[barondla]

Dumb question. Have experience with 3 different brands of home electrostatic speakers. They all can be played with good, highend amps. Why are electrostatic headphones different? Why can't a Ragnarok or some other totl headphone amp play stats?

 

[Pietro Cozzi Tinin]

https://www.head-fi.org/search/1719097/?q=ELECTROSTATIC+VS&t=post&o=relevance

 

[jimmers]

Dumb question. Have experience with 3 different brands of home electrostatic speakers. They all can be played with good, highend amps. Why are electrostatic headphones different? Why can't a Ragnarok or some other totl headphone amp play stats?

Electrostatic speakers have the drive signal step-up and the EHT diaphragm charge supply built into the speaker base, head phones need the drive step-up and diaphragm EHT generated in the amplifier.

 

[hearditontheX]

Sadly, my HP-25 died, the battery was tired and they don't make them any more.
So, switched to the HP-12C and it's my only remaining calculator to this day.
The 25 was scientific. The 12C is financial. At some point in time, we all switch to financials.
Anyway, the 12C still uses RPN. The best calculator idea ever!

I have an HP-11C that I still use at work. I've replaced the batteries once.

 

[GearMe]

Well, I just picked up a Gungnir MB and have it plugged in and warming up for a comparison session on Monday with my Bifrost MB.

I'm hoping I can distinguish a noticable difference to justify the expense.

Naturally I'll be comparing the two SE, but I'll certainly play with the balanced to my Jot and Liquid Carbon. Hopefully this DAC can help me separate the two amps. The Jot, for it's price, is stunning by comparison. It easily holds it's own to the LC single-ended, and I'm thinking it'll be even better balanced...YMMV, to my ears, blah, blah, blah...

Should be fun!

Would be very interested in what your take is...

 

[Paddlefoot]

Oh look... my Wife bought me some new Schiit

 

[AndreYew]

Dumb question. Have experience with 3 different brands of home electrostatic speakers. They all can be played with good, highend amps. Why are electrostatic headphones different? Why can't a Ragnarok or some other totl headphone amp play stats?

Those speakers have a transformer inside them to raise the voltage level presented by the amp to what the speakers need. The speakers also have their own power supply to generate the high-voltage bias for operation: the speaker is plugged into the wall. 'Stat headphones depend on the amp to do all of this, and 'stat amps can't drive normal headphones either because it's operating in a very different domain than normal headphones.

 

[Charente]

Oh look... my Wife bought me some new Schiit

Yes, I can see that ... we can tell the real Schiit items ... all with very bright white 'headlights' !! I have 4 now myself.

 

[DSNORD]

Bada Bing!!! I'm on my way to winning the prediction lottery. Yggy scores a Robert Harley Golden Ear award in TAS just out today.

"But if the very best reproduction of PCM sources is your goal, the Yggdrasil is the ticket. It's a spectacular performer on an absolute level, and an out-of-the- world bargain."

And it's a pretty spectacular performer on an OBSOLETE level too!!!

No reason it won't win DAC of the Year. When it wins Product of the Year, I've got my Triple Play!!!

("....and it sounds like it should cost $15,000, not $2,300." Now guys, don't go getting any fancy ideas of a price bump.)

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Dear Jason,

If 79% here agree would you at least consider this line of thought: Regarding poor little Xappie the electrostatic amp that bit the dust in 2016. Consider also in 2016 the new normal for the price of headphones became $4K!! Proclaimed life changing by some even though they can't seem to be produced with proper uniformity. No sooner did this happen and voila, the new planar bargain has a $6K price tag. Point being if you put together an even more end game Schiit bargain in a Yggy/Rag chassis for say $1,979.00 and they positively light up, for instance, the electrostats from another fine California company that I think a lot are waiting and hoping to be "affordable" in a relative sense, most surely the amp would find a nice size market for itself in the electrostatic niche. The Niflheim.

You wouldn't sell a zillion, but you would be making a statement and that's publicity.

So of course Sol is priced at ~1k and an e-stat amp would have to be twice that. The Mjolnir Audio people start their good amps around 3k and BHSE is like 5k. I love what MrSpeakers is doing with their new e-stat (hopefully volume will help subsequent iterations fall closer to 2.5k or even 2k) but the real bottleneck in electrostatic headphones is amplification, not transducers. You can get 007 for under 2k and 009 for under 3k (I've seen some used for 2300).

Schiit's genius is making obsolete mainstream, cf multibit, cf all of Jason's awesome topologies. Sol remains a TBD, and even I'm not optimistic for it finding anywhere near as large an audience as Mimby, which was an absolute industry game-changer. I think Jason remarked that every time you double your price you quarter your sales, so yes, a hypothetical e-stat at 2k would be, at best 25% sales of Mjolnir 2. And yes, the focal utopia (never mind the ether series) has made a very good case for forgetting electrostatics and sticking with the infinitely less fussy dynamic transducers. However, the electrostatic sound is wondrous, and I know that @Jason Stoddard would do everyone a service by turning up the heat on the competition and forcing them to make more competitive products. Even if it's only a run of a thousand followed by a discontinuation, they may well become a collector's item someday.

Any possibility of a Schiitr demo of the mentioned prototype?

i'm not sure why people are getting hot and bothered over opinion.

We need to say 'hot and bothered' more. It's a great phrase.

 

[DSNORD]

New Little Jotty has been playing now for 20 minutes. Dead cold out of the box sound is SUPERB!!! Black background, wide sound stage, great bass, and crisp treble. Gumby/Jot make my LCD-X sing like my Yggy/Rag. I'm really looking forward to a head to head competition after 40-50 hours of use.

Thanks again guys for yet another homerun product.

Hey, rest of the Industry- you can take your ball and go home now!!!

 

[RCBinTN]

[Mod Hat On]

Gents - getting a couple of complaints about the O/T conversations taking over the thread. Just a thought - but if a group of you do want to chat (and that is perfectly OK with us), maybe consider starting a topic in the Members Lounge? Just might make it a little better for those who don't want to hear about vintage PCs and calculators ......

Thanks

For sure, Paul. I sustained that a bit too long, my bad.

Well then...on to further on/topic discussion about the Manhattan Project -

 

[UntilThen]

I wasn't a fan of Schiit until I stumble on this setup. Previously I only wrote about Feliks Audio Elise and Euforia tube amps. Now I have nothing but praise for Yggdrasil and Ragnarok. If you had told me that HD800 sounded very good with Yggy and Rggy before I heard it, I wouldn't have believe you. Now having heard it for 2 weeks (had Yggy for 2.5 months and Rggy for 2 weeks) I have to say, this is the best I've heard from HD800. It's amazing that a solid state amp will drive HD800 so well. It is very clear, fast transient, taut and tight bass, texture laden, lush and above all, it's natural and musical. Yggy and Rggy is very revealing but at the same time, it's very comforting on the ears. Too good to be true right? Well it is, to my ears.

Ps.. on a modified HD650 in balance mode, it is very good too. Amazing !

Congrats Schiit. You did a very good job with this combo.

 

[RCBinTN]

I wasn't a fan of Schiit until I stumble on this setup. Previously I only wrote about Feliks Audio Elise and Euforia tube amps. Now I have nothing but praise for Yggdrasil and Ragnarok. If you had told me that HD800 sounded very good with Yggy and Rggy before I heard it, I wouldn't have believe you. Now having heard it for 2 weeks (had Yggy for 2.5 months and Rggy for 2 weeks) I have to say, this is the best I've heard from HD800. It's amazing that a solid state amp will drive HD800 so well. It is very clear, fast transient, taut and tight bass, texture laden, lush and above all, it's natural and musical. Yggy and Rggy is very revealing but at the same time, it's very comforting on the ears. Too good to be true right? Well it is, to my ears.

Ps.. on a modified HD650 in balance mode, it is very good too. Amazing !

Congrats Schiit. You did a very good job with this combo.

Yes! I fully agree. I am also a SS amp user (Bryston BHA-1).

I discovered the magic when I upgraded my Gungnir to GMB.
The Schiit MB technology enabled my HD800.

That was when I realized the HD800 are not so amp dependent.
They are more DAC dependent.

I've heard the Yggy/Rag stack with the HD800 - certainly a great rig!
Enjoy your music.

Cheers,
RCBinTN

 

[FLTWS]

2368048[/ATTACH]

I've been listening to my Ygg/Rag/HD800(stock) for almost a year, still amazed at how it sounds. And I also have Utopia and love it as well. Nothing else I've auditioned since comes close to either of these HP's with the Schiit.