You are right, that's what it can look like. But I'd like to offer up a few arguments against it.
To the casual observer, Schiit sure can seem a bit indecisive at times: DS AKM here, DS ESS there, Multibit AD here, Multibit TI there, Sol here, Sol-less there (yes, Schiit has gone dark and is now a company without a Sol, and we all have to learn to somehow deal with it), boxed transformer here, toroidal transformer there, SPDIF is better here, Unison is better there, tubes are really hard to source here, let's sell an amp that requires ten tubes there, silver here, black there…
But indecisiveness is not what's going on. (For the most part, at least.)
The AKM vs. ESS thing was forced by AKM's factory burning to a crisp. The Sol-lessness is because the thing just didn't sell enough to warrant the effort that would go into keeping the product alive. The boxed vs. toroidal transformer thing is because Jason mentioned that even though toroidal ones sound better, they just weren't able to find (good enough) ones when they originally designed Ragnarok. That, apparently, has changed. SPDIF arguably DOES sound better than USB, but then they attempted their own implementation with Unison, and it turns out that this implementation outperforms SPDIF, so now that sounds better. The silver vs. black thing is due to the fact that silver is Jason's preferred finish, but really hard to get right, especially lately, so they also inadvertently opened a whole can of worms by also offering a black option.
But there are of course also cases that aren't as clear-cut, decisions that really do seem like pure indecisiveness, like Magni 3+ vs. Magni Heresy. So what's up with that?
Well, these are products where the team at Schiit either can't quite settle on which sounds better, or where they want to try something new with a product without having to axe the existing one. In those cases, they opt to offer both variants and let the market decide which of the two flavors they want. Jason calls this the Thunderdome; let the two versions of a product fight it out until one comes out the other end as the winner.
So, to make this long story short:
What you are watching might look like "flavor of the month" hunting or indecisiveness, but it isn't. What's happening at Schiit is more akin to rapid prototyping. A lot of businesses do that, although arguably not enough, but almost none of them include their customers into the process as much as Schiit does. So you simply end up seeing how the sausage is made. That's all.
But why do they do that, and most other (audio) companies don't? Why risk to look like you don't know what you're doing to the uninitiated? Why risk appearing indecisive and flavor-of-the-month-hunting? Why risk losing out on sales by option-overloading shoppers?
Three and a half reasons that I (as someone with ZERO insight into Schiit's inner decision making processes) can think of:
First, and most obviously; With stuff like the AKM vs. ESS situation, they simply had no choice. It's either switch, or stop making delta sigma DACs. I think it's clear that the latter option isn't realistic, so they went with the first.
Second; audio is inherently subjective. When you design and sell audio gear, you literally can't win. Ever. If you're a people pleaser, for the love of all the gods and the sake of your mental health, stay the heck away from designing and selling audio gear. Because no matter what you do, you will inevitably hit the taste of a few, but miss the taste of most. That's just how it is. Sure, there are objectivist audio gear consumers who prefer to hunt down the best-measuring gear. And that's ok, it is one legitimate way out of many to figure out what's "best" for you. But Schiit isn't in the business of making the best-measuring stuff. They try, here and there, just for Schiits and giggles, but more often than not, the worse-measuring prototypes end up in production, simply because their internal auditioning process revealed those to sound better, measurements be damned.
Third; options are a good thing. Sometimes. As is the case with Magni 3+ and Magni Heresy, and as it seems to be the case with Yggy "less is more" and Yggy "more is less", two versions of the same product can sound different enough, yet both of them still good enough, that the internal auditioning process just doesn't lead to a clear winner. So why not let the market decide which one they want?
Also, as a purely speculative aside: I believe there are signs that the availability of Analog Devices chips might not be able to keep pace with the ever-growing number of Multibit DACs sold these days. It feels like more and more audio connoisseurs agree that delta-sigma might be great for cheap and/or mass market audio gear, but it just doesn't measure up (flaming pun most assuredly intended) to Multibit or ladder designs. But those Analog Devices chips really are expensive a.f., and if you look at the backorder time estimates of recent months, their overall availability seems to have become somewhat of a bottleneck. So I am very much tempted to hazard the guess that the whole Texas Instruments situation with Yggy might be Schiit's way of testing the waters in terms of the market's acceptance of alternative implementations to the proven-to-be-a-hit AD implementation of Multibit. Also, can't hurt to have a second leg to stand on, just in case AKM isn't the only company dumb enough to bet the farm on just a single fabrication line.
Three-and-a-half'th; maybe, and just maybe, just to prove a point. You can argue 'till the cows come home whether a better-measuring product also sounds better. Godspeed to you if you want to try. Since you can't argue taste, though, it's an inherently moot debate where everybody just ends up losing. What you CAN do, however, is collect votes.
By his own admission, Yggy OG is still the best-sounding DAC Mike knows how to design. And the way I have come to judge his character, I have no reason to believe that he would have kept (and, evidently, will keep) Yggy A2 the way it was for this long - and sleep at night - if he had a better design float'n' around in his noggin'. So if they arguably won't necessarily sound any better than the OG, why the new TI options, and TWO at that? Well, Yggy OG might sound like heaven, but it measures like hell. And unfortunately, at this price point, I'd assume that sales lost to so-called "bad measurements" can actually hurt quite a bit. So why not offer an option for the number hunters? That way, you have a product in your line to make the objectivists happy without having to punish the subjectivists that helped you grow to where you are today. If the Yggy "more is less" sells like hotcakes? Great! Moa moneyz! And if it doesn't, that's fine, too. Then you're one step closer to proving what you've been preaching for more than a decade: That measurements simply do
not
predict
sound quality.
But who knows, they could also just be comically bad at making up their minds and/or at how to run and market from scratch a successful, rapidly growing, internationally appreciated, and critically acclaimed business in a tiny and highly volatile market that is to a considerable extend made up of very noisy and opinionated torches-and-pitchforks-wielding armchair experts. So who's to tell, really.
At one point I loaned some to Jason for a tube shootout. I suppose it was double blind since all tubes were encased in pvc and their identities were only revealed after the test was over.
One of these things is not like the other…
