Haven’t been writing much – give my lack of hand-eye skills it has been difficult for me to type. I just type a lot of Schiit I have to correct. It just goes slow. A few subjects are discussed below.
1. Here is something I wrote a few months ago:
One of the cheap DACs (I recently built) sounded waaaaaaaaaaaaay too *** good. This what I should know after forty some years of building DACs. I have to find out why this cheap DAC if built sounds so good. I do not believe in the engineering paranormal so perhaps I am missing out on some engineering spec. We shall see. More on this as it is revealed.
Further discussion: At any one moment, I have a half dozen or so prototype or experimental converters, or major parts of them laying around. For every dozen I build, there will be a few which apparently sound like ass and a few that appear to be really good. This is how I do things R&D. I build lotsa Schiit. This makes it so when I have a situation where I am really sick like I was six months ago, I can come up with a good sounding Bifrost2.
When it is time for a new product (or upgrade) it is not that I talk to God and let him tell me how to build it now. Instead I assemble it from bits and pieces of my protos which are constantly built. The products do not spontaneously generate. This is exactly what I did with Bifrost2. This is precisely because I build a lot of Schiit and listen to it. It is what I am doing right now. Even though I woke up still not dead again today (sorry Willie), I am listening to Faure’s Requiem, even though I am not a fan of French music.
So, at any moment, there are great, fubar, and insipid protos on my desktop. Will they evolve into Schiit products? Typically it has been portions at most. A large percentage of this stuff goes nowhere. I build all of this stuff to put it in the bank for future use (maybe). This is how I have always done it. Do you, the reader like it when I share what I do? My only reservations are when some speculate that there is a new DAC which Baldr loves, so there is no point getting anything for now, etc. The story on the DAC above is that I am still evaluating it. Nothing paranormal. Single ended, balanced, etc. Just as I am the various other toys I built.
2. Sigma Delta.
Well, it’s not that I hate ‘em. Not even that I feel better when they are not around. It is just that they have spawned a DAC product inflation that has confused users as well as some less informed manufacturers. The fact that the dac parts are distributed with recipes make it so anybody who can read can design a ds DAC, which is why there are so many of them. For example, it may occur to lamer company principals that they may need a DAC, even though it has not occurred to them why they should make the 3,563rd such Delta Sigma DAC on the market. The Tech geek at the company suggests they use accujack capacitors. The marketeer suggests they call it “power gumbo topology”. Thus is born yet another pointless ds DAC.
Now, I’m not sayin’ I am experienced, just old enough to have designed a schiitload of ds DACs since they first came out, primarily as a home theater component, in the very early 90s as I recall. They do not do much for me, much less float my boat. They are usually not offensive, just lacking musical emotion – boring, yet inoffensive. They do have a place!
Where is that place, you say? Well, ever since I made the original Modi DAC for a hundred bucks, I have aspired to make a cheap multibit DAC. Well, that is done, I have made at least three dirrerent cheap multibit design DACs. It is an exaggeration to say they sound like ass; they are just a bit on the bright side. It is my opinion that the ds DACs I have built are less bright than boring. So, what I am saying is that I have yet to make a multibit DAC targeted under a couple of hundred bucks or so that universally sonically beats a DS DAC I can build at the same cheapo price. End of story – for cheapo, ds rules. Above $250, multibit trounces any ds design I have ever heard and I have heard a lot of them.
3. Gadget
Hasn’t been much said about the gadget lately, There are a few of reasons it has not yet been released. The best one is that it is not finished yet. So what is not finished? After all, we demoed one a couple of years ago, no? Indeed, we did but the algorithm was written into an Analog Devices DSP processor, a processor unsuited to allow the algorithm to run properly. It was gimped to fit into what we had at the moment. We got lucky because it demoed well. What we really need to do this right is a much faster, non DSP hardware base. The DSP platforms we build now are suitable for digital filter implementation. The gadget’s as well as a couple of other feature type goodies we have built need to run on a much, much faster platforms which are NOT optimized for digital filters.. Much faster than any other processor which will run openBSD.
We have a requirement for a not quite that fast processor for our upcoming transport. The fact that the processor will have some bonus apps and features will require that speed. At that time we will be much closer to the processor requirements for the gadget/signal processor functions.
The summary is that the gadget is NOT killed, only slumbering while we get there hardware-wise.
4. Me and my health.
I am very much OK from the neck on up, but my body doesn’t quite agree with this Lambert/Eatonish Myasthenic crap. My professor/doctor tells me statistically I am under 1 per million.
Takes me quite a while to type (so far 2 hours on this writing for all the mistakes I make and correct.) The good news is that doing a schematic is much more like normal because it is all mouse based.
Still can barely walk, and I talk like a drunk daily until my medicine kicks in. I have no sense of balance standing, and perfect balance sitting.
Despite it all, I am still building Schiit and enjoying very much doing exactly that. Thank yo all for your continued support!
