Schiit Jotunheim impressions

I was wondering when somebody was going to bring up the Jot's relative lack of depth to its soundstage - I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought this.

I mean, it's not totally lacking depth but the Jot lacking here was obvious to me when I A/B'ed it against my Cavalli Liquid Carbon.

 

it does have a narrow soundstage and this is partly why i think the rag is a better amp. it doesn't get brought up much as we would think. if this is the most expensive component someone has bought they may not have much to compare it to other than something like a mojo.

 

Do you mean shallow?

 

I would assume shallow. Pair that with an Elear, and you'd most likely not have a good time....

 

@Hands - I did a search on stage and read the relevant comments then I did a search on depth and read those relevant comments. This was earlier today.

I saw a few hints and mentions. Your comments definitely stood out as the most vivid to me.

 

Finally got a chance to audition a Jotunheim. They were sold out of the DAC version, so my chain looked like this:
Clip -> Jot -> 650 / JH13
(Clip is Rockbox'd, set to 0 gain. 650 is my own, modded with Dynamat.)

Yeah it's good. I was actually more impressed with it on my IEMs--the detail, timbre, and bass tightness were excellent. Maybe I've just been under-driving the IEMs for too long, I dunno.
With 650 it's good but nothing really stood out to me. I'm glad the supposed brightness of Jot didn't overwhelm the 650; may have even helped male vocals sound detailed. Details really stood out in general.

The shop had a Valhalla 2. Tried the V2 cold and with stock tubes, so it was completely unfair, but fwiw: V2 has the edge in wider soundstage and placing vocals dead centre; Jot had much better bass tightness, bass quantity, and timbre.

 

Got my Jotun today, and spent several hours in listening.
My rig: PPP (Power regen) - iMac (but with Win 7) - Wyrd - MF M1DAC - Jotun - Flow open

I am really amazed now. How can $400 amp sound like this? Are you crazy Schiit??
Will collect my thoughts later. But one immediate finding was it did not make my (already somewhat bright) flow brighter at all (rather it refined and tamed high treble / top octaves a bit), which was totally unexpected. Feeling strange (surely in a positive sense).

 

This is exactly how I hear the Joti soundstage. It's a wide thin rectangle which has been bent around into a semi circle so that hard left and hard right are right next to and parallel to your ears. I think that's why the centre image seems weak by comparison.

 

What a great song to test "sound stage"?

 

Bubbles by Yosi Horikawa gives a good sense of space, although not instrument placement.

 

I noticed something similar with the HE-400i, which didn't become more pokey, but if anything more polite, balanced out of the Jot. A pleasant surprise.

 

Still wowed. Just keep on listening to my favorite songs for a number of hours.

Listening to Jotun reminded me of the moment that I auditioned BHSE for my sr009 at one audio meet several years ago. I'm not necessarily saying jotun is similar with BHSE in terms of sound. But the wow experience as a total package is nearly and surprisingly identical. What is different, that bhse was not mine, but this jotun is mine. How happy I am!

 

how is this amp compared to to black widow?

 

jotun is somewhat bright, bw is very dark. jotun's greatest strengths are transparency and lack of glare, its greatest weaknesses are sound stage depth and a fatiguing unrefined sound. Black widow's biggest weakness is being dark and shouty but it is fairly resolving and has good synergy with planars.

@kirayamato that is the best i can do to answer your context-less question, ie I have no idea what your use will be and what the rest of your chain is like. For making music I'd go with Jotun. For listening to music I'd go with neither.

 

@kirayamato didn't you ask the same question, about a month ago, in this thread? And some people have already chimed in with answers.
[Edit: I realise it was 2 months ago, but ehh, details.]

 

Lambchop "The Daily Growl", great for testing soundstage, and plankton, AND shivery toob thrillz. You can tell it's working if you are floating in a cosmic 3d void.

 

I really like "Jupiter" from the London Phil/Adrian Boult recording of The Planets. Having listened to it on a bunch of headphones, dynamics, BAs, stats and planars, I have a pretty good idea of where most of the orchestra is sitting. There are also several points where it tests if the spatial cues stand up well when there's a lot of layering going on.

Oh, and it's also a fully kickass piece of music, too.

 

thanks for the suggestions.

 

I liked the Jot (no dac) from the loaner program so I bought one with the internal DAC for the office.

I have to say I'm pretty unimpressed with the internal DAC unit. I had originally tested it with a
bifrost multibit and the internal unit pretty much kills everything I like about the Jot.
Compared to Bifrost Multibit, soundstage, bass, treble extension, detail etc are much diminished. I figured the
internal dac would tide me over until Schiit comes out with a balanced, stackable, multibit dac
but now I'm wishing I got the Momby instead of the internal DAC. New Jot still sounds
great with the Bifrost. I thought it might be USB vs optical, but USB sounds fine from the
bifrost.