Transport + digital preamp with USB recording device support => CD ripper!
An expensive one, but still.
What a long, strange trip it's been -- (Robert Hunter)
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Transport + digital preamp with USB recording device support => CD ripper!
An expensive one, but still.
Hi Mike. How about this.
Bifrost 2. Use the Jot chassis with 2x18bit chips in SE and CAB (Cheap-Ass Balanced) circuit. USB, BNC, Coax, Opt inputs. XLR and 2 RCA outputs. $600-$700.
Whaddya think?
Bifrost 2. Use the Jot chassis with 2x18bit chips in SE and CAB (Cheap-Ass Balanced) circuit. USB, BNC, Coax, Opt inputs. XLR and 2 RCA outputs. $600-$700.
Whaddya think?
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bosiemoncrieff
Headphoneus Supremus
My hesitation about building the Gadget into a larger digital pre is that it could push it later and later into 2019, perhaps 2020. I like the effects of the prototype, am eager to see them with a more powerful processor, and would love to have it in my hands by Labor Day. Can BWD be added to Yggy?
The emphasis on code is interesting. Am I correct in thinking that the Chord people put more emphasis on proprietary code than a particular DAC chip? I would love to see Mike's digital to analog conversion become more widely used, for instance in the KSE1500. If having a code base that can be integrated more easily than a big silver box, so much the better. He is rightly protective of his extraordinary intellectual property, and if he were to license it, should only do it with a fee proportional to the industry-leading quality of his work.
I do love the Solti Ring sonically, even as I recognize the superior interpretive prowess of Furtwängler and Böhm.
The emphasis on code is interesting. Am I correct in thinking that the Chord people put more emphasis on proprietary code than a particular DAC chip? I would love to see Mike's digital to analog conversion become more widely used, for instance in the KSE1500. If having a code base that can be integrated more easily than a big silver box, so much the better. He is rightly protective of his extraordinary intellectual property, and if he were to license it, should only do it with a fee proportional to the industry-leading quality of his work.
I do love the Solti Ring sonically, even as I recognize the superior interpretive prowess of Furtwängler and Böhm.
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winders
Headphoneus Supremus
Will the CD transport properly handle CDs with pre-emphasis and HDCDs?
Missing any mention of Loki Større glad to hear progress with Sol. Thanks for the update.
KoshNaranek
Headphoneus Supremus
I have been trying to condense my thoughts to give you feedback Mike, so here it is: I will take one of everthing digital that you make.
gldgate
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My main interest is the gadget. I've been reading about it for what seems like a couple years so whatever form gets it to market first has my vote.
DoubleIPA
100+ Head-Fier
I like the idea of a Gadget and larger Loki combined in the digital domain, if that's even possible; all your audio manipulation in 1 unit. Then again if you do a digital pre with the gadget and equalizer built in that'd be interesting.
I'm another person in the 2.1/2.1 camp. I know Jason stated directly to my post in his thread there's not a market but I see others posting same thing, so I respectfully disagree. I was recently reading a post on HTGuide where someone built Jim Holtz and Curt Cambell's Statment speakers and ran into bottoming out issue. Yes, they're full range, but with today's dubstep and other electronic music the speakers were heavily taxed and the 2 x 8" drives bottomed out. The solution was to go 2.1 or 2.2. If you're running a stereo setup with bookshelves, a sub is a welcome addition as well.
I'm another person in the 2.1/2.1 camp. I know Jason stated directly to my post in his thread there's not a market but I see others posting same thing, so I respectfully disagree. I was recently reading a post on HTGuide where someone built Jim Holtz and Curt Cambell's Statment speakers and ran into bottoming out issue. Yes, they're full range, but with today's dubstep and other electronic music the speakers were heavily taxed and the 2 x 8" drives bottomed out. The solution was to go 2.1 or 2.2. If you're running a stereo setup with bookshelves, a sub is a welcome addition as well.
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hearditontheX
500+ Head-Fier
I’m excited to hear about Sol progress and the possibility of a CD transport. I presume the transport will be a single disc unit? If you can make it a multi-disc changer, that would be even better.
How about a single unit that is a Loki Maxi + Gadget + Selectable out
bosiemoncrieff
Headphoneus Supremus
So far, Mike hasn't cracked digital EQ, so you'd need to build an Yggy in there too and tack on an analog Loki Maxi at the end.
Re the transport: I don't have the bandwidth for moving to CDs at this point in my life. I'm collecting them, though they remain at the Landhaus rather than the Stadthaus here in San Francisco—but they are for a later time in my life. My studio is coming along nicely, especially with the new Emotiva Airmotiv 4S hooked up balanced to MJ2 (my poor Panache might as well be put into storage), but simply cannot accommodate the ritual of CD, never mind of vinyl.
Which brings me to the transport: I have no expectation that Mike was ever considering a multi-CD slot loading contraption, but you should not want him to. Not only does it massively increase the opportunity of mechanical failure and (I'm sure) add all the noise back in that one hopes to negate when one leaves the convenience of a computer, it defeats a central purpose of non-computer audio. Yes, audio fidelity, but also ritual. To make the point I now reproduce the first two pages of my next novel:
Re the transport: I don't have the bandwidth for moving to CDs at this point in my life. I'm collecting them, though they remain at the Landhaus rather than the Stadthaus here in San Francisco—but they are for a later time in my life. My studio is coming along nicely, especially with the new Emotiva Airmotiv 4S hooked up balanced to MJ2 (my poor Panache might as well be put into storage), but simply cannot accommodate the ritual of CD, never mind of vinyl.
Which brings me to the transport: I have no expectation that Mike was ever considering a multi-CD slot loading contraption, but you should not want him to. Not only does it massively increase the opportunity of mechanical failure and (I'm sure) add all the noise back in that one hopes to negate when one leaves the convenience of a computer, it defeats a central purpose of non-computer audio. Yes, audio fidelity, but also ritual. To make the point I now reproduce the first two pages of my next novel:
Tonight, Leland was in his element. Law school could be tedious, tiring, and dull, and Leland persevered through those sort of days, but today was no exercise in mere subsistence or survival. Tonight, he gleamed.
Glenn Gould, his favorite, was about to play the 1955 performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations for us on the piano yet again. Leland had just bought a new toy, a tube amplifier, that glowed in the darkened room and fed his beloved speakers with smooth, mellow “tube magic.” I had heard the thirty-eight minute record a dozen times before—on that very couch, in that apartment, looking out over the Chicago skyline—but I loved the performance that night more than ever. As we talked, Leland would pause from time to time—for the fifth variation, the fughetta, the quodlibet—but it was a good distraction. He stood before me with an old fashioned in his left hand and the record in his right. I sipped my gin and tonic.
“You see, Michael, the amplifier has an entirely separate power supply,” he said, gesturing at the slightly smaller of the two pieces of equipment. “People underestimate the importance of separating amplification from power supply. Dirty power is adds noise, adds hiss. For vacuum tubes, it’s all the more important to separate the power. Tubes, for all their euphonic sweetness, will never have the accuracy, the dead-silent backdrop, of a modern solid state amp. But for a ‘50s performance like this, in monophonic sound, I come down on the side of euphony at the expense of ruthless accuracy.”
It is a usual thing to congratulate, silently, a person for having a smile. Compliments as regards a person’s being a smile, of possessing, in his case, an equanimous and charismatic warmth, are less common. The Italian side of his family saw to it that the sunshine of Sicily set off whatever colder Aryan blood came from his father—and did his complexion, with its agile hazel eyes, a solid.
In more extravagant moods, I had wished to have been able to pull off the longer, gold-colored, loosely curled hair which cascaded down Leland’s head and which was if not quite long enough to reach past his shoulders at any rate long enough, ever and always, to be long. Though I had often tried to discern some variation in the hue and texture of my own, its dark brown color and fine consistency, inherited from my mother’s ancestral Japan, like my matching brown eyes, in which I always hoped to see some green or yellow, evoked the undifferentiated impression which some have toward my birthplace in Wisconsin some hours north of Leland’s then apartment. Its shortness, perhaps, completed the picture.
He turned around, put down the drink, withdrew the record from its sleeve, and carefully placed it on the turntable. The amplifier had “warmed up” to his satisfaction for the previous half hour. He took the switch for the phonographic preamplifier in his index finger and gently flicked it on, and then the turntable. Carefully, he lifted the needle from its resting place and lowered it onto the edge of the record, gazing at it for a long moment to make sure that the process had succeeded to his satisfaction. He picked his drink back up, and, walking past the length of floor-to-ceiling windows to my left, which opened away from Lake Michigan and onto what of the skyline persisted north of the river, seemed to give the city a look of approval. His Siberian husky hewed close to his side and was in some search for his affection. He knelt down and let her lick his face, perhaps kissed her back. I had no particular desire for children—my job teaching high school was an efficient contraceptive—but if he behaved toward Adeline anything like he would toward his unborn children, they would be lucky for his reliably loving care.
Glenn Gould, his favorite, was about to play the 1955 performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations for us on the piano yet again. Leland had just bought a new toy, a tube amplifier, that glowed in the darkened room and fed his beloved speakers with smooth, mellow “tube magic.” I had heard the thirty-eight minute record a dozen times before—on that very couch, in that apartment, looking out over the Chicago skyline—but I loved the performance that night more than ever. As we talked, Leland would pause from time to time—for the fifth variation, the fughetta, the quodlibet—but it was a good distraction. He stood before me with an old fashioned in his left hand and the record in his right. I sipped my gin and tonic.
“You see, Michael, the amplifier has an entirely separate power supply,” he said, gesturing at the slightly smaller of the two pieces of equipment. “People underestimate the importance of separating amplification from power supply. Dirty power is adds noise, adds hiss. For vacuum tubes, it’s all the more important to separate the power. Tubes, for all their euphonic sweetness, will never have the accuracy, the dead-silent backdrop, of a modern solid state amp. But for a ‘50s performance like this, in monophonic sound, I come down on the side of euphony at the expense of ruthless accuracy.”
It is a usual thing to congratulate, silently, a person for having a smile. Compliments as regards a person’s being a smile, of possessing, in his case, an equanimous and charismatic warmth, are less common. The Italian side of his family saw to it that the sunshine of Sicily set off whatever colder Aryan blood came from his father—and did his complexion, with its agile hazel eyes, a solid.
In more extravagant moods, I had wished to have been able to pull off the longer, gold-colored, loosely curled hair which cascaded down Leland’s head and which was if not quite long enough to reach past his shoulders at any rate long enough, ever and always, to be long. Though I had often tried to discern some variation in the hue and texture of my own, its dark brown color and fine consistency, inherited from my mother’s ancestral Japan, like my matching brown eyes, in which I always hoped to see some green or yellow, evoked the undifferentiated impression which some have toward my birthplace in Wisconsin some hours north of Leland’s then apartment. Its shortness, perhaps, completed the picture.
He turned around, put down the drink, withdrew the record from its sleeve, and carefully placed it on the turntable. The amplifier had “warmed up” to his satisfaction for the previous half hour. He took the switch for the phonographic preamplifier in his index finger and gently flicked it on, and then the turntable. Carefully, he lifted the needle from its resting place and lowered it onto the edge of the record, gazing at it for a long moment to make sure that the process had succeeded to his satisfaction. He picked his drink back up, and, walking past the length of floor-to-ceiling windows to my left, which opened away from Lake Michigan and onto what of the skyline persisted north of the river, seemed to give the city a look of approval. His Siberian husky hewed close to his side and was in some search for his affection. He knelt down and let her lick his face, perhaps kissed her back. I had no particular desire for children—my job teaching high school was an efficient contraceptive—but if he behaved toward Adeline anything like he would toward his unborn children, they would be lucky for his reliably loving care.
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belgiangenius
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I'll order that digital preamp right now, Mike!
Brian D
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I'd be a first day order for the CD transport.
Ron Scarboro
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+1 for the Bifrost 2 w cab
Ron Scarboro
New Head-Fier
A transport that plays CD, SACD & DVD-A would be a killer. I hate having a Yamaha Blue Ray player in my system.
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