Schiit Audio - Official Thread

As one who is an engineer, does a lot of testing at work, and does a lot of hobbyist testing at home, I like measurements, but I realize that its only a small apart of the whole story. I feel like people are so drawn to the numbers, they forget to actually listen and enjoy.

A couple years ago now, there were only a handful of us taking measurements and posting DIY stuff online. Now it seems like everyone is doing it with their own DIY tools which is wonderful and great. But now we have more strict objectivist who only look at FR curves and if it’s not HARMAN TARGET than its worthless. I find a lot of naive-ness in these type of commenters – the first one being taking a DIY tool and trying to strictly compare it to a compensated curve used on another too with factual argument, and then thinking that if its exactly like Harman Target, then it must be better than Z which is not quite Harman but slightly off – while not paying attention to other things like distortion, decay, dynamics, etc that affect how you hear things (like speed of attack reducing that mid-bass bump in the Harman Curve so that it doesnt bloat out everything).

Anyway, on Schiit Audio - I find ASR is useful for what it is trying to, but I also find that it has a cult-ish following. I mean, the first comment on the Joutenheim review was something about a bland, boring metal look – I happen to really like that unique, yet modern simple look over some generic acrylic diy box look that gets rave reviews.

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My high school friend’s dad had a red one. I never did get to drive it, nor his GT350 fastback for some reason…

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You weren’t able to pull a Ferris Bueller? :wink:

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That’s very well said. I couldn’t agree more.
Forgot to include the quote in both posts. Just delete if they make no sense out of context :woozy_face:

(The ASR/everyone needs to remain respectful post is my reference)

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They should give you stock in the company! :wink:

Re the Shiit stack

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Just pulled the trigger on the Loki EQ/tone control. I can see two places I might want to use it. On anything MQA where my tastes or equipment differs from the engineer’s, and in my primary system to add tone controls. It appears that my integrated amp will handle this thusly:

When the Loop out feature is used, Aux out becomes the loop out which will feed the connected components input, and Input 5 will become the loop in which will come from the output of the connected component. Please note: the loop in connectors are directly connected to the internal amplifiers as if the unit was a standalone amp with 27db of gain. The loop out is controlled by the volume control, but the loop in is not. Make sure you have all connections made properly to ensure no damage is made to your equipment.

I think that’s pretty much a preamp out / preamp in arrangemen, designed for some sort of signal processing, like maybe a tone control.

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That’s what it sounds like to me.

This has been on my ‘almost buy’ list for a while. I really wish I could test one in person with my own equipment rather than order it online. I’m not sure how much I’d actually use it, as I have a degree of tone control through headphones and amps.

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I have a Loki and quite like it for certain things. I find it useful for low volume listening, where you might want the equivalent of a loudness button found on vintage Japanese amps, in effect boosting the bass and treble regions in order to compensate for their perceived loss, as per the Fletcher-Munson curves. For gaming or watching movies, a more V or U shaped FR can also be fun or useful. The bypass is transparent, so if you don’t want to add EQ there is no change to the sound nor is there any noise whatsoever. To my ears the quality of the tone controls is preferable to what I hear using the digital EQ of my music server, JRiver, although not as precise or versatile. So, I am not sure how useful it would be to adjust that notorious 6KHz peak the HD 800 are known for or the upper mid dip the Focal Elear are known for. It does work well however in adding low and sub bass to the Focal Clear, much better in my view than the bass boost of the iFi products.

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For those keeping track …

My next formal “review/comparison” will be the all-up Schiit multi-bit DAC comparison/review. Depending on your personal context, this is somewhere between two years and 8 months later than I originally suggested I’d do it.

I mention this only due to the large number of “You said you’d post it last week!” emails in my inbox (just the most recent of many in the last couple of years).

I do, to be honest, feel bad that it has taken me so long to get too. Not because of the demanding emails (most of which are from people that, as far as I can tell, have never posted any impressions/reviews of anything), but because I had the gear (I didn’t already own) on loan late October/early November last year and I am only just getting to writing my thoughts up …

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This sounds cool. Very cool. Also a big bargain (these two products are already a bargain…).

Below is a quote from Jason’s post in Head-Fi

Yes. That’s right. Build your own, save some money, and get a CanJam-only sticker showing the world you built it.

Sounds scary? It’s not. We’ll have people there to help you with any part of the process, from assembly to Avermetrics analyzer testing. There’s no soldering or any dangerous voltages. It’s literally only a matter of minutes to get to a finished, working product (or two, you can build one or both if you’d like.)

Canjam visitors should not miss this! :slight_smile:

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Posting here because there was no dedicated Vidar thread…

Since I got my vidar yesterday, I’ve been listening for nearly 20 hours. With both Raal SR1a headphones and Tekton Lore speakers. Also switched between vidar and JLH many times to compare side by side.

While I generally like vidar, it showed some relative strengths as well as limitations. SR1a revealed issues more evidently, as expected.

One thing that I had to scratch my head was I couldn’t hear any hint of gm doubling (aka transconductance doubling). When Lyr 3 compared with other class-AB amplifiers, it was heard as discontinuous or rough transition over volume gradation. I didn’t expect I could hear it to annoying extent… but no, never, nothing.

I was comparing it with class-A JLH. With such a revealing transducer, that’s weird. Or, could be red-flag. I started to worry if my SR1a was broken. $3.5k headphone broken at day 3? That must be a disaster. :fearful:

Fortunately, it turned out that vidar had ridiculously high class-A bias. Jason at Schiit audio informally commented that Vidar had 1/10 bias of Aegir, which was biased at 10W. So, Vidar is supposedly biased at 1W (or 2.83V and 0.35A at 8 ohm equivalently).

I am running the vidar with 2.5V dac out at 0 dbfs and -25 db pre gain for SR1a (and more attenuation applied to 8 ohm lore speaker), which results in 1.77V and 0.29A at 6 ohm – well below than the crossover. In other words, I am virtually operating Vidar as class-A for my uses.

No wonder. I assumed vidar also had 1.2-1.4V of voltage biasing (like most class-AB amplifiers), which was not true.

Now I am way less motivated to replace vidar with Aegir. Lowered power must never be a problem for me. But running hotter could be potentially annoying.

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I see you replying right now @torq you must have seen the new Schiity DAC an headphone amp too :wink:

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Two interesting new releases from Schiit were just announced:

Bifrost “2”:

The most intriguing to me is an all-new, multi-bit only, balanced-output version of Bifrost, that also includes remote control and Mike’s new USB interface implementation (which is even better than the USB Gen 5 module).

I think this fills what’s been a gap in Schiit’s line-up since the launch of the Jotunheim. Namely a balanced-output DAC in the same form factor. And this time it is fully field-upgradeable (no need to send it back).

And interestingly it is now using a version of the 18-bit converters that feature in Gungnir MB. The most recent running changes to the original Bifrost multi-bit had already pushed it much closer to the original Gungnir MB in terms of performance, so this should take it even closer (it looks like it might even measure better too).

Very intrigued, and may have to order one both to put it in context with the other Schiit multi-bit DACs (which I have so far failed to complete my all-up review of - and for which might be a bit late now). And, in particular, if the “Weldenheim” (a Jotunheim sized “Direct Drive” amp for the SR1a) project comes off, and has balanced inputs, I’ll be pairing this with one of those to run a set of SR1a in the office.

And original Bifrost owners (of any flavor/era) can get a $100 discount on a Bifrost 2 for the next few months (through March 2020).

Asgard 3:

The one amp in Schiit’s line-up I’d never really spent any time with was Asgard. And now it’s been replaced with an all new model, at a lower price, with more power, albeit no longer a pure class-A design.

Nice to see an even more cost effective option for this form-factor.

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Of course, my timing here is spectacularly bad.

I was trying to get my all-up Schiit multi-bit DAC comparison posted before I headed off on vacation. I meant to have that done last year, but it’s such a big piece (incorporating “original” and “current” comparisons, etc.) that it’s taken far longer than I would have guessed.

This new Bifrost sort of buggers up that comparison …

I suppose I could add it to the mix, and make it a 5-way comparison … but at this point I think it’d be better to do the thing as a series of forum posts, and handle the individual DACs separately.

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I vote that you post what you have and add the new bitfrost at a later date. Something new is always going to come out… If you always wait to add the newset thing, then it will never get out

I guess we’ll see if I can adjust/finish editing the original piece before I leave, then I’ll do that … if not, I’ll probably do what I described above.

Bifrost 2 looks like a big steep from the previous Bifrost with not a huge increase in price!!

I tried the Lyr3 HA with the MB module last year. Loved the amp, but the module didn’t do it justice. Sent it back. Ended up with a HA only Mjolnir2.

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B2 is a game changer for DACs under $1000. Not only modular but Unison USB finally in production! I’ll probably buy one because I have been longing to check out the new USB and the card for my Yggdrasil won’t be available until January. Also Eitr and Wyrd are being discontinued so if you need one buy before current stock runs out.

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