[adias]

Not as long as they use a motorized potentiometer for the volume knob.

The microcontroller in your Freya uses the pot's resistance to determine the volume level. If it senses that the resistance goes down, it'll switch the volume relays so that the resistor array attenuates the incoming audio signal less —and vice versa. It's essentially still a more or less fully analog volume control, even though there's a microcontroller in there managing the state of the relays for the resistor array.
(Disclaimer: This is an educated guess. I've never looked at my Freya's circuit, but I have a strong hunch that this is how it's implemented based on how Freya's volume control management generally behaves. If I'm wrong with the above assumption, some of the following will of course be incorrect as well.)

The problem you're describing has very little to do with your remote triggering too long a signal but is more of an effect of the motorized potentiometer's inertia. It simply takes a little bit of time for that little motor in the potentiometer to get going. And once it does, it takes a little bit of time to stop again. Have the microcontroller send out its "turn up a bit" signal for a shorter duration, and you might not see the potentiometer move much at all because the little motor won't have enough time to rev up and overcome the pot's mechanical resistance enough to move the shaft for a meaningful enough distance. Make that signal even just slightly longer, and you end up giving the motor just enough time to get going, but now you have to deal with its inertia.
Oh, and not all pots are perfectly alike, even if they're of the same type. So you would have to find a way to calibrate this whole thing on a per-pot basis.
And even if you can somehow perfectly time the motor signal duration to ensure just two or three "volume steps", it'll all go out the window the second your operating temperature changes. You might have noticed that your Freya sometimes clicks its volume relays for no apparent reason? Yeah, that's because the microcontroller saw the volume pot's resistance change a tiny bit even without you touching anything, probably because the thing got a little warmer.

To do what you ask for, it would have to work the other way around: The microcontroller would have to store a "master volume value" and each press of the remote would increase or decrease that volume value by a fixed amount. Then you would be able to precisely control the attenuation state of your Freya's resistor ladder. But you would also lose the ability to use an analog volume knob. Because motorized pots don't "know" what position they're at, the microcontroller can't just change a number internally and then "tell" the potentiometer to turn itself to the exact position that would correspond to that volume level. So you would have to either replace the volume control with tactile buttons or some form of rotary encoder for volume changes on Freya itself. Not really sure how "sexy" that would be as a product.

Also, the number of relay clicks you hear are not necessarily equal to the number of volume steps. In most cases, more than one relay has to switch for just a single step in attenuation. Think of how you count up or down in binary, where often more than just 0->1 or 1->0 flip occurs for a single step up or down. The relays in Freya do the same, and they don't all switch perfectly simultaneously.

As an aside:
I'm not using Schiit's remote for my Freya. I appreciate that the one Freya comes with is machined from a block of aluminum, and that's a nice touch. Especially when you compare what you get from Schiit to the 10 cent plastic monstrosities you're presented with from other audio gear manufacturers.
But I still don't like the blister buttons, and I don't want to have yet another remote control sit on my coffee table.
Instead, I am using my Apple TV's remote to control my Freya+.
Apple TV lets you program the volume up, volume down, and mute buttons on the Apple TV's remote. So I programmed mine to control Freya's volume, and I am using the mute button on the remote to toggle through my Freya's output modes. I never use Freya's mute function, and that way, I don't have to get up when I want to switch from passive (which is what I use for watching TV most of the time) to tube gain mode, which is what I use for some TV shows and most of my music listening.
I also think the volume up and down signals the Apple TV remove sends out may be a wee bit shorter than what the Schiit remote emits. At least I feel as I have a tiny bit more control over how much the volume goes up or down with the Apple TV remote. But that could also be an effect of it having proper tactile buttons, not just a somewhat flimsy sheet of blistered plastic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting! Thanks.

 

[Zachik]

I'm really hoping we can continue to produce MMB2--the confusion and insanity around the DSP chips we use is fodder for another chapter, involving finger-pointing, 80 week delays, demands for full payment of all backorders (without delivery of any parts), a trip to CES, top level guys at the chip manufacturer, etc.

@Jason Stoddard - A true story:
I have been to CES this year (first time since 2002), but was stuck in a suite the whole show except for 1 hour.
Guess who I ran into the only 1 hour of being at the show floor? Dave from Schiit!!!
I approached and introduced myself, and Dave was totally amazed that ANYONE would recognize him...

 

[BeyerMonster]

Has anyone with Vidar/Aegir auditioned Tyr? I've got a set of bi-amped Magnepan 3.6Rs (Aegir/Vidar) and was contemplating Tyr or perhaps going dual Aegir.

 

[adydula]

Found Them!!!

I love these BW pix...history in the making!
Old School!

 

[Ripper2860]

Who could this possibly be?

I am a published author, background actor, paranormal investigator, video editor, test driver, shade tree mechanic, serious tea drinker, costume/clothing/jewelry designer, antique doll hobbyist, former stagehand and self-styled weirdo. I've been in movies and television shows such as Spiderman 2, Domino, Angel, The Changeling, and have danced the Cancan while dressed as Leeloo from The Fifth Element.

My first guess was Mike, but I'm thinking I could be wrong after the last claim to fame.


** If she ain't the most interesting person ever, then I don't know who would be!

 

[yonson]

Thanks for another great chapter Jason! Unless it's rated for 25W or less AND is HUGE, I've always just assumed a speaker amp was Class AB even if they claimed it was A.

 

[turtlerod]

Has anyone with Vidar/Aegir auditioned Tyr? I've got a set of bi-amped Magnepan 3.6Rs (Aegir/Vidar) and was contemplating Tyr or perhaps going dual Aegir.

I used Vidars with MA

Has anyone with Vidar/Aegir auditioned Tyr? I've got a set of bi-amped Magnepan 3.6Rs (Aegir/Vidar) and was contemplating Tyr or perhaps going dual Aegir.

i used 3 vidars to run my front Martin Logan front speakers and then switched to two Vidars. The improvement was as close to a religious awakening as I will ever get.

 

[ricksome]

For me, it comes down to, can anyone really tell if they're listening to class A, AB, D, etc in blind testing? My guess is, no.

I would agree. I am waiting for someone to chime in and start flaming your blind testing claim. Of course if they are blind folded and allowed to burn their hands on a heat sink, they would know that Class A is being listened to.

 

[macdonjh]

Oh gawd I should have put this in! Class A won't vary. SE can't. Push-pull can't. Complementary won't, until it's past its Class A bias.

Thank you!


If you do this, I'm up for replicating it at The Texas Round 2- Up the Schiitr.

Here's hoping the initial version was simply a typo.

 

[Jason Stoddard]

@Jason Stoddard

Well no-one has "bit" on the "BOTC or BITG" in one of my lame posts.

Well if you go all the way back in Schiit time :

Christmas Presents Until the End of Time?

“So, do you think it’ll go? Do you think they’ll sell?” Mike Moffat asked, looking at the first assembled Asgard on the engineering bench in my garage. He was being Mike-fidgety, rocking from heel to heel in the small, chilly space.

“Well, on paper it looks good,” I told him. “But you know how that works. They’ll either sell, or we’ll have Christmas presents until the end of time.”

Somewhere in my pictures stash I have a picture of a person I think of sitting on the hood of a corvette in a garage....hmmm? Cant find it.

So Asgard OG back then was a BITG = "Built In the Garage"
or
BOTC = "Built on the Corvette"...

Another futile attempt to share the early years...

The Corvette was hot and so was the Asgards back then!

:>)

Definitely built in the garage. Probably had the boards stuffed while we were watching movies, built on a plastic fold-up table, and tested by me.

Not as long as they use a motorized potentiometer for the volume knob.

The microcontroller in your Freya uses the pot's resistance to determine the volume level. If it senses that the resistance goes down, it'll switch the volume relays so that the resistor array attenuates the incoming audio signal less —and vice versa. It's essentially still a more or less fully analog volume control, even though there's a microcontroller in there managing the state of the relays for the resistor array.
(Disclaimer: This is an educated guess. I've never looked at my Freya's circuit, but I have a strong hunch that this is how it's implemented based on how Freya's volume control management generally behaves. If I'm wrong with the above assumption, some of the following will of course be incorrect as well.)

The problem you're describing has very little to do with your remote triggering too long a signal but is more of an effect of the motorized potentiometer's inertia. It simply takes a little bit of time for that little motor in the potentiometer to get going. And once it does, it takes a little bit of time to stop again. Have the microcontroller send out its "turn up a bit" signal for a shorter duration, and you might not see the potentiometer move much at all because the little motor won't have enough time to rev up and overcome the pot's mechanical resistance enough to move the shaft for a meaningful enough distance. Make that signal even just slightly longer, and you end up giving the motor just enough time to get going, but now you have to deal with its inertia.
Oh, and not all pots are perfectly alike, even if they're of the same type. So you would have to find a way to calibrate this whole thing on a per-pot basis.
And even if you can somehow perfectly time the motor signal duration to ensure just two or three "volume steps", it'll all go out the window the second your operating temperature changes. You might have noticed that your Freya sometimes clicks its volume relays for no apparent reason? Yeah, that's because the microcontroller saw the volume pot's resistance change a tiny bit even without you touching anything, probably because the thing got a little warmer.

To do what you ask for, it would have to work the other way around: The microcontroller would have to store a "master volume value" and each press of the remote would increase or decrease that volume value by a fixed amount. Then you would be able to precisely control the attenuation state of your Freya's resistor ladder. But you would also lose the ability to use an analog volume knob. Because motorized pots don't "know" what position they're at, the microcontroller can't just change a number internally and then "tell" the potentiometer to turn itself to the exact position that would correspond to that volume level. So you would have to either replace the volume control with tactile buttons or some form of rotary encoder for volume changes on Freya itself. Not really sure how "sexy" that would be as a product.

Also, the number of relay clicks you hear are not necessarily equal to the number of volume steps. In most cases, more than one relay has to switch for just a single step in attenuation. Think of how you count up or down in binary, where often more than just 0->1 or 1->0 flip occurs for a single step up or down. The relays in Freya do the same, and they don't all switch perfectly simultaneously.

As an aside:
I'm not using Schiit's remote for my Freya. I appreciate that the one Freya comes with is machined from a block of aluminum, and that's a nice touch. Especially when you compare what you get from Schiit to the 10 cent plastic monstrosities you're presented with from other audio gear manufacturers.
But I still don't like the blister buttons, and I don't want to have yet another remote control sit on my coffee table.
Instead, I am using my Apple TV's remote to control my Freya+.
Apple TV lets you program the volume up, volume down, and mute buttons on the Apple TV's remote. So I programmed mine to control Freya's volume, and I am using the mute button on the remote to toggle through my Freya's output modes. I never use Freya's mute function anyway, and by "misappropriating" the mute button to switch output modes, I don't have to get up when I want to switch from passive (which is what I use for watching TV most of the time) to tube gain mode, which is what I use for some TV shows and most of my music listening.
I also think the volume up and down signals the Apple TV remove sends out may be a wee bit shorter than what the Schiit remote emits. At least I feel as I have a tiny bit more control over how much the volume goes up or down with the Apple TV remote. But that could also be an effect of it having proper tactile buttons, not just a somewhat flimsy sheet of blistered plastic. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Someday we're gonna tackle that whole remote thing with a custom solution...or, to be more accurate, tackle, kidnap, exile to a desert island, and replace with something far, far better. Problem is cost. Working on that.

@Jason Stoddard - A true story:
I have been to CES this year (first time since 2002), but was stuck in a suite the whole show except for 1 hour.
Guess who I ran into the only 1 hour of being at the show floor? Dave from Schiit!!!
I approached and introduced myself, and Dave was totally amazed that ANYONE would recognize him...

Dave went to CES mainly to meet with some chip manufacturers...part of the multibit saga. It helped a lot.

Who could this possibly be?

I am a published author, background actor, paranormal investigator, video editor, test driver, shade tree mechanic, serious tea drinker, costume/clothing/jewelry designer, antique doll hobbyist, former stagehand and self-styled weirdo. I've been in movies and television shows such as Spiderman 2, Domino, Angel, The Changeling, and have danced the Cancan while dressed as Leeloo from The Fifth Element.

My first guess was Mike, but I'm thinking I could be wrong after the last claim to fame.


** If she ain't the most interesting person ever, then I don't know who would be!

That's Rina, my wife.

 

[Ripper2860]

I know. I just didn't want to put it totally out there. All I can say is Texas is the better for having you folks decide to split your time here.

The fact that you guys settled on Corpus is interesting since Rina seems so "AUSTIN".

 

[rkw]

i used 3 vidars to run my front Martin Logan front speakers and then switched to two Vidars. The improvement was as close to a religious awakening as I will ever get.

You switched from 3 Vidars to two Vidars??? Or did you mean to say two Tyrs?

 

[Paladin79]

Here's hoping the initial version was simply a typo.

I have to figure out how to set up the comparison before anything can be replicated. Choosing A, AB, and D is bound to give mixed results. Tube vs solid state should be more definitive. Oh and blind testing for me has nothing to do with blindfolds or having the ability to feel heat.

 

[senorx12562]

I thought it was the picture of Rina that someone referred to, but then I thought no, that can't be it, that wasn't a Corvette, was it?

 

[M-83]

So I’m thinking about the super interesting MJ3 and Class A piece @Jason Stoddard posted….

Pure class A for my Audioquest Nighthawk and switch setting for LCD-3 for more power….?

Will be interesting to see more detail on MJ3.

Question is, will it sound better than Rag 2?

I don’t use my Rag 2 for speakers so possibly might be worth funding MJ3 with Rag 2 sale.

We will see.