[Paladin79]

Been running an inhouse competition between the Schiit Vali 3 and Schiits Midgard
Although I love the Vali 3 and all the recent tube experiments...I have to say
that the Midgard really tops the little Vali 3...even with the really good tubes.

There is just more power and thus control of most of my headphone drivers.
Very noticeable....yup it sure is...

That said the Vali 3 is here to stay and allows for a really decent hybrid tube experience.

Cans using in this experiment are Rad 0's, planars, but very efficient.
Using the SE, non halo 1/4 phone jack on the Midgard, same power as the XLR out.



Alex

Interesting. I was trying to think of tube amps anywhere near the Vali 3’s price range and could only think of the DarkVoice and a couple other chi-fi amps as bad or worse than the DV. No comparison at all unless you modify those amps. I had to look up the Midgard but once again an amazing price for what that amp does.

 

[Paladin79]

Your accomplishments in such a short period of time are simply amazing.

You'll need to take a position on BBQ at some point, but until then great job!

Easy there, some of us live in BBQ free zones you know.

 

[adydula]

Working at IBM in the Test Center for memory chips, I had three of these 1800 systems that I had to calibrate, run diagnostics, etc..fun!
SLT logic and tons of wire warpping...

 

[adydula]

Interesting. I was trying to think of tube amps anywhere near the Vali 3’s price range and could only think of the DarkVoice and a couple other chi-fi amps as bad or worse than the DV. No comparison at all unless you modify those amps. I had to look up the Midgard but once again an amazing price for what that amp does.

Midgard is another Jason Stoddard wonder amp...stellar all around...if you really honest and compare with other SS amps
it will surprise the heck out of you...

No real competitors to Vali 3 with 100 volts on the plates that I know of...for $149!!!!

Vali 3 VS Midgard

 

[corndog71]

Whew! Had to catch up!

My brother, who was born for IT, has tried to get me into it for decades to no avail. Best I could do was learn basic HTML back in ‘97 so I could make my own website. But like others have said, my brain is not wired for IT work. I could maybe do the hardware side of things but it just wasn’t compelling enough.

Last night I tried the headphone output of my GCD and it sounded a little bit cleaner than Vali 3 but it also lost some of that lovely tube flavor. I could go either way.

 

[golfbravobravo]

I used to sell those. I worked at Radio Shack whilst going to college.

After my marriage dissolved I moved back North to I applied to go to (coincidentally, through the company I ended up working for 5 years later in a very different capacity) a systems analysis course. They accepted me, then discovered I was part way through that year's Open University course. They told me to come back when I'd finished. But I needed to eat and pay rent, so applied to Tandy for retail trainee manager job.
I was a trainee for a very short period (I'd run complex establishments on warships and military bases - a bit like a PX) and this was starightforward stuff. I was appointed to a manager position in about 8 weeks, became the new store opening guru shortly thereafter.
I'd bought a Commodore Pet and played around with it a lot, so knew the fundamentals of small computers. In those days, Tandy had retail stores, retail with computers (X Stores) and Computer Centers. The Manchester CC had run through managers and was in a dire state. They wanted a proven business manager who knew something about computers. Willy Muggins ended up in central Manchester "You are going to commute 29 miles each way, EVERY DAY???????)"
We seemed to do things right and I had a great team and we ended up as the top computer store, top individual sale in that financial year. I still have the plaque in my cave.

Fun times.

 

[ArmchairPhilosopher]

Tech isn’t the problem, we are.

As long as tech makes life easier and stays out of your way, it’s perfectly fine. But shiny new toy syndrome is what sells cars, fridges, TVs, phones, computers, software, audio gear, etc., and so we’ve been conditioning product designers and engineers like Pavlovian dogs to put long and convoluted feature lists over usability. We’re just getting what we’ve been voting for with our wallets for decades. And so now we’re looking at “smart” fridges with screens on them to let you know that your milk has gone sour, 12 month smart phone release cycles, TVs that you have to fight every step of the way to disable their on-by-default butt-ugly motion smoothing and Willy Wonka-style color grading, and cars with touch screens where you have to drill deep into a bunch of submenus just to pop open your glove box or change your seating position.

All this crap costs a whole chunk of coin to develop, and it’s what makes you pick item A over item B on the show floor. Even if you won’t use 98% of that two miles long list of features ever again after the first few days of shiny new toy syndrome has worn off.

Don’t get me wrong. More often than not, tech is annoying. But let’s be honest: We did that to ourselves.

 

[Bowmoreman]

As was I.

Technically, I was “made” in 1958. First product shipment was in 1959…

 

[riffrafff]

I can remember owning a Fidelity chess challenger created in 1976 that had more capabilities than the computer that helped land us on the moon.
I bought mine about 1981, it was originally based on an 8088 processor. It took many years before Big Blue beat an international grandmaster, 1997. Now there are some crazy good chess engines.
“
Fidelity chess computers won the first four World Microcomputer Chess Championships: Chess Challenger won in London 1980, Fidelity X in Travemünde 1981, Elite A/S in Budapest 1983, and Elite X in Glasgow 1984. Moreover, they won the four United States Open Computer Chess Championships, all held in Mobile, Alabama, in 1985, 1986, 1987 and 1988 (Chessmaster 2100) . A remarkable performance is its first place in the ACM 1988 Championship, tied with Deep Thought.”

Now as far as home computers it was a Commodore 64 followed by early IBM’s then a clone 286, 386 etc. I can recall graduating from a composite color monitor on an Atari to EGA, VGA, and SVGA on up. I dismantled an early EGA monitor, reverse engineered it and got a company into a computer monitor repair business. Companies like IBM did not supply schematics, nor did those made in other countries. My son began with computers at age four and that led to his profession.

I think I still have my Fidelity chess computer in a box somewhere. I should probably find it and see if I left the batteries in it.

 

[bcowen]

Easy there, some of us live in BBQ free zones you know.

My condolences. But you have blue tomatoes, so there's that.

 

[Paladin79]

I think I still have my Fidelity chess computer in a box somewhere. I should probably find it and see if I left the batteries in it.

I donated mine to a grade school when one of the teachers decided to take the time to start a chess club. It was how I learned plus I had two older brothers to practice against. Later it was those in the USCF and FIDE.

 

[Bowmoreman]

Lisp is the first thing out of all this programming talk that I am even faintly familiar with, though I used that within AutoCAD only minimally. I could sure make AutoCAD dance, though. Very fun!

The reason Digital MADE the DEC-System 10 (and 20) 36 bits, is because of LISP requirements for memory addressing… the 18 bits were a perfect fit. Critical functions in LISP could be implemented basically in the core instruction set (especially with all the Half-word instructions in Macro-10/20). The history of both are inextricably linked, which is why it was also at the core of ARPAnet and then IMPS (Internet Message Protocol Server - IIRC?)… We had several nodes in Marlboro at LCG headquarters; and we were doing emails, chats, bulletin boards, and share sites LONG before the real “Internet”.

But lord, the trouble I had “grokking” LISP. I was more an assembler and Fortran guy. Actually got paid one summer in college by a grant to port a Snobol Poetry-analysis program for analyzing German poetry into Fortran because it would run more cost-effectly on the CDC Cyber system. Each run in Snobol was DAYS of computes, I got it down to under 2 hours with a mix of Fortran and CDC assembler. Yeah, things to file under: why in God’s holy name would you use THAT language for THAT/?

 

[Paladin79]

My condolences. But you have blue tomatoes, so there's that.

Not yet I don’t. We nearly had a tornado last night, I might as well be in Texas or Oklahoma.

 

[Paladin79]

The reason Digital MADE the DEC-System 10 (and 20) 36 bits, is because of LISP requirements for memory addressing… the 18 bits were a perfect fit. Critical functions in LISP could be implemented basically in the core instruction set (especially with all the Half-word instructions in Macro-10/20). The history of both are inextricably linked, which is why it was also at the core of ARPAnet and then IMPS (Internet Message Protocol Server - IIRC?)… We had several nodes in Marlboro at LCG headquarters; and we were doing emails, chats, bulletin boards, and share sites LONG before the real “Internet”.

But lord, the trouble I had “grokking” LISP. I was more an assembler and Fortran guy. Actually got paid one summer in college by a grant to port a Snobol Poetry-analysis program for analyzing German poetry into Fortran because it would run more cost-effectly on the CDC Cyber system. Each run in Snobol was DAYS of computes, I got it down to under 2 hours with a mix of Fortran and CDC assembler. Yeah, things to file under: why in God’s holy name would you use THAT language for THAT/?

Great use of Grok, very Heinleinian. I am reminded of his “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity” quote.

 

[Bowmoreman]

Great use of Grok, very Heinleinian. I am reminded of his “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity” quote.

The good news, is Bismarck very much groks high end audio (CD of PF Animals via Yggy into my Apogees). 21st Century “his masters voice”, as it were: “Dad, there are DOGS in our room!”

Bonus points for pet picture