Schitt Lokius Tour Impressions

Discussion in 'Headphone Amplifiers and Combo (DAC/Amp) Units' started by bilboda, Aug 7, 2021.

  1. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    Schiit Lokius Impressions

    [​IMG]


    Early impressions:
    Currently have single ended with Zana Deux S, SW 51+, balanced to speakers and The Black Amp headphone Amp
    Headphones currently plugged in are Meze Empy's to the BA, HD8ooS/ZD, ETA Genesis G/SW51+
    I will have to mix and match and bring in The Verite O and LTA HP2.
    My rca switch is working fine. My xlr switch is not, can only get one output at a time, currently the BA, maybe have ins and out switched around but don't think so,

    1 nice thing is one only needs XLR out from the dac and the single ended devices work just fine.
    Flipped the switch several times and notice no difference on any amp.
    Using rca in and XLR out loses volume in 1 channel.

    Something of a gas so far. ETA Gen G was sounding a bit dark on SW51+, lowered the 20 hz and bass and it sounded very similar to HD800s on the ZD.

    The BA amp is not getting a whole lot of benefit so far in the early going. I can isolate the bass, but I am not playing any slamful music. Any Ideas?

    The idea of changing setting per song is a bit much. I can see making changes for tv on the optical input but that PLL on the Spring 3 is exceptional and seems to have removed gremlins frm that input.

    I will hook up a umik mic and use REW. Maybe I can improve my speakers. At least I will have some relative measurements.
    and some charts to display from the lab, where science is a stranger....
    the lab.jpg
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2021
  2. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    lokius bypassed.jpg rew lokius my settings.jpg lokius my first settings.jpg lokius leveled.jpg lokius leveled.jpg some rew results...I was able to get the vocal regions levelled. I'll have to wait to see if I like it.
    Our ears or more sensitive in this area and may not need a flat frequency response. Listening now to Cassandra Wilson who gets quite murky at times, she can sing very very low.
    She is not murky now but may be too bright. If nothing else, this shows you what the devices is capable of.
    lokius bypassed.jpg lokius bypassed.jpg rew lokius my settings.jpg
     
  3. Marvey

    Marvey Super Friend

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    Cool. Keep in mind that you do not necessarily want flat if you are measuring from a listening position. This will end up as too bright sounding. The only time you want a flat measurement is if the microphone is spot on pointed to the speaker's tweeter from a meter or so away.
     
  4. bilboda

    bilboda Florida boomer

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    room nodes gone
    will work on a little more bass and the nulls and then see what the lokius will add...


    toed in.jpg
     
  5. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    You call that a Lokius? I’ll show you a Lokius

    [​IMG]
     
  6. Marvey

    Marvey Super Friend

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    Be careful what you wish for. Especially when it comes to Jason @schiit.
     
  7. M3NTAL

    M3NTAL Friend

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    Are we looking at an active / passive / Digital Digital Analog type device with the Lokius Beefius ?
     
  8. beemerphile

    beemerphile Friend

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    I apologize to the SBAF community. I should not have included myself in this rotation. My life is so scrambled that there is no time for anything right now. I have it ready to pass on to @HotRatSalad when I get the address. I did give it a go though, and while I sit here and get about half-snockered on cheap red wine, I'll pass along my probably incoherent impressions. It has the Usual Schitt of a rear-mounted power switch and an eyeball-busting white power indicator light that I usually attenuate by affixing a pressure sensitive dimming dot such as...

    https://www.amazon.com/LightDims-Or...ocphy=9011085&hvtargid=pla-385855711588&psc=1

    It has a wall wart power supply. I could find no fault with it, but I am sure the Greater Brains on the pedestrian audio forums will find that an $800 LPS really "opens up" this $300 device. It first of all does no harm. Defeated and on-line set to null are indistinguishable from each other. The detents at the flat position are a nice touch and six bands seems about right. My last attempt at tone controls was a couple of White 4400 units with 1/3 octave controls and they occupied a 2U rack panel for each channel. I got them free when NASA in Huntsville AL 86'ed the sound system in their cinema room and went digital. I threw them away when all of the caps started drying out. Prior to that I drove myself crazy with a pink noise generator and a calibrated mic trying to get straight lines on my frequency response graphs. Once I got the lines good and straight I determined that I didn't like the way it sounded and I tweaked up the treble to compensate for high frequency loss obtained as a result of a misspent youth racing cars and motorcycles; shooting guns; and playing drums in a garage rock band. A garage is a truly horrible place to set up a bunch of loud instruments and subject yourself to all that your amps could muster.

    All of our pre-amps used to have tone controls before the purist camp took the hill. Manufacturers then charged us extra for "purist" preamps without tone controls or loudness comp and now we get to pay the capitalist bastards to add it back. This is a clean device and would be excellent to adapt any particular setup to any particular listener. The purists are welcome to recoil in horror. After that, I imagine it would be left alone. Given that all of my content is served now via Roon, I have set up a DSP profile that works very well for my Susvaras into my abused elderly ears. The only thing I cannot compensate for is the 2500 Hz frequency of my tinnitus at which nothing will break through. If I wasn't doing that, I can see this component fulfilling that role well. True, the DSP gives you a lot more tools to manipulate the response, but the process is arcane. Six knobs is probably not yet over my head. If I had to set up the DSP again, I probably could not. I started with a canned setup for an LCD4 and adapted it to suit.

    I'll probably back out of here again. I'm a mess.
     
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  9. Jinxy245

    Jinxy245 Vegan Puss

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    I'll start with the obligatory yet sincere thanks to SBAF for having these loaners available to our members. It really is a priceless resource and I am grateful to be able to take part.

    I'll also say that in this particular instance, writing about the Lokius is somewhat of an odd experience for me. I'm used to trying (as best I can anyway) to articulate how something sounds, but how do you describe the sound of something that's designed to alter the way the rest of your chain sounds? Again, I'll do my best.

    My set up was my HP Pavilion PC running a variety of lossy and lossless files via JRiver to my Bifrost 2 > Lokius > Pendant (1st version) > my Sapele Aeolus. I stuck to the Aeolus since that was the headphone I was most curious about changing, and I stuck to the Pendant because I didn't have another set of XLR cables on hand to feed the Lokius.

    Ergonomically I had no real issues with the design choices Schiit made. You could pick nits about the power switch being on the back, but I decided it was best to leave it on anyway. I found that it actually needed to power on for an hour or so to sound it's best, which surprised me but probably shouldn't have. I am not the biggest fan of wall warts, but they're not usually a deal breaker for me and to keep this form factor it's a tradeoff I have no problem with.

    It's a solid little unit, just as wide as the Bifrost 2 but a little shorter so I found it easy enough to place on my slightly crowded desk. The knobs all felt solid and I appreciated the slight 'stop' at the neutral (12:00) position. Two switches up front for input (up balanced, down SE) and EQ pass-through (up EQ engaged, down bypassed). 6 frequency bands to play with were plenty for me, more I think would be too nervosa inspiring, less I felt would be too much of a broad brush (though I haven't tried the Loki Miini+).

    Sound wise, it does work as advertised changing the sound as you dial it in. To answer my own question of how to describe the sound of an equalizer, I imagine you focus on things like distortion and transparency which I had little to no issue with. I heard no distortion, though Schiit does warn that if you use higher voltage sources (output more than 2V or 4V) you'll likely hear distortion.

    To my ears the Lokius was also mostly transparent. I did think I might have lost a bit of macrodynamics but I'm not confident enough to say that with a great degree of certainty. As much as the bypass is a boon, the signal still passes through Lokius so A/B-ing would be wholly unreliable, not to mention a major PITA. Other than that, I really couldn't pinpoint any sonic detriment at all, and I'm not really pinpointing anything so much as being suspicious.

    In the end I was most curious Lokius could help with some of the areas that I have more trouble hearing. Some of the telltale markers in songs I would listen for have become harder to hear over the years (both age related and job related really) especially at the volumes I try to listen at in order to retain as much of my hearing for as long as I can. I found Lokius to be very helpful in that regard. It can be fun to adjust the bass too if you have some particularly thin recordings, but that wasn't as much my focus.

    As much as I was worried that I might get too preoccupied with knob fiddling (insert joke here) to concentrate on the music, once I had it dialed in to my preference, I forgot it was there. I just knocked the last 2 bands up a quarter turn and listened. Forgetting it's there and listening is really the goal for all my gear. The Lokius is a darn good equalizer IMO and worth checking out.
     
  10. M3NTAL

    M3NTAL Friend

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    Hey man, you're not alone. My reminder is that doing the grind, not all the eyes you see everyday will have the same vision, but you have to remember that your hope might be helping someone else stay afloat. They will never tell you or show you their appreciation, but it all falls apart if we start making bigger cracks.

    I've even fallen out of love with my "bimmer", but it's a connection that I often make with your "handle" and I make sure to read what you write. The Chang->Sbffff was a little scary at first, but I think level heads have prevailed and we have a real nice place to come talk.

    Wine does sound nice!

    Thank you for the writeup of the Lokius; I'm really excited for the bigger badder more radder eq ladder, but I'm sure (positive as right now since my house is trying to kill me) I can't afford it.

    I 'think' the Lokius will be plenty for the LCD-R, but the new Reveal plugin is also quite fun to play with. (LCD-X profile) It might have to hold me over until I can play with the big boys again.
     
  11. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    [​IMG]

    GEAR

    Pi2AES -> Schiit Yggdrasil A2 -> Lokius -> Drop 789 with Sigma 11 LPS -> og Solaris

    Build

    Solid as usual from Schiit, though I wish they would figure out an alternative to the retina laser LED. I prefer the red glow of the Jottenhiem 2 with no LED. The black finish is definitely the way to go if it fits in your rig because it’s got white indicator lines on the knobs making it much easier to see where they are.

    Schiit says you shouldn’t stack this on top of an amp because it could cause noise issues. I don’t really have a choice unless I make my rig incredibly ugly and imbalanced, so it’s on top of my 789 and there is no noise induced by this. Just a heads up that it is possible though maybe not with all gear.

    SOUND

    It doesn’t sound like anything to me, but neither did either Loki Mini. But the additional knobs make this so much more useful than the Loki mini. The og Solaris has always bothered me with recessed vocal range and a slightly cool tonality. I’ve got the the two middle knobs at 3 o'clock with the 3rd knob slightly higher to add warmth and the vocals of the Solaris are finally fixed. I’ve also added a bit of air with the last knob. The Solaris sounds really remarkable now, it contends with my full sized headphones. Well worth the price and highly recommended.

    Though with full sized headphones I have a purity complex and would want them to sound right on their own, or mod them to sound right. I’m guessing the lokius would be great for that dip in the HD8XX but I won’t be putting it in my headphone chain. Maybe some tricky mods can fix it. ;).

    But really, it could probably do a much better, more precise job at fixing problems we spend way more money on then the Lokius (tubes, cables, various amps). It’s a cheap way to get perfect system synergy with no fuss especially if you have a one headphone rig like many do to cater to its sound signature.
     
  12. gixxerwimp

    gixxerwimp Professional tricycle rider

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    The Schiit FAQ says,
    I think your 789 has an external PSU, so no internal transformer. Has anyone stacked this on top of a Bifrost 2? Any noise issues?
     
  13. rhythmdevils

    rhythmdevils MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    True! Good catch! The PSU is actually a Sigma 11 which is located way off to the side of my stack. Cool that I can safely stack this on my 789 then.
     
  14. edd

    edd Almost "Made"

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    my Lokius sits on top of a Bifrost 2 without any noise issues. The SW51+ that it feeds isn’t stacked though.
     
  15. DrForBin

    DrForBin Friend

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    hello,

    "what DO you believe in then?"

    "i believe in ... (insert list here) ... and tone controls!"

    (i also believe in mono by-pass switches. but they have, sadly, gone away. :()

    tl/dr: the following is a total fanboi rant.

    this is a fun machine. MrsForBin and i each have an OG Loki Mini in our Schitt stacks. we both use them to a greater or lesser degree.

    i detect no degradation in sound with Lokius engaged. i detect an increase in musical enjoyment with judicious tweaks on headphones.

    i find it hard to fathom that Schitt can produce Schitt with this level of quality and design at the price they charge. but then, i have never been involved in manufacturing.

    if you are: ham-fisted (me), afraid of soldering (me), concerned about warranty violations (that would also be me) , this device is a no-brainer.

    versitile, affordable, nice size, looks good, built good. and i don't have to try to mod things that cost a lot more.

    now i want a dedicated (to music only) two channel system where i can use this to make things sound better to ME!

    if you are addicticed to modding, no need to apply, if you are chasing the ultimate headphone set-up(s), more than likely not.

    but, if your like things to be a little bit changed to what you like, go for it!

    besides, if you think this is heretical, you can remove it from the signal path by flipping a toggle.

    cheers!


    .
     
  16. deafenears

    deafenears Almost "Made"

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    I wish the Lokius EQ band was 4kHz rather than 6kHz. Few headphones I own and few I'm interested in:

    r4G51Vl3Sr.png

    Has anyone here touched 6kHz?
     
  17. loadexfa

    loadexfa MOT: rhythmdevils audio

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    Lokius Loaner Impressions

    Chains
    Roon (Qobuz/Redbook) -> Pi2AES -> SFD-MK II -> Freya S (passive) -> Lokius -> Moth Prototype -> Auteur (teak, perf suede)

    Roon (Qobuz/Redbook) -> Pi2AES -> Pavane L3 -> Freya S (passive) -> Lokius -> Mjolnir 1 -> HE 6se (RD modded)

    Drop Audio Technica Carbon VTA (Denon DL-103)-> iFi Zen Phono -> Freya S (passive) -> Mackie HR624s

    General Thoughts
    Writing up impressions for an eq is harder than I thought. I mean, I turn knobs and it does eq. I guess I'm done!
    :drunk:

    I enjoyed fiddling around learning how to bring out parts I like and tweaking music to match my taste (I tend to prefer more vocals and mids in general). I tried comparing multiple times with the eq knobs set to neutral vs bypass mode and I didn't hear any difference in the sound. I have the older Loki and I like the convenience of the XLR in/out and extra knobs for more control. I haven't used the Loki in a long time and definitely prefer the Lokius, I think the extra cost is well worth the added features. I'll probably get one (or two) sometime in the near future.
     
  18. roshambo123

    roshambo123 Friend

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    After checking out the loaner, Lokius isn't something I would buy, but it is something I would recommend if someone was about having tone control for their system.

    I'm not an ideal customer for Lokius. I don't run EQ normally and prefer to have the presentation of the system and headphone be whatever it is, unadulterated. That being said, this is a great little tone control unit that doesn't assert itself or noticeably degrade the quality of the sound.

    Running XLR's from Yggdrasil GS > Lokius > MJ2 and with the Lokius knobs at unity, hearing how much Lokius changed the sound simply by being in-line was challenging to discern. Having Lokius in-line requires an additional set of XLR cables and it would be easy to blame minute differences on Lokius when it's actually just the cables. I think clarity is better without Lokius, but there's no way for me to say it isn't cables. At any rate, the audibility of Lokius at unity in the chain is very, very low. If I wanted tone control, this is an amount I'd trade willingly to get the functionality.

    Turning each knob, the effect on each band can be dialed in quite easily. You can add some lower bass or additional air. You can assert or attenuate most voices. You can do a little dark tilt or a little bright tilt. It works well.

    Do I care? Not really. Lokius doesn't change my opinion on anything. I was able to add a little bump to the HD800's bass and reduce its treble a bit for more fatiguing tracks. Did it make them suddenly awesome for hard rock? No. Did it change my HD6XX's in any way that made me like them more on MJ2? No. I was pretty happy with my setup before and Lokius didn't make me want to change and the effect was something I didn't feel the need for.

    So bottom line, tone control isn't a function I want but Lokius would be the first unit I'd recommend to someone that did. For the performance, the price, functionality, and XLR I/O's are a pretty impressive package.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 27, 2021
  19. StandUp713

    StandUp713 Friend

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    Lokius Loaner Impressions

    After installing into my chain(XLR), PC/Gungnir /SPL Phonitor X/Clear or LCD 4z, I enjoyed tweaking the sound to get things... better.

    I do not think there is a big enough swing(dB) to fix anything broken, only to make little improvements here or there. Tried to calm down some base heavy IEMs. But just did not have enough swing in the lower two knobs. Although it did help.

    Also confirmed that I like a V shaped sound signature by looking at the finalized settings for both sets of headphones.

    I do recommend the product, if you like to make quick tweaks to compensate for a picky sound taste.

    Thanks again Loaner Program!
     
  20. yotacowboy

    yotacowboy McRibs Kind of Guy

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    Has anyone compared Lokius (with no knobs twiddled) Bal to SE, to a Cinemag-based 1:1 converter doing the same?
     

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