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Shitt DAC Lovers/Haters?Can both be right?

solderdude

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I make an assumption, and I may be wrong, but that assumption is that people interested in audio are interested in finding what sounds good to them. If that happiness is in a 128k stream with garbage headphones, they have hit audio truth, happiness in what they are listening to. That is completely different than people who (it seems all to often) broadcast whatever they have is the "best". There is no best, only what a person likes best.

Most people make a decision to buy something based on reviews, recommendations on favorite websites, looks, functionality and/or price. Usually after looking around on the web.
Generally they are happy with what they bought.
People interested in audio are always looking for the next best thing reviewed by their favorite reviewers.
That happens here and elsewhere... that's how this hobby works.

Rarely they audition stuff for themselves and take months to make a decision and keep using this till the cows come home.
More often than not a decision to buy something is done solely on subjective findings or recommendations.
There is always something audio folks want upgraded and the market is eager to sell you their stuff.
Whatever they bought is best to them but may not be best for someone else and may very well not have best performance in an absolute sense.

There is something as best technical performance to date. Sadly it does not take long for the next 'best' device comes along.
The same is true for subjective personal 'best'. Next month someone claims this or that 'trounces' or 'destroys' their favorite whatever... and that will start nagging at them too.

One may like Schiit or not (I am agnostic to that) but actual performance and errors can be found. Audible or not. In all brands.
If you love your gear that's fine but objectively not all Schiit is 'da s#it' just as it is with most other brands as well.

If you enjoy music with your favorite gear that's all that matters in the end.
There are lots of ways to get there.
 
OP
jonmichael

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You might want to hold off on the Gungnir until the dust settles on the new Bifrost 2, which is nearly 1/2 the price and now has balanced outputs and the new Unisom USB. It may end up that the Gungnir is no better (and I say this owning one) and replaced with a new model. As of now, prices of used Gungnirs are dropping as people are seeing the Bifrost 2 as pretty much equivalent.

I love my Schiit, and think they are a fair value for what they provide. I am probably most happy with the Original Saga preamp bought on closeout for $199 when the Saga S and + were released.

I am not in any hurry; thanks for the heads up on the Bifrost 2. I look forward to the testing.
 

CDMC

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Most people make a decision to buy something based on reviews, recommendations on favorite websites, looks, functionality and/or price. Usually after looking around on the web.
Generally they are happy with what they bought.
People interested in audio are always looking for the next best thing reviewed by their favorite reviewers.
That happens here and elsewhere... that's how this hobby works.

Rarely they audition stuff for themselves and take months to make a decision and keep using this till the cows come home.
More often than not a decision to buy something is done solely on subjective findings or recommendations.
There is always something audio folks want upgraded and the market is eager to sell you their stuff.
Whatever they bought is best to them but may not be best for someone else and may very well not have best performance in an absolute sense.

There is something as best technical performance to date. Sadly it does not take long for the next 'best' device comes along.
The same is true for subjective personal 'best'. Next month someone claims this or that 'trounces' or 'destroys' their favorite whatever... and that will start nagging at them too.

One may like Schiit or not (I am agnostic to that) but actual performance and errors can be found. Audible or not. In all brands.
If you love your gear that's fine but objectively not all Schiit is 'da s#it' just as it is with most other brands as well.

If you enjoy music with your favorite gear that's all that matters in the end.
There are lots of ways to get there.

You hit on a lot of important points:

1) There is a group of audiophiles (as with every hobby) that are always looking for the latest and greatest. They will never be happy. I love them, they let me acquire better components than if I had to buy new.

2) The latest and greatest if often touted as a "major breakthrough" when in fact it is like all the prior latest and greatest, an incremental change.

3) Most people end up happy, as for the most part, most equipment is pretty decent nowdays. Even at the $200 a pair speaker level, the products from the major manufactures are mostly good, with the big differences being in voicing preferences.

4) Combined with the mentality of "mine is the best" is the seeming inability of many to consider that what works well for them may not work well for others. Taking speakers again (as they represent the largest differences in sound, outside of the room itself), people consistently recommend what they have, regardless of the question posed. Personally, I love Magnepans and have multiple pairs over more than two decades. Magnepans are not the right speakers for a lot of people, they are power hungry, take up space, and dynamically constricted, but man do they do other things well, and I am willing to live with the compromises. Likewise, horns have great dynamics, but have other compromises that make them unlivable for some. Yet, in virtually every forum when a person asks about speaker recommendations, without care of the person's needs, Maggies and Horns will be recommended. That is a real problem.

One of the things I like about Schiit is they are pretty honest about what they do. They readily admit, their cheapest DAC measures the best. Perhaps most importantly to me, they have helped to bring back some sanity to this hobby, where somehow five and six figure components have become the norm. I am still shocked when someone asks "what is the best $25,000 speaker", "what DAC should I get for $10,000", or better yet, "what $1,000 power cord sounds best".

For the record, I have heard a massive difference with speaker cables. Something sounded wrong with my right speaker and after swapping stuff around to isolate the problem, I found one of the speaker cables had corroded and had about 40ohms of impedance which I checked with the multimeter. Changing that made a big difference in sound. A bit disappointing as these were expensive to me speaker cables from a large manufacture (about $300 new) and they shouldn't have corroded.
 
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amirm

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One of the things I like about Schiit is they are pretty honest about what they do.
You can't be serious. They could have avoided 99% of the fanfare created by my reviews by being honest about what they do. They have done everything under the sun to avoid the plain truth of what we have discovered here from grounding issues to actual performance of their products. I had to test no less than three versions of the Schiit Yggdrasil in order to counter their constant denials of the design issues in them. When the owner of the last one sent in his to be verified, they accidentally upgraded its firmware and then measured it! And performed who knows what other upgrades to them.

They proceeded to ban me from all of their threads on Head-fi just as well.

The image they want to portray is what you say. Problem is, no one had tried to test that theory until I came about. The result was some of the most unprofessional conduct I have seen in the industry.

To this day, they have refused to contact me to help resolve conflicts between my findings and that of theirs. An honest company would have immediately contacted me, sent me other samples for testing, verify performance of what I have tested without modification, etc.

There is always an opportunity to make money from a business. What you can't do is regain a good reputation.

But yes, they have done a masterful job of appearing honest with all the backstories, folksy company name, participation in forums (while enjoying full protection of the forum owner by sponsorship), etc. So I am not surprised of your reaction to it but the reality is just not there when it comes to product performance.

Even today, you can't find measurements for all of their products even though they finally have proper measurement gear.
 

ajawamnet

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I say we get a bunch of old RCA AM transmitter tubes, stick 'em under backlit dome and get the Ancient Aliens guy with the wild hair to proclaim that not only will our DAC/AMP contact Elvis and Janis when we listen to their recordings, but it'll also connect to galaxy's far far away.

And as to grounding, hell with that... 8kV of plate voltage will keep stray hands away... We'll call it Buutt... 'cause if you touch it you get knocked on yer...
 

Interference

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Given that a lot of stuff nowadays is good enough to subjectively sound great, I believe Schiit's success is mostly due to a good marketing strategy. They don't seem to have a good record when it comes to QA/QC.

Overall, I don't think they deserve the hype.
 

GrimSurfer

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... They proceeded to ban me from all of their threads on Head-fi just as well.

Even today, you can't find measurements for all of their products even though they finally have proper measurement gear.

Oh, the irony.

This is my first post in over a month... since being threatened for banishment by the Sheriff of Nottingham for questioning the motives of somebody touting a product outside the Desperate Dealers Forum. Those motives were, btw, abundantly clear for those bothering to look: guy working for a software company, touting a hw/sw product, breathless "copy" urging people to just buy it, posted at the end of the Australian tax year (when companies have certain advantages in that tax system).

I guess the lesson for you (and me) is that principle counts for very little on forums, @amirm. You can choose and enforce the rules of you own domain but you can't count on the rules of propriety or science elsewhere.

Thats the problem with today's society and, in particular, social media: It rewards people who live by the motto "hooray for everything". It punishes those who question things from topologies to ethics.

So I suppose the question here is whether you'll continue to strive to achieve something different or just become another point on the social media compass.

FWIW, I hope you continue on your current path and encourage a place where positions can be challenged, even if that abraids some of thin skin of people so obviously "in the game".
 
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ajawamnet

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Oh, the irony.

This is my first post in over a month... since being threatened for banishment by the Sheriff of Nottingham for questioning the motives of somebody touting a product outside the Desperate Dealers Forum. Those motives were, btw, abundantly clear for those bothering to look: guy working for a software company, touting a hw/sw product, breathless "copy" urging people to just buy it, posted at the end of the Australian tax year (when companies have certain advantages in that tax system).

I guess the lesson for you (and me) is that principle counts for very little on forums, @amirm. You can choose and enforce the rules of you own domain but you can't count on the rules of propriety or science elsewhere.

Thats the problem with today's society and, in particular, social media: It rewards people who live by the motto "hooray for everything". It punishes those who question things from topologies to ethics.

So I suppose the question here is whether you'll continue to strive to achieve something different or just become another point on the social media compass.

FWIW, I hope you continue on your current path and encourage a place where positions can be challenged, even if that abraids some of thin skin of people so obviously "in the game".

I typically hate forums... a rant I did years ago about how f'd it can be:
http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/Get_your_pinky_warmers.html
 

ajawamnet

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BTW - the link on my pinky warmer page - from the wayback machine:
Audiophile



Warning!:
Audiophiles are everywhere. There may be one in your house RIGHT
NOW!



An audiophile butt plug


$7250 Speaker cable. Only true audiophiles can tell the difference between these and $10 cables from Radio Shack.


Cho Seung-Hui before his headphones were stolen.
An audiophile is a person who is into otic sex, that is sex with ears. It comes from the Greek audios, sound, and philos, fucking. Audiophiles also will have sex with CDs and tie themselves up with speaker cable. Especially pretentious audiophiles will favor old vinyl records, saying they feel "warmer". When they can't get something on vinyl, they will attempt to run everything else through an expensive tube processor to make it sound "warmer".
An audiophile can be spotted by their habit of complaining about MP3s and using only FLAC, because the high frequency sounds that even your dog can't hear get stripped out in compression.
Audiophiles will often spend at least 100 dollars on gold speaker cable, because they think that the raw pretentiousness will make them have an audiorgasm. Sadly for them, there is no known mechanism that can make MCR sound any good. Audiophiles are all deaf, however, and as a result they can't actually tell the difference between those $5 earphones you bought at Go-Lo and $250 Sennheiser HD555s.
True audiophiles will spend $50,000 on designer hand-made speakers, $7,000 speaker cable, $10,000 in power filtering equipment and a $5,000 vinyl player, and still won't be able to tell the difference between it and a $500 system without lying through their teeth.
Contents
[hide]
How to spot an Audiophile
  • If outdoors (rare) will be wearing three sets of noise - canceling headphones, because one just doesn't cut it.
  • Will have no money for little things like gas, food or clothes.
  • Will have a 160GB iPod with only three songs on it, due to their compulsion to have everything completely uncompressed.
  • Will probably be a Mac user.
  • Will spend $120 on a Telefunken-branded triode when Sovtek sells the same damn tube for eight dollars, and will claim to be able to tell the difference.
  • Will have the vast majority of their house (mortgaged) full of their sound system, which will sound shit because audiophiles all think that broken "classic" parts pwn modern things like 7:1 surround sound.
  • Bought the 2009 Beatles Mono Box set, which somehow costs more than the stereo set.
See also: SHAKTI Stone
Trolling Audiophiles IRL


  • Alternatively, you can tell them that the high frequencies that they can't actually hear could possibly cancel some of the frequencies that they can hear. This will make them question everything they have ever known.
Audiophiles pwned for good


My brother, an audio engineering whiz kid has proven to me what is real and what is not. We gathered up 5 of our audio buddies. We took my "old" Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables (decent cables according to the audio press). They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent.


—Dr. Bob Dean
Sauce


If you're in the business of selling high end audio then it becomes very important to discover to what extent the golden ears are or are not full of it. Bob Carver did a little hands on research at a mid '70s trade show to shed some light on these suspicions. He displayed an impressive system openly. I don't recall the model number but it had the separate tube amps for the right and left channel. It had the oxygen free gold wire to interconnect the type of components that ultra audiophiles have wet dreams about: hand crafted capacitors and resistors and transistors matched to six 9s precision in gain and so on and so forth. In any case the system displayed was in the $30k range at the time. The speakers were no less expensive and no doubt exquisitely hand matched to the amps. But here is where the joke comes in. The speakers were connected to a $200 dollar range bookshelf stereo hidden behind a curtain. Carver injected pink noise into the ultra stereo and displayed the result on a spectrum analyzer. He then set the bookshelf system to a moderate volume and EQed it with the same pink noise as input until it matched the spectrum of the ultra stereo. As long as the controls on the bookshelf were not tampered with, it's sound was good approximation of the ultra stereo at the same moderate volume. He told the audience that he had a top secret experimental system behind the curtain and wanted to field test it to ensure he was on the right track. With some audiophile grade vinyl classical as the input he switched between the ultra stereo (which they COULD see and were familiar with) and the "top secret" bookshelf system behind the curtain. Lo and behold! The bookshelf system had far better "aural spaciality.........." I've known salesmen who have done this same thing several times with the same result. I suppose this goes a long way toward explaining the audiophile aversion to double blinded A/B listening tests. Those A/B switches must introduce some truly horrible "multiphasic inhibited frequency shifts" into the signal.


—dmaxwell
Sauce
External Links
 

dmac6419

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I don't swear my dac sounds 'great' I think it does it's job as a digital to analog converter. I don't think it changes anything in the frequency response of my music. Thus, I do not hear extra bass or anything that such other owners claim to hear. I don't think the midrange sounds any different on another dac, like a topping d50. I do not think the soundstage is somehow wider. Nor do I think the mids sparkle, the treble sizzles, the bass slams better on my dac compared to another dac. What you've got here is an owner who fell for the Schiit marketing. I'm a young individual who Schiit clearly targets. I'm literally right in their demographic.

However I don't have anything bad to say about how it sounds. It sounds great. But so does any other dac with at least 16 bits of resolution. I only listen to redbook audio quality, 16/44. So not like I need something to have higher resolution or potential to resolve (state of the art 21bit performance)

I can sympathize with the person who is looking to buy a new dac and might be led astray from the marketing. But I also think that you should do your own research. Amir has made the process much easier. At the time I bought my dac, I did not know this site even existed. Anywho. I've said this in other threads but the amount of emotional fueld responses I see from the most active members on this forum confuses me. Dacs are such a minuscule part of the chain. So yes it's nuts to spend 5 figures on a dac. It's really just up to the user to make his own decision what he values. Does he value state of the art performance? Does he value luxury item aesthetics? Then sell you car and mortgage your house and buy a current spec Berkely dac. Or a MSB.

Back on planet Earth, I think a topping d50 will suffice for all of us :) thats the honest truth.
I concur
 

Dialectic

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This is my first post in over a month... since being threatened for banishment by the Sheriff of Nottingham for questioning the motives of somebody touting a product outside the Desperate Dealers Forum. Those motives were, btw, abundantly clear for those bothering to look: guy working for a software company, touting a hw/sw product, breathless "copy" urging people to just buy it, posted at the end of the Australian tax year (when companies have certain advantages in that tax system).

You were spreading this conspiracy theory about a user who was excited about BACCH4Mac. The user is in Australia. Australia does not have a BACCH dealer. So much for the conspiracy theory.

And then you said you were leaving ASR because the forum admin was like a law enforcement official who arrested a home invasion victim for taking the law into his own hands. That's a perplexing analogy given that you'd been on ASR for only a month at that point, posting mostly grumpy stuff and ridiculing others.

But you didn't leave, and you don't own ASR, which, I believe, is owned by the person you're criticizing in your post above.

I guess the lesson for you (and me) is that principle counts for very little on forums, @amirm. You can choose and enforce the rules of you own domain but you can't count on the rules of propriety or science elsewhere.

Thats the problem with today's society and, in particular, social media: It rewards people who live by the motto "hooray for everything". It punishes those who question things from topologies to ethics.

It's a little bit odd to say that people are punished for questioning things on ASR of all places.
 

BDWoody

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Oh, the irony.

This is my first post in over a month... since being threatened for banishment by the Sheriff of Nottingham for questioning the motives of somebody touting a product outside the Desperate Dealers Forum. Those motives were, btw, abundantly clear for those bothering to look: guy working for a software company, touting a hw/sw product, breathless "copy" urging people to just buy it, posted at the end of the Australian tax year (when companies have certain advantages in that tax system).

I guess the lesson for you (and me) is that principle counts for very little on forums, @amirm. You can choose and enforce the rules of you own domain but you can't count on the rules of propriety or science elsewhere.

Thats the problem with today's society and, in particular, social media: It rewards people who live by the motto "hooray for everything". It punishes those who question things from topologies to ethics.

So I suppose the question here is whether you'll continue to strive to achieve something different or just become another point on the social media compass.

FWIW, I hope you continue on your current path and encourage a place where positions can be challenged, even if that abraids some of thin skin of people so obviously "in the game".

Almost like you were never gone...
 

GrimSurfer

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Pretty much, @BDWoody. World peace didn't break out in my absence and audiophiles and those in the business are as sensitive as ever.

So @amirm being disinvited from an Internet forum doesn't surprise me. Just as it should come to no surprise that Shiit decided to curtail critical commentary instead of addressing shortcomings. (Did anyone really think that frat boy/hipster humour was simply a cover for serious engineering?)

This is the age in which we live: It's easier to silence a voice than produce a world class product, just ad copy sells more shite than good engineering.
 

maxxevv

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I have a desire for a Gungnir MB, but I fear it is just equipment envy, based on what I read here. Yet many users swear by it. Hard to know, easy to make a $1300 mistake.

And that's why I love this and other forums.

At that price, I'll say get a RME ADI-2 DAC, that gets more than close enough to SOTA performance levels.

And you get FREE: a highly capable headphone amplifier and a capable DSP unit too.

So let's rephrase: that in subjective objective listening tests, the Schiit sounds as good as the top DACs ever tested. So what is more important - the sound in music listening or measurements?

Corrected that.
 

garbulky

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garbulky said:
So let's rephrase: that in subjective objective listening tests, the Schiit sounds as good as the top DACs ever tested. So what is more important - the sound in music listening or measurements?
.
Corrected that.
Well even though I'm all for subjective listening, in this case I was talking about objective listening tests (the ones that Amir performs in his reviews).
 

maxxevv

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Well even though I'm all for subjective listening, in this case I was talking about objective listening tests (the ones that Amir performs in his reviews).

There was an objective in conducting those listening tests to see if there were obvious enough flaws in the output, but strictly speaking, those are subjective tests at best since there were no binding protocols nor fixed set of test procedures.
 

majingotan

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Even today, you can't find measurements for all of their products even though they finally have proper measurement gear.

What do you think about their honesty with their published measurements about their Bifrost 2?
https://www.schiit.com/public/upload/PDF/Schiit DAC APx555 Standard Test Suite_ Bifrost 2.pdf

Here's a quote from their page:
No, seriously, I don’t believe this True Multibit stuff. 18 bits? What about 24 bit music?

Well, leaving aside the fact that there probably ain’t nowhere near 24 usable bits in any recorded music, no matter the audiophile cred, if you’re looking for resolution below the 18-bit level, take a look at our measurements, showing Bifrost 2 clearly resolving a -144dB signal. That’s -24 bits. Boom.

I don't ever see a graph on their measurements that Bifrost 2 having a 144 dB dynamic range or SNR so how is it resolving a -144dB CLEARLY?
 

garbulky

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There was an objective in conducting those listening tests to see if there were obvious enough flaws in the output, but strictly speaking, those are subjective tests at best since there were no binding protocols nor fixed set of test procedures.
I'm surprised. I am under the opposite impression. Hmmm...
 

scott wurcer

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You can't be serious. They could have avoided 99% of the fanfare created by my reviews by being honest about what they do.

I can't agree more, the "technical" content of some of their add copy is unprofessional.
 

amirm

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What do you think about their honesty with their published measurements about their Bifrost 2?
https://www.schiit.com/public/upload/PDF/Schiit DAC APx555 Standard Test Suite_ Bifrost 2.pdf

Here's a quote from their page:
I don't ever see a graph on their measurements that Bifrost 2 having a 144 dB dynamic range or SNR so how is it resolving a -144dB CLEARLY?
It is marketing nonsense. I addressed it in this thread: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-yggdrasil-ads-on-stereophile-may-issue.2633/
 
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