debate, but I'm pretty sure any of the relevant USB packets carry a CRC block. In theory, the bits are being sent along perfectly or they are not. If a bit was flipped, the CRC would indicate this. The odds of a bunch of random bit failures that would also pass a similarly randomly failed CRC get into the statistically irrelevant range (I haven't checked the math on this, but feel pretty confident about it). Essentially, there should not be a scenario where the bits being pulled from a USB packet and put into some chip are wrong.

 
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson
 
I don't know why I put that quote up, just seemed appropriate as long as we're talking Wyrd Schiit.
 
OK, so how does Wyrd wind up affecting jitter (not much, I understand - Jason, do you have actual figures on how much?) through an async USB input, nearly the entire purpose of which is to keep anything prior to the DAC's clock from affecting jitter?  Here's my Wyrd speculation:
 
First: atubbs is right, this isn't about flipped bits.  If it happened, believe me, you'd hear it.  Like a scratch on a record - a quick, nasty "tick."  We're not talking subtleties in the audio presentation, we're talking "Damn!"
 
Nope, let's look at the DAC *at* and *after* the clock, because with async USB nothing *before* the clock should matter.  First of all, electrical noise *at* the clock may affect the clock's operation, causing jitter.  And second, *after* the bits are clocked out of the buffer, what happens?  The bitstream is evaluated to determine whether each bit is a 1 or 0.  The answer to that depends on whether the signal does or does not exceed a specified value.  And how is that value determined?  With respect to ground.  Ground is the zero point.
 
So let's say there's noise on ground.  Then the signal isn't being compared to an actual zero, but to a value above that, so the signal is seen as just slightly lower level than it actually is.  Let's say the amplitude of the wave representing the bitstream is rising.  The point at which it reaches the crossover point from 0 to 1 will be delayed ever so slightly - jitter.  Let's say the wave is falling.  The point at which it reaches the crossover point from 1 to 0 will be accelerated ever so slightly - jitter again.
 
There's an actual EE (which I definitely am not) named John Swenson, who's written some stuff about this that may actually be cogent (which mine definitely isn't).  But at least if I'm understanding John correctly, this may be what Wyrd helps to correct.
 
Glad as always to be corrected if what I've said turns out to be very, very wrong.
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 4:37 PM Post #3,854 of 169,998
I am surprised that so few of you seem to have 'cooked' your cables. This is standard practice here in blighty-land. Most English audiophiles do this every year or two. You have to disconnect all of your cables, and put them all together into your microwave. You then select full power, preferably 850W or more, and then set it to run for 10 minutes. You can certainly hear a big difference, apparently it realigns the electrons, which is why you have to do all of the cables together.

 
Yup.  Good idea.  You have ring mains there, though, that probably accounts for the differences you hear.  No such thing here in North America.
 
Nov 20, 2014 at 4:45 PM Post #3,855 of 169,998
Since in theory a microwave oven is a lot more accessible than a backyard liquid nitrogen tank...
 
One being that the metal crystal lattice will align with slowed molecular motion under cryogenic conditions, and the other being that heated (~molten?) metal crystals will align with a magnetic field.  You do have to cool them quickly to freeze the alignment, tho, and with cryo the metal crystalline structure will remain in alignment while warming back to ambient temperature.
 
I'm surprised that sparks don't fly.
 
'Course it could just be relaxing the conductor wire stress from fabrication, which is also a heat treatment.
 

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