[yonson]

I'm not with the 4 tube thing either. Much better to go with 6. Per channel.

Holy mother of cable risers!

 

[ScubaMan2017]

I'm not with the 4 tube thing either. Much better to go with 6. Per channel.

Oh, I do NOT see six ceramic insulators holding up speaker cable. That is all kinds of aural-enhancing, thermal-isolating, convective-cooling, honey-don't-singe-the-carpet-AGAIN, you-do-what-you-like strangeness. +1, @bcowen ...

 

[ScubaMan2017]

Get a set of Socket savers for front and back tubes. You'll be amazed at how much cooler it runs by lifting those hot tubes up a bit. Made a huge difference in my case.

A while back, I think you did indeed suggest that on this thread. I tried that. And yes, it did indeed cool the chassis right down. All was well until my bloody cats knocked the glass tubes askew... every... screwing night. As an uptight science teacher, that asymmetrical condition bugged me and I removed them. Hence, I had better make my peace with hot knobs.

{{{Pssh, I'll survive}}}

 

[tincanear]

I'm not with the 4 tube thing either. Much better to go with 6. Per channel.

not cable risers, but one of the following:
1) just some leftover parts from some mad-scientist experiment
2) the entire neighborhood around his house is blacked out because someone removed the insulators from the power poles and the wiring shorted out

 

[tafens]

{{...one of these days, I'll get used to the amount of heat that beast gives off... and not freak out touching a hot volume knob}}

Speaking of volume knobs, I just did what I could call an “enhanced visibility” mod

 

[Ripper2860]

not cable risers, but one of the following:
1) just some leftover parts from some mad-scientist experiment
2) the entire neighborhood around his house is blacked out because someone removed the insulators from the power poles and the wiring shorted out

Or ...

3) 'Stones' stolen from the U.S. "Little Persons" Winter Olympics Curling team.



(There's no line @bcowen won't cross to feed his audio OCD.)

 

[GearMe]

Oh, I do NOT see six ceramic insulators holding up speaker cable. That is all kinds of aural-enhancing, thermal-isolating, convective-cooling, honey-don't-singe-the-carpet-AGAIN, you-do-what-you-like strangeness. +1, @bcowen ...

Ha! I have this vision of @bcowen climbing telephone poles in the middle of the night to 'commandeer' insulators for a 'higher purpose'

 

[bcowen]

Ha! I have this vision of @bcowen climbing telephone poles in the middle of the night to 'commandeer' insulators for a 'higher purpose'

LOL! My original intent was to disconnect power from the neighbor's houses and mainline all of it to mine -- those amps needed some serious juice. But once that was accomplished the insulators were of no further use, so you know, like why not repurpose them? Seemed logical at the time.

 

[The Life]

Getting near -100dB THD+N with 60dB of gain…yes, this is doable.

The coronavirus situation may set some plans back. We'll see.

For this reason alone the people working on the vaccines/cures need to hurry up. I’ll personally volunteer to test the drugs if it’ll help get this phono preamp here faster.

 

[roadcykler]

A while back, I think you did indeed suggest that on this thread. I tried that. And yes, it did indeed cool the chassis right down. All was well until my bloody cats knocked the glass tubes askew... every... screwing night. As an uptight science teacher, that asymmetrical condition bugged me and I removed them. Hence, I had better make my peace with hot knobs.

{{{Pssh, I'll survive}}}

I luvs me some hot knobs, well, just the wife's.

 

[wout31]

Speaking of volume knobs, I just did what I could call an “enhanced visibility” mod

I use this one

 

[bcowen]

I use this one

I like it! I'm guessing the rubber ring helps prevent finger slippage when you have mere milliseconds to crank it up?

 

[bdinnerv]

Chapter 27:
Twilight of the Gods—Ragnarok from 2009 Until Today



Which pointed at the software.

“Dave, how frequently are you adjusting the bias on Ragnarok?” I asked, trying to get to the bottom of our mysteries.

“Frequently?” Dave blinked, looking mystified.

“Yes. Once a second, once every tenth of a second?”

“Once,” Dave said.

“Once? Once once?”

“Yeah, when you turn it on. Or when you switch gain modes.”

“Once?” I cried. “And then you let it go?”

“Yes,” Dave said. “But the operational point trends downward with temperature, so it’s safe.”

“Unless it gets so low the bias is turned off,” I said. Suddenly the crap-sounding Ragnarok started to make a lot more sense.

Dave nodded. “Well, there is that.”

Argh. “Dave, it has to adjust continuously, over time.”

“But then you have to parse out the difference between output current into a load for a music signal, and quiescent operating point.”

I nodded. “Exactly. But that’s what we intended to do from the start.”

Dave nodded, but fell silent. “That’s a lot harder.”

“Right.”

“I need to do some more work.”

“Right!”

A few more weeks went past, since I was tied up with other products, other problems. Eventually, Dave and I got together with new software…and a surprise from Dave.

“I also added debugging code so we can see the output current and the voltage out from the DACs at all times,” Dave said.

And, sure enough, the Ragnarok control board sprouted a new connector: an ancient DB-9 computer port. This, Dave hooked up to a computer. Soon, numbers were scrolling on the screen, updated about once a second.

“This is the output current,” Dave said. “This is the other channel. And this number is the DAC output, from 0-4096.”

“Neat!” I said. Which is true. This was an insanely helpful tool to debug Ragnarok.

“But, uh, Dave,” I added, pointing at the output current, which had risen from 250 mA to 300, then 400, then 550…”

“Oh,” Dave said, switching it off. “It hasn’t done that before. Did you change something? Maybe it’s not adjusting fast enough.”

I had changed something—the driver current. Which meant they were heating up at a different rate. Which the firmware couldn’t compensate for.

“Can it adjust faster?” I asked.

“Sure,” Dave said. He changed a few lines of code, and we restarted the Ragnarok. This time, the output current rose over 250mA, but more slowly. But it still wanted to run away.

“I can change it so that it adjusts faster, the farther it is away from the target,” Dave said. A few lines of code later, and we had an amp that didn’t overshoot the target by more than 10% before settling down to a nice, constant 250mA.

Hi Jason,

First off, I want to say both congrats to yourself and the team at Schiit for creating some great products, creating a successfull business and having fun along the way.

Secondly, thank you for this great story. I am currently on my 3rd iteration of starting up a business over 20 something years and have had some successes and failures along the way but it is always enlightening to hear other peoples stories - you can always learn something along the way no matter how many times you have a go at it.

I am both a pretty new member to this forum and new to head-fi but enjoying every minute of it so far. Please forgive me if this has been covered in the next 3700 pages (I am only 148 pages through this thread after starting on it yesterday morning) and also forgive me is this wont work in the audio world ( I am a listener, not a doer) and a bit of a hack when it comes to electronics but wouldnt you have been better off implemeting a PID controller in ths case? At the the of the day, you got the result you wanted but PID would usually be the preferential way to achieve something like this and likely a quicker path and more reproducable?

Any way, I have another 3700 odd pages to get through and am looking forward to the rest of the story unfolding!

Ben

 

[porchwizard]

Speaking of volume knobs, I just did what I could call an “enhanced visibility” mod

For those with audio nervosa about where the volume is set, now you can close your eyes, adjust for best listening pleasure, then stick the arrow on at 12 o'clock, and live happily ever after.

My personal system is, if it's too loud, turn it down. If it's not loud enough, turn it up.

 

[yonson]

Sol has arrived!

I'm in the middle of setup, everything has been quite straight forward so far, just taking a break for a late lunch and to watch the video again on setting up the anti-skate...

On the volume front I rarely look at the dial, I just adjust it until it sounds like I want...