[Paladin79]

Yeah I did, but I didn't say I was a real man.

And unfortunately I sent my whole Partridge Family collection to @Ripper2860. His David Cassidy posters alone weren't enough.

My test tracks are more on the line of The Ubiquitous Mr.Lovegrove by Dead Can Dance but each to his own. A bit of Daft Punk here and there is good for me as well.

 

[Ripper2860]

Yeah I did, but I didn't say I was a real man.

And unfortunately I sent my whole Partridge Family collection to @Ripper2860. His David Cassidy posters alone weren't enough.

Sucker! Partridge Family and David Cassidy memorabilia prices have gone through the roof since David's passing. How do you think I'm paying for a Ragnarok.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed where my highly collectible and life-sized Susan Dey pillow awaits.

 

[Paladin79]

Sucker! Partridge Family and David Cassidy memorabilia prices have gone through the roof since David's passing. How do you think I'm paying for a Ragnarok.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed with my highly collectible life-size Susan Dey pillow.

Yikes that album must be worth $5.00 now to the right collector. Enjoy the Ragnarok!

 

[Ripper2860]

Dream crusher.

 

[earnmyturns]

Mine was VMS, on an 11-780, IIRC.

My almost-brother-in-law had an IMSAI 8800 at home, in the first man cave I ever saw.

Oh kids, it goes much further back... Did a lot of my early programming in Algol-60 on an Elliot 4130. Graduated to PDP-10 (various languages/OSs) Then C and PDP-11 Unix V7, then VAX 11/750 with 4.1 BSD. Then Symbolics 3600 LISP machines. Some VAX 11/780 VMS as well. Then Sun-2 Motorola 68010. Side-trip to Mac 512 and pretty much every major Mac hardware and software issue since. Then SGI Irix. Some WindowsNT C++. Then lots of Java on Sun and Intel-Linux desktops and servers. And it goes on...

 

[tincanear]

Monitor Audio RS8.. 91 dB efficient. The Naim has plenty of power. Aegir should as well.
I appreciate all the advice.

I was leaning pre, but really want that Aegir.

The Freya S and Freya + preamps will allow you to run the Gungnir MB in balanced mode into any amp (balanced OR single ended)…

I also suspect that Jason & company is working on a new amp similar to the stages in Ragnarok 2 but with additional enhancements (even better than Aegir???) with at least a functional bench prototype at least as good as the current offerings or he wouldn't have hinted at it.

Preamps are also lighter and therefore cheaper to return ship during the 15-day trial period if you don't notice a change vs the passive Sys. Remote volume.

Long ago, I ran a passive pre from an old Philips CD player into a modified hafler amp for a while, then bought an Aragon pre-amp in the late 80's to replace the passive... no regrets about buying the Aragon (would have preferred the Freya S over the Aragon, but Schiit wasn't around then)

 

[DougD]

My first computer complete with operating system and memory stick.

Appears to be a Tablet Mark I.

Portable model. Secure erase technology. Day/night display with AlwaysOn capability.

And still in operating condition.

Impressive.

 

[tin-ear]

We HATED walking to school in the snow: meant we had to wrap our feet in barbed wire for traction. We didn't have a lot of holes in our shoes, but damned if the barbed wire didn't find where to poke in. Every time. As if the "uphill both ways" wasn't bad enough...

My father, (1919-1998) grew up in Iowa. A few times he used the, when I was your age we had to walk though 4 miles of snow to get to school line. After he passed I was talking to my uncle/his younger brother (by about 4 years). I brought this up and laughed. He said that on most days he and my dad chose to walk instead of taking school bus. And, the school bus had their yakkity sisters on it!
So, I (born 1951) grew up in the San Fernando Valley just over the hill from Schiit headquarters in Arleta. Arleta is probably the smallest named portion of the City of Los Angeles 1/4" mile wide x 2 miles long. I used to tell my nieces and nephews, when I was your age, we had to walk through 2 miles of smog to get home from school.
Several decades of cleaning up the air have worked pretty good. It was brutal. Jason may remember it?
Watch some old Highway Patrol TV episodes (1955-1959). Sometimes outside shots show a vague grey background. Sometimes smog reduced visibility to a few city blocks.

 

[tin-ear]

This is an exceptional perspective.

Many of the early CG effects looked very bad, even when they were technically perfect. Maybe this is somewhat akin to that? The beauty is in imperfection?

At one of the earliest Stereophile shows I heard the then recently introduced Martin-Logan CLS electrostatic loudspeakers. These were a single panel electrostatic. They were being driven by Audio Research 300 watt tube monoblocks. I was new to high end audio. It blew me away. And garnered a lot of praise. Sometime later someone commented that measurements showed the panels continued to 'ring' after an impulse was sent to them. And this this was common to large flat panel speakers. A theory was proposed that this kind-of echo gave your brain some more info to process the original sound, resulting in an improvement of the perceived sound.
I just know I was blown away.

Regarding CG: I grew up watching the original Star Trek series. In black and white, mostly. But, it was in reruns almost constantly, so it is in my bones.
In 2006 remastered versions with new CG were made. I'm sure they were thinking they were improving on the cheesy 1960's special effects. Now when I watch the new versions what I see is a mix of charming 1960's era effects (achieved with a limited budget and vintage tech), and cheesy 2006 era CG.
I guess "cheesy" is subjective.

Oh well. 30-40 years ago they colorized B&W movies, because few under 30 or something wouldn't watch them. In Suddenly (1954) staring "old blue eyes," Frank Sinatra, they gave him, you guessed it, brown eyes.

 

[porchwizard]

My father, (1919-1998) grew up in Iowa. A few times he used the, when I was your age we had to walk though 4 miles of snow to get to school line. After he passed I was talking to my unlce/his younger brother ((by about 4 years). I brought this up and laughed. He said that on most days he my dad chose to walk instead of taking school bus. And, the school bus had their yakkity sisters on it!
So, I (born 1951) grew up in the San Fernando Valley just over the hill from Schiit headquarters in Arleta. Arleta is probably the smallest named portion of the City of Los Angeles 1/4" mile wide x 2 miles long. I
used to tell my nieces and nephews, when I was your age, we had to walk through 2 miles of smog to get home from school.
Several decades of cleaning up the air have worked pretty good. It was brutal. Jason may remember it?
Watch some old Highway Patrol TV episodes (1955-1959). Sometimes outside shots show a vague grey background. Sometimes smog reduced visibility to a few city blocks.

Ok... I'll say it... When I was young... I grew up in Southern California in the 60's in, often, under a mile visibility, brown throat and eye burning haze. There were occasional outdoor restrictions (smog alerts) but we ignored them as much as possible. The Santa Anna winds, also responsible for spreading fires, were the only thing that would occasionally clear out the smog revealing beautiful views of the San Bernardino Mountains, really only 45 minutes drive away but hidden most days of the year.
Smog is less obvious these days, but progress in reducing pollution has been offset by increased vehicle numbers and usage.
And I did walk 1/2 mile to junior high and nearly 2 miles to high school, but not exclusively. I also rode a bike, rode the bus, got car rides with friends, and eventually got my own car.

 

[barondla]

Yep.

Here's the thing: when we started, there were a lot fewer options. Now, we still have some significant advantages--longest arm anywhere near the price, a real unconstrained unipivot, quick swapping of affordable arms, the biggest and most insane bearing anywhere near the price, unique aluminum plinth and aluminum platter...but it's also coupled with some disadvantages--more expensive than entry-level US-made tables, getting near the price of VPI's entry table, no dust cover, can be more fiddly to use with a separate motor pod/unipivot/etc. On balance, I think we have enough advantages to bring it to market, as long as we can keep delivering a consistent, quality product. But it's no longer a slam dunk.

To me, and perhaps many others, a consistent performing SOL is still a slam dunk. Nothing else has these "go faster" parts & features. Your market was never a $180 turntable.

The SOL has been a bit of a problem child. Please don't let that affect your view of its worth. The SOL isn't a dumbed down table. That is rare in an under $1000 set up. There are people willing to undertake the extra work to achieve greater sound quality. Thanks.

 

[Balthazar B]

Oh kids, it goes much further back... Did a lot of my early programming in Algol-60 on an Elliot 4130. Graduated to PDP-10 (various languages/OSs) Then C and PDP-11 Unix V7, then VAX 11/750 with 4.1 BSD. Then Symbolics 3600 LISP machines. Some VAX 11/780 VMS as well. Then Sun-2 Motorola 68010. Side-trip to Mac 512 and pretty much every major Mac hardware and software issue since. Then SGI Irix. Some WindowsNT C++. Then lots of Java on Sun and Intel-Linux desktops and servers. And it goes on...

@earnmyturns, were you at Berkeley, by any chance?

 

[gljus]

Is that a typo or did you really mean 50 m (as in meters)? Are your speakers in the same house as your amp?

Yeah, the resulting speaker cables are only about 2.5 m / 8 ft each, but had to buy 50 m / 150 ft as it is 5-wire PGP cable for electrical wiring sold only in bulk. Initially I was thinking it’s stupid to buy 50 m of cable which I won’t use but then remembered the original cables for the speakers (roughly the same AWG) are around $500 and $60 for 150 ft wasn’t that bad of an „investment”.

 

[Varejao17]

Monitor Audio RS8.. 91 dB efficient. The Naim has plenty of power. Aegir should as well.
I appreciate all the advice.

I was leaning pre, but really want that Aegir.

if your interconnects are short you can get the Aegir now then upgrade the SYS when you have the budget. Just remember that Aegir stereo is single ended on the inputs...

ed

 

[johnjen]

Thank you. Yes, probably. There has to be a certain suspension of disbelief, more organic and less synthetic. But we only have to look at the history of cinema to see that suspension of disbelief is a moving target correlated with technological evolution.

Systems of reproduction compress reality massively, and 0.0001 levels of distortion does not change that one whit. You might say compensatory distortions introduce a kind of sensory "expansion". Even the compression used by mastering engineers Is a kind of "expansion" because it makes "all the sound" more audible. Depending on the system you're listening to of course

Thank you for putting into words and presenting the POV of the magnitudes of "Systems of reproduction (that) compress reality massively".
And that MUST be employed in order to be able to even come close, from a 'practical' (ie be able to actually function) perspective and still enjoy the results.

This for me at least partially helps to explain, why certain types of tube amps that 'add' 2nd order harmonics, which can act as "compensatory distortions (which) introduce a kind of sensory "expansion"" to the SQ, can be so desirable.
And of course there are other technical means of causing similar 'effects', but these types of "compensatory distortions" will all measure as 'worse' due to the perception that less is always better when it comes to 'distortion numbers'.

And when all IS said and done it ALWAYS comes down to personal perception and personal choice.

Thank you for this insightful look into our perceptions.

JJ