I bought a Loki Mini the day they came out and would most likely buy the Loki maxi with or without balanced connectors since they are not my flavor of fu-fu dust. Granted that xlr are physically better connectors so I do use them but not because they are balanced. What intrigues me is that Schiit has built a better pathway to DAC/AMP combos which obviates the need to think about balanced connectors and pretty much blocks the user from adding a Loki of any flavor as someone noted earlier. I know Schiit has given users more choice and lowered costs with add-in boards but will it undercut sales of Loki?
No doubt have the $1249 Gungnir Multibit and $2399 Yggdrasil undercut sales of the $149 Loki. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm not sure I understand what you're driving at--I'll admit I can be slow. I would think people with Gumby's and Yggy's who aren't all swept up in balanced hype could use a Loki Mini. I do. Just take the SE output from Gumby and run it to the SE input on the amp of your choice. No problem. My point was simply that if you have a Jot with a DAC board or any other DAC or amp combined in one box, there is no way with Schiit's present line-up to get Loki Mini between the DAC and the amp, neither SE or balanced. Thus the new modular boards that allow users to put DACs and amps together make it harder to use Loki Minis. Have I missed something?
Hah, sorry, I think I'm the slow one here, I misunderstood your point. Somehow (and I'm really not quite sure how) I thought you were saying that Schiit has a "better pathway" in the form of their balanced offerings, and that the customers who have them can't have the Loki because it's not balanced, which undercuts Loki sales. And my point was that the balanced folks are probably the minority, because the only two serious products that sort of lock you into balanced if you want to get the most out of them are the two top of the line DACs (starting at over a kilobuck), and so shouldn't affect Loki sales significantly.
But you're making an entirely different point here, namely that the DAC modules block people from using Loki in any form, and I can definitely see that quite a few people would have gotten a Loki already if they could actually use it. That's probably true, no argument here. I would add Eitr to that as well - at least when I use my phone as the source, I don't quite trust USB, and gen 5 USB would sooth my USB nervosa a bit (in ways a Wyrd can't). But Eitr is useless with a USB-only DAC module.
I got the DAC module in one of my Jotunheims in case I ever want to sell it, which is probably easier if it's usable all by itself. But now I'd have to tell people it's the "old" 4490 one. Who wants that!?
I figured, so I thought I'll be smart and skip straight ahead to Yggdrasil and Jotunheim (some actually seem to prefer it over Ragnarok)On another level, Schiit products are like potato chips, you can't eat just one. They sell one another until you hit the end of the line, Valhalla. I keep waiting for that product.
But now I'm still wondering how much of the Yggy goodness the cheaper multibit DACs would provide... and whether Ragnarok wouldn't be better still... and what that class A sound of the Asgard 2 is like... and whether Lyr 3 with those Russian tubes might best Jotunheim, when the Lyr 2 failed to do so when I tried it... and whether I shouldn't get a Mimby + Magni 3 as a bedroom setup...
So yeah... it doesn't end!