Yes, I am a terrible person.
I planned on having a chapter up for you yesterday, but things got out of hand in prototyping again (another surprise--even for us--one you might see in August at the SchiitShow--in addition to what we've had planned.)
We'll see. It's definitely the fastest prototype we've ever turned--from the first conversation I had with Mike, to sending out the board, it took only 3.5 days. Add another month waiting for parts (like 3 custom transformers) and fixing some truly hilarious screwups (like the power switch being reversed, all transistors being reversed, wrong pinouts on one of the transformers, etc) and we have a working prototype. It's not quite fully sorted, but it's running.
So what is it? It's something I never expected we'd do. But recent developments in the industry make this new product a lot more interesting. Time will only tell if we'll unveil it in August (likely in pre-production form only...a hint that it does not replace anything in our line, nor compete with anything in our line) or if we're going to go into radio-silent mode and I'll be writing a chapter about how we decided not to do this product at all.
And this is on top of a whole bunch of new stuff, one of which we're hoping to announce next week. That's a fairly, ahem, *small* product, but I think it'll have a lot of impact beyond its size. You'll see. Soon.
And even if this doesn't make it to the SchiitShow, we will have something there we've been working on a long, long time. Its gestation period is almost as long as Ragnarok--the first prototype was laid out in late 2012, and a rough version was running in early 2013. Why such a long development cycle? Because this is something wholly new--from topology to concept--and we think it will really change the desktop landscape. But we've been wrong before. How it goes is entirely up to you.
And, finally, of course, we're in fast-track on getting the next amp prototype finalized. I think this one will be very close to what we'll run with. Maybe you'll see that at RMAF. In any case, you will see the preamps, since we've started ordering parts for them.
Beyond that, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. We'll see how those go. As I mentioned, we're always working on more things than we're going to introduce. If they're interesting, affordable, fun, and serve a real need, they have a chance of becoming reality. If not, not so much.
