The Mike Moffat (#2 at Schiit) Blog

Discussion in 'Schiit' started by baldr, Dec 15, 2016.

  1. msommers

    msommers High on Epipens

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    Very happy to read the Sol project is still progressing as most of the other items seem cool but not on my radar.
     
  2. Darren G

    Darren G Friend

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    Mechanical stuff... QA and support nightmares. Takes some big balls to make that transition.
     
  3. Forza AudioWorks

    Forza AudioWorks MOT: Forza AudioWorks

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    Happy news they're progressing, I'm always into reading what these two are up to. This is very enjoyable.
     
  4. Scott Kramer

    Scott Kramer Friend

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    upload_2018-5-21_16-40-3.png

    Want to hear the superf'incomboburrito filter wig out distortion...? Same type is baked into this track– fades in at 1:03 to 1:06+ on, in the highs. Kept rebooting moby, or thought i2s was screwed up. Then tried on a ds dac, and youtube & it was the same! LOL it tricked me.

    *thought it was interesting, very similar sound, non issue other than that
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2018
  5. Darren G

    Darren G Friend

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    A personal thanks @baldr and Jason. Got my Yggdrasil back with A2 board a few days ago, which sounded like crap out of the cold box, but three days later... sitting here listening to Chris Botti, and Billy Kilson's drum solo. Feck, never heard horns or cymbals sound so like they do live. You guys are doing something right!
     
  6. insidious meme

    insidious meme Ambivalent Kumquat

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    LOL. Schiit isn't having a redux of the response for the Yggdrasil analog 2 board release on Head fi. Sad that enough dumbasses can ruin it for the rest of us.

    Looks like the Sol is on its way to being released. Very nice.
     
  7. Cspirou

    Cspirou They call me Sparky

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    Also Jason said that they wouldn't announce upgrades until a year of installed boards has passed instead of 3 months like the Yggdrasil
     
  8. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Sorry, was that earlier in this thread or elsewhere? Don't think I recall reading anything of the sort, and for... reasons, I've been keeping an ear to the ground for Gungnir Multibit upgrade news :p
     
  9. aamefford

    aamefford Nothing like chamberpot coffee

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    Me-thinks quite a few of us have. Mine’s a used maybe 2 year old upgrade to gen 5 model. I plan to a wait, rather than sell, and buy a new one with the maybe upgraded silently or not status.......
     
  10. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Mike was nice enough to give us a few hours' warning before the official Yggdrasil A2 launch and price bump, kinda doubt we'll be so fortunate again but eh, they deserve every cent.

    Still sucks that a few very loud... people, ruined the fun for everyone else by raising a stink about the A2 silent revision. Ah well.
     
  11. Ringingears

    Ringingears Honorary BFF

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    Knowing Mike he will somehow let us know (quietly) what’s up. At least I hope so. At least tell me. :p
     
  12. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I gotta get the screwdriver and tools out. Will report back in a year. Yeah, I haven't heard Mike get so geeked in a while.
     
  13. insidious meme

    insidious meme Ambivalent Kumquat

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    To be fair, based on his latest update, he seems to be neck deep in work. I think telling anyone about a new board for the Gungnir Multibit would be a low priority based on the last time something like that was announced. It will happen when it happens. And yes, I am waiting too. Just that thinking about it makes me furious at the morons who put Schiit in this position. So I try not to think about it much.
     
  14. baldr

    baldr Schiit-sterer

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    On “designer” DACs and why I do not build them:

    I have been on record saying that the Yggdrasil is the best DAC I know how to build. By and large, that statement stands given my current design worldview. Note that I did not say design philosophy. The philosophy concept implies that I am building a DAC to my own best thinking on how to do them. Some of those ideas were good, some so-so, and some were wet dreams. So much for “design philosophy”. I have built, and continue to build designs based upon new ideas, most not in an effort to make something to justify an Yggdrasil 3 (III – more nose in the air, no?) I have been building DACs since 1984. I have designed a f**k ton of them with a f**k ton of approaches. What this means is that I have traveled the DAC world, which is needed to have a worldview.

    Let me put that in the context of an Yggdrasil. Well, an Yggdrasil is very similar to my first “Frankenstein” which was the first DAC with a megaburrito filter. The DSP processors in those days have been replaced with faster ones with more bits, the DACs have gone from 16 to doubled 20 bit silicon. The only thing better was the BWD hookup which still is the best way by far I have found to connect a digital source (in those days, nothing but a CD player) to a DAC. Back in the 1980’s the digital audio tech was quickly changing so the Original 16 bit Theta Dspro went from 16 to single 20 bit technology within a 5-6 year period. Now this was back in the day when I was still trying to build the best. I was using fancy pants resistors and caps from a variety of vendors such as relcaps, caddock, vishay, and mills (among many others). I was even using teflon circuit boards which were a major pain in the ass – they would coldflow, sag into, and short out from the chassis below and were unsuitable for reliable surface mount and would collapse into the solder bath when the boards were flowed.

    Now back then I was selling into the high-end market. It was becoming less and less fun. Finally, Crystal Semiconductor came out with digital audio parts based on sigma delta and delta sigma technology. I was excited! Something new! I built my first proto and it sounded like ass. Really like diseased ass. I some other bright ideas to improve the ds tech but it really, really sucked. As a bit of time went by and more and more vendors came out with delta sigma parts I realized just how bad it was. As the supply of multibit DACs began to get more and more expensive, I saw the writing on the wall and got out of the DAC biz. I began to do a lot of surround digital processors, where it didn’t matter so much for sound since it was all about the video. I kept doing that for quite a while.

    Twenty years went by and Schiit started. I caught up to current tech and realized that ds tech was all that was left. So I built some ds dacs to buy some time to get new multibit designs going again with the Analog Devices AD5791 DACs. They were industrial and had a bunch of funny setups, glitch to get rid of, and odd formatting of the audio. In the meantime, resistor and capacitor technology had improved for less expensive parts, in fact orders of magnitude better for a lot less money – I applied it all to Yggdrasil, and we used our scale it up know-how to make it cheaper.

    Today at my age I am so fuckin’ happy to be out of the high-end business. All that matters there is that yours is the biggest, hardest, and longest. Period. I talked with a certain high-end vendor that I shared my very first high-end room at the Chicago CES show in 1977 for the original Theta Electronics. He shared the difficulties of out-performing and out-maneuvering all of his competitors to get the best possible reviews. I asked him how often that happened and he said not often enough. What I didn’t tell him is that Yggdrasil gets great reviews as well (although he probably knows).

    Well, the Yggdrasil with the best commonly available high grade parts is typically within 10 ppm worst (absolute and rare) case compared to the most expensive designer parts. There is no guarantee fancy parts will be better, and many times they are worse, manufacturer to manufacturer and package to package. Typically they are also constrained from a standpoint of distributed capacitances and inductances, which can add odd resonances and slow them down.

    Here is how it works in the real world. If the resistors are used as feedback elements, brand x may sound better. If they are filters or loads, brand y series better from 1 to 10000 ohms and brand z from 20000 ohms up, etc, etc. Now some are loyal to some brands, others to other brands. The brands have different sounds in different locations. If I followed this down as an obsession, I would be dead or crazy. Further, some combo of parts is better for classical and others for techno, and so on. It would be like trying to open Mike’s Mexican-Chinese-Italian-Indian-Coprophagic-Mediterranean-Japanese-Indonesian-Vegan-Vegetarian-French-Booger restaurant. When you try to please everyone, you please no one. No matter how much I bitch and shout that warranties vaporize as soon as the product is opened, there are those that will do so. I understand why some of you do so, but you still don’t get your warranty back. If you want a DAC that has the fanciest parts, there are many used to new car priced ones out there. I know there are those out there who would modify those as well. This is due to the Dunning-Kruger effect which explains why competent modifiers have their parades pissed upon by cretins.

    From more experience comes a new worldview. The Yggdrasil comes from a 34 year long history. After 1990, there have been two technical innovations worthy of new product, and one of them is based on a 1980’s innovation. I leave the USB out of this for the moment because it is a relatively new input in the context of 34 years. One real revision in 28 years sometimes makes me wonder why it is upgradable. Ah but except the USB is the least reliable part of any DAC, particularly in the winter when it is dry and we jump sparks as we plug in our USB cable. Saves throwing out the Yggdrasil just because the USB blew out. What was I thinking, after all.
     
    Last edited: Jun 13, 2018
  15. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    Another one for Alternate Tuning Corner. I'm always a sucker for "Selling England by the Pound" picking, but it's the fruity tuning which makes this more than just accomplished pastiche.

     
  16. Scott Kramer

    Scott Kramer Friend

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    Rare perusing for me at headfi, read Mikes latest post & was in the mood at the time... cut-paste/repost/crosspost here ;D Apologies for the repeat if you guys already read this.

    @baldr

    Photograph-of-a-silicon-chip-with-the-three-platinum-resistors-2.png

    Transistors on silicon are essentially free, a 45 dollar chip may have a billion+ transistors.* Resistors, capacitors, inductors– not so much. Intel had a breakthrough several years ago, where they could do wifi 100% on silicon (the capacitors were the tricky part) -- and it was the most amazing "die shot" ie. magnified picture of the silicon I'd ever seen. Can't seem to find those pictures anymore, I think chipworks locked us out. That was wifi, the 4G wireless chips are insane... ever see a "fractal antenna" ** in silicon?

    ^ Pictured is just 3 resistors on silicon, no doubt romper-room simple-->

    Imagine how exotic the AD5791BRUZ internally may be. Could be worthwhile sanding down a damaged one to see the classic R2R layout, each resistor having that zigzag pattern (at least 40 right?). Then 4x of 'em for the ya2!

    Shit, I'd like to see it!

    Makes sooo much sense, super precise. Instead of going external with the inherint complexities of board layout, component/power/ground/capacitance/inductace interaction, discrete resistor tolerances, distance, bla bla bla !

    * LOL, I hear you thinking, no schiit
    ** https://www.head-fi.org/threads/wha...n-robert-hunter.784471/page-576#post-14350043
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2018
  17. dmckean44

    dmckean44 In a Sherwood S6040CP relationship

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    The rest of the head-fi post sounded like @baldr has some good ideas. But if he built it discretely, it would be pretty difficult to move it to IC. NRE on a full custom IC is like $500k and a $5 million dollar minimum order amount. Plus if you screw something up you're stuck with bad chips and you have to do it all over again.
     
  18. Azimuth

    Azimuth FKA rtaylor76, Friend

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    Which is why it is more cost effective to reverse engineer an off the shelf industrial IC for audio decoding. Wait...Schiit already did this.
     
  19. Clemmaster

    Clemmaster Friend

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    It’s not reverse engineering, they had the specs.
     
  20. MWSVette

    MWSVette Almost "Made"

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    Happy Birthday Mike @baldr , I hope you have a great Birthday weekend...
     
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2018

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