On Jason’s thread, I have been reading a steadily growing volume of often speculative posts re our upcoming transport. Please allow me to clear the air regarding the true current state of said product’s goals and development. As a preliminary, I have nothing bad to say with respect to any other transport makers. For someone such as Cambridge to say in business four or so times longer than we have says nothing quite as much as they certainly must be doing a lot of things right. More power to them.
The proposed Schiit transport will be the fourth or fifth transport I have been involved with over the last thirty or so years. It will be absolutely compatible with all future Schiit digital products. Of all things digital, I am certain about the following sentence. Paramount to optimum performance/listening are antiseptically clean clocks. We have many source devices such as ethernet to USB devices, transports, and sundry sother components. Well and good. What few or none consider is the fact that by far the most important location for clean clocks and data is right at the DAC chip itself – the ass end of the converter. (Destination clocks) The farther the clean clock goes back in the reproduction toward the source, the less it matters. Clean clocks still matter at the source, but all to frequently rapidly approach triviality. Destination clocks rule.
So at some point in our Schiit, newer products and upgrades for our higher end products will feature the best, rock solid clocks at our DACs where they kick the most ass. What does this have to do with a transport? Well, we can use an enhanced BWD connection controlling jitter all the way back to the transport even through an async USB connection as well as BWD.
Huh, USB connection??!!?? Yup, our transport will have a USB out. Such apostasy! Why? Well, I am finally good with USB now being as good as S/PDIF and AES on our new USB receiver. Better, even. Yup, really. This begs a USB out.
So what transport do we use? On our proto, we have a genero interface to try virtually any transport. Well, here is what we found out on differences between transport mechanisms: Using a clock close to the DAC, running it all the way back to a moderately de-jittered and cleaned up transport clocks and data, very little difference exists. To repeat: trivial, mouse nuts, vanishingly little differences. This makes transport mechanism selection point towards product life and reliability, as it should.
With traditional clocking from the source, the clock cleaning becomes much more important. The differences between different transport mechanisms significantly widen.
So, if destination clocks are so good, how come no one uses them?? Well, it requires a perfectly stable async BWD/USB connection back to the source. The key to public acceptance is a compatible system which will mate with ROW source clocked components (ROW – rest of the world.) There is also a phuc ton of engineering to do – A self engineered USB digital audio host and input, and/or a BWD with clock control line interface.
So the transport will include a USB host (audio output), and a BWD with destination clock features, in addition to AES and S/PDIF ROW features. We do have a proto running, that still has a few bugs to fix, mostly in our USB interface. What we have our attention on now is a stubborn bit selection 16/24/32. What a waste of time 32 audio bit is, kinda like a hub cap on a pizza, but people expect it, so we waste our time.
We then pick a transport mech and let Ivana finish with the control software. Sounds easy, huh? After we get our USB interface debugged and our Host (transport out running) we will be almost ready to start the rest of the transport. All efforts are on finishing the last of the USB. Then we will wait until Microsoft gets to the no new development point on W7 and we will be ready to release our new USB. Why? Because we do not have time to write a driver for an OS which will soon be on its way out (probably just when we finish). Another thing we have to get running is the USB with Linux so it will work with Linux powered Ethernet to USB devices on the market for the streamers. The point, there is still a lot to do.
On sounds like ass – it means I cannot get emotionally involved with the music. It seems there was some discussion on Jase’s thread about my true meaning of “sounds like ass”. If I don’t get PTSD listening to Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride or contemplate promised rewards listening to the end of Mahler’s Eighth, or feel like setting a fire at the end of Die Walkure, it sounds like ass.
On one reason why this Schiit takes so long, AKA brilliance: Jason and I were having a discussion of all good and bad re upgrades in the lab a few months or so ago. The two most popular were clients love them in favor, and clients whine and complain about our speed of delivery against. As this discussion reached an impasse, Alex walked by and tossed over his shoulder a comment: Why don’t you make all of the upgrades user interchangeable? Jason and I quietly started at each other like morons for a very pregnant long pause. At pause’s end he was long gone.
This is the real current state of the transport.
More soon on German Music.
