I have no explanation for the sound differences. I believe you though. We’ve seen unit variations from Schiit before, like in Jot1, but that’s usually been after several months of production, not all at the same time.
The Verite closed will make my ears bleed on a bright amp with bright songs. Having the Jot not do this to me was entirely surprising.
Yes, it sounds great with both Stellia and Verite with my VDH cables. Wonderful holographic imaging, great bass. It’s just that the Burson and Pendant sound better to me with both headphones.
Anyway, I hope @ProfFalkin’s is the “one true amp” since I’ve found a workaround for my listening. I did email Schiit just now to ask if I perhaps had a defective amp when it comes to the treble, which would be weird when the mids and lows sound so good.
Darnit real life. That’s what I found with respect to controlling/tweaking sonics.
I’m glad you have a functioning unit in to enjoy and evaluate. If there’s one order they should have gotten right…LOL.
This is kind of awkward to post, as I’d like to be sensitive to feelings, different perspectives, and all that. So bear with me.
I went digging around for impressions at HF and Friends, and I can’t really find another example of someone saying Jot2 is bright. I’m not questioning your impressions, mind you, just trying to figure out why our two amps seem to sound different. I am wondering if preferences, this severely faulty audiophile language, treble sensitivity, or some other combination of factors are causing the disconnect on sound impressions here? I’m usually very sensitive to treble in the presence region myself, so I am inclined to think we have that as a shared preference. It could be unit variation / fault as well, I don’t know. Bright seems to be a bit of an outlier here on terms used to describe the Jot 2.
I dunno.
I also experienced excessive treble energy with the Eikon and Jot 2 balanced out and high gain. I didn’t experience this with low gain or SE out. I also didn’t experience it with VC under any configuration.
I also find it a bit odd that most others have not been offended by balanced out and high gain in the treble region.
I also had a very, very early unit. I picked mine up from the Schiitr the day after it was released.
I appreciate you being sensitive to my feelings, but believe me when I say that I’ve wondered about all of that myself, in particular wondering if I’m having a weird reaction to “normal” treble and it’s all in my head.
The reason I don’t think it’s all in my head is that I have agreed with most other posters on the other amps I own, including you, and we have some overlapping equipment. My Pendant and Lyr 3 have perfect treble. The Asgard 3 was a tiny bit too rolled off for me, but fine for “fun listening”. The Soloist 3XP has a bit more treble than the Pendant but not harsh.
So I’m coming to the conclusion that this is down to unit variation/fault, where mine is the outlier.
I’m just past the 15 day window for Schiit, and I can’t prove there’s anything wrong with the amp, so I’m fine keeping it. If mine is an outlier, I’ll just refrain from making comments to people looking for advice.
Agreed, balanced out and high gain were unlistenable for me (before my VDH tweak) and low gain and SE out were better. I ordered mine as soon as the announcement went out, so perhaps ours were from the same batch.
Interesting discussion using high gain, balanced and “excessive” treble.
I have had a Jot2 here for several weeks before announce and have hundreds of hours using it with all kinds of stuff with the various combinations…and never have an issue with “excessive” treble.
What strikes me interesting is usually one uses the lowest gain that allows for an amp to drive a load adequately. If your not careful using too much gain you can cause unwanted distortion. Sometimes due to clipping. I have done this in testing on most all amps I have and built in clipping indicators and can make amps clips depending on the gain and load.
From what i see the Eikon has these specs:
IMO there is no reason to use HIGH gain with these very efficient headphones…your asking for issues.
Couple this with more power using balanced and high gain your upping the ante here.
I am NOT saying your amp might be defective or your crazy…but the point here is lately it seems amy folks just do things that just dont make any real…“fill in the blank”…
Heck the Eikons with a few milliwatts can get to 97db!!! Thats loud!! At least for me its loud.
Just my thoughts.
Alex
Here’s a possible reason.
I and others have observed that some amps, including Schiit’s, perform best at high gain where low gain can be congested, compressed, or lacking in dynamics. And then other amps perform best at low gain where high gain has excessive distortion/noise floor/ treble. Also headphone dependent.
I understand what your saying.
But too much gain is too much gain.
I aspire to not use more gain than I need to 
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I think it’s generally well known at this point that Schiit amps have a different tonal balances on different gain settings. I’ve always selected the gain setting that sounded more correct, or more synergistic with my chain.
And I don’t think “too much” gain is going to be an issue at normal listening levels on the Jot. (Or even very loud levels.) If the gain was high enough to bring distortion to audible levels and to clip at safe volumes, then that would be one thing, but that’s not going on here at all. In fact, if that was happening, I think it would be a complete failure by design on the part of the manufacturer. We would also clearly see that on the measurement plots, and we don’t.
At 12dBV (not 0dBV!) on balanced/high gain 300ohm, we see distortion and harmonics just bit above or below -120dBV.
(Sorry for the crappy phone screen cap.)
This is an unlistenable volume level, obviously.
My understanding is that clipping occurs when an amp is asked to produce more power than it is capable of.
If an amp can produce 1 watt of output without clipping then it doesn’t matter if it is set to low gain with the volume control higher or set to high gain with the volume control lower.
If the amp can produce 1 watt then there won’t be clipping.
In the current case, if people are listening at similar levels for low and high gain there wouldn’t be a difference in terms of clipping.
I’ll be happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.
I can’t speak to changes in sound profile not related to clipping.
As far as I know, that’s all correct.
Although I’m not entirely certain about this, as far as I understand clipping can occur within an amp when:
And afaik, these thresholds are independent from which gain setting is used, like you also mention.
This has been an interesting thread to follow… 
It’s like Cobra Kai, Season 3. Must watch by the way 
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The amplitude of the signal that any amplifier can pass without distortion is limited by the available power supply voltage. Op amps are most commonly operated with power supply voltages in the range of about + / - 10 to 15 volts. This will allow the device to accurately handle signals of about 20 - 30 volts from negative peak to positive peak.
If you apply a signal to the input of an amplifier and the gain of the amplifier circuit causes the output signal to exceed the available power supply voltage, the output signal will remain latched and steady at the maximum available power supply voltage until the output signal drops back into the amplifier’s normal operating range. This is what we call clipping distortion.
Input Impedance: 50K ohms
Gain (balanced input): 2 (0dB) or 8 (18dB)
Gain (SE input): 1 (0dB) or 4 (12dB)
Given the gain and power specs, I simply don’t see how any signal from any dac could cause this to happen with even a load on the circuit presented by the lowest impedance / highest sensitivity headphones at any sane (or even test) volume levels. Connect 4 ohm speakers to it, then sure, maybe then.
That’s what I said.
The issue is whether the bright treble is caused by clipping due to user error as you claim.
I submit that neither clipping nor user error is the cause of the reported treble issues.
LOL, if we’re talking about me, I concur. 
My amp was bright when I plugged it in. I’ve tried different cables and different combinations of SE, XLR, high gain, low gain just to see if I could get rid of the brightness. I think my experimentation may have caused some confusion regarding what I was trying to do, but I was just trying to see if I could tame the highs.
The only thing that worked was a set of cables that were unusable on my other amps because they cut the treble way too much, but they appeared to work some magic on the Jot.
No-one else appears to have that brightness issue, so I’ve emailed Schiit to ask for a replacement, only because I’d like to hear the same amp that everyone else is raving about. Schiit may say no, and to be honest, I’m not going to have a big fight with them, because it was only $399 and my EQ’d amp sounds fine driving my monitors, and I’m happy to use my other (better) amps for headphones. I told Schiit that I will continue to buy their products irrespective of their response.
I’d imagine everyone is sick of my story by now, so I’ll try my best to refrain from talking about the Jot, unless Schiit agrees to replace it, in which case I’ll let you all know how it sounds.
