Gear you wish existed

A Schiit CD transport.

 

A Schiit DAP.

Excellent sound quality, expandable storage, long battery life, and a smooth, no frills UI with access to hi-fi streaming services at a value price.

 

Headphone amps with tone controls.

 

Gungnir Multibit with two balanced outputs and AES/EBU in. In Jot form factor.

 

Planar magnetic headphones as comfortable as the hd800

 

A sub $600 open headphone as good or better than the HD650, so people can stop recommending the HD650 every time someone starts a "recommendation" thread. Seriously, its pretty lame that A. Sennheiser has never updated the headphone despite the fact that easy mods make it better and B. that in 14 years, no other companies have managed to make a headphone that beats the HD650 in all areas. All the tech developments have gone into overpriced flagships while the sub $1K market has been pretty much ignored.

 

"'Maximum Dong' edition Vali 2 tube, to fill all your gaping needs*!

*Schiit may be an unintended side efffect"

 

He said "moist" ... hahah

 

THIS

 

A Bifrost Multibit with balanced XLR out ... seriously Schiit, you need to make this, I'm begging you.

And while you're at it, make black cases an option dammit. You're just messing with us at this point. It can't possibly be that much more expensive to black anodize your enclosures and if it is, charge the customer the difference so people can stop plastidiping their Schiit. I will gladly pay $50 more to get a Schiit product that matches the rest of my gear.

 

I would like an 18 bit redbook standard.

Also modern production vacuum tubes that beat NOS tubes in reliability, and tone.

 

I think that this does exist. A simple analogue mixer could have bass/mid/treble controls on each channel. Next step on the scale would be an extra knob for each that controls the mid-point frequency for each of those. Over and above that is beyond what I've ever seen, but that only extends to fairly modest live-music mixing desks. I've never been in a real studio.But over and above this, all you need to add is the 'Q.'

Other members will know: Parametric EQ pre-dates digital. Right or wrong? And someone must have put it in a stand-alone box?

But... ye gods... it is tough enough with all the lovely GUI graphs. Using that stuff with just knobs must have taken supernatural skill.

 

Indeed! But these may be considered overkill for tuning your stereo system with:
http://www.massenburg.com/products/gml-8200
http://www.manley.com/products/view/msmp
http://www.cranesong.com/ibis.html

 

@baldr might indeed be mooting something like that:

 

Volume controls that consist of a L and R volume pot (or stepper) stacked such that both go up and down together, but you can use it as a balance control by twisting one against the other. Now that Balance controls are apparently gone to wherever Tone controls went, this would help those of us whose hearing is less in one ear or who listen at low volumes where channel imbalance is most noticeable. It is not enough that the two channels be exactly matched. Hearing differences (or speaker / listener relationships in a speaker system) can make volume bias useful.

 

Good suggestion, would love one of those too!

Sennheiser actually tried to make a souped up HD 650 in the guise of the HD 700 and they fucked it up, despite making a technically more advanced headphone. Popular wisdom have it they modified quietly later iterations of HD 650 to make it less veiled although this is not very obvious when dismantling the headphone except for the different color of the transducer. I guess Sennheiser bosses are content with the crown of the headphone proper sound referee and having the most popular audiophile headphone in history.

Also worthwhile to mention in passing the HD 6XX was the super TOTL in the 1990' when introduced. If anything Sennheiser invented the concept of expensive headphones and started "educating" the market/audiophools on the benefits of spending bigger money on headphones.

Jason Stoddard, Shiits No#1 emeritus, preached over these ideas ad nauseam. One color only chassis because it keeps things tidy and cheaper. In the past, under pressure from whining crowds he got talked into making a limited run of black units and then could not sell them all before the new versions were ready to ship, ergo he went back to the original plan. It's more than meets the eye on the color issue. He even dedicated few chapters of Shiit happens to this issue, pretty informative read available on the other audiosite where the dark side lives. I admire the discipline they apply themselves to not giving up their vision.

Simmilar situation with the balanced Bifrost Multibit: this would f**k up the chassis and create an extra layer of complexity for sourcing the smaller quantity of different specked chassis and make for messy upgrades. Not to mention that a balanced Bifrost Multibit would be significantly more expensive than single ended, closing the gap on Gungnir Multibit and making for less of a good deal.

Edit: grammar and orthography babble