The Mike Moffat (#2 at Schiit) Blog

OK – some definitions of Schiit R&D stuff given my history of narratives, complete and in progress as well as comments in various contexts:

BWD = a connectivity standard which is my fave, either between digital audio components, or internal use in converters.

Manhattan Project = a music processor of which we are working on various versions. These can be applied to anything from audio as a better recreational drug (think chronic) to Soylent Green class societies.

Sol = our upcoming turntable (to play flat black records).

Plus, two upcoming products. Could be anything from wet-dreams to brilliant ideas.

Lastly, one product in feasibility studies.

Oh, and Jason is working on several as well.

 

I am exceedingly curious about Manhattan Project. When your prototype is ready for public impressions, let us know. I might make the drive from Phoenix to the Shiitr for that.

 

Really good to read the insights from Mike who has deep knowledge of the clock problem, and has done so much to solve it.

I wanted to give +1 to the idea above of a portable media player, but built like a Schiit tank (vs a Chinese flash in the pan). CD's are good, I have plenty, but I'd also rather much load up a portable device with music and use that as my source. Stick a USB 3 or SATA interface on it for those of us who have copies of our optical discs as files to be played.

 

A high quality Schiit version of a Squeezebox Touch and server system would be awesome. PS Audio is working on something like that called Octave with their own software but I know it's going to be horrendously expensive and totally unnecessary.

 

If you need a Squeezebox replacement look at offerings from Sonore, and match up with your USB DAC.

 

Sonore is way too overpriced for what it is, imho.

 

And it is NOT just Jason who will never combine those 4 entities. Never, but Never.

 

Now we can dream up other stuff for Schiit to make.

 

Like a pivot point gain stage amp to sit between the Mj2 and Rag? It wouldn't be a full ragnorok end of the world kind of amp, maybe more like a very minor catastrophe or a serious large scale concern kind of amp. Is there a deity responsible for midlife crisis in Norse mythology? You could call it that.

 

At this point I'd be happy with a reasonably priced periphery ring for turntables. The VPI ones costs mega bucks, and I haven't been able to find a third party company that makes them that's still in business. The only non-VPI ones you can find new are proprietary ones for specific manufacturers. We need a really solid generic one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

 

I googled around for this some time ago. If you make them from aluminum they are just incredibly expensive for the milling and materials. I think that you could make one out of a hard plastic like Delrin for a lot less. But man, the tolerances have to be really tight and the mass needs to be sufficient and even. Tough.

 

I tend to think of Schiit being super experienced with aluminum, and not on Delrin. But yeah, it takes quite a slug to make one of those. Or does it.....?

 

There was a smaller company that made them for some years and it was still like $500, I think. So yeah, maybe. But their aluminum experience is mainly being super economical with chassis design. The only way you can do that with a periphery ring is to bend it, which would be a nightmare due to how tight the tolerances need to be. Or so I think from this armchair.

 

What about casting a periphery ring?

 

This seems obvious and yet I didn't think about it. I dunno!

 

So WTF is the Manhattan. For years, I was in a state of mystery – I had no idea why old prewar Banjos and Mandolins sounded better than new ones. Ever the non luthier, I began to read up and pull bits of data from various sites on the internet.

Hmmmmmmmmm. Lloyd Loar, master builder at Gibson from 1919-1923. Rather than build instruments to a set of prints, he individually tap tuned the instruments to C=256 Hz for best musical performance. At that time, that was a useful mean of the non standardized pitches of the day for hillbillies, bands and non-classical orchestras. It turns out he was replaced, because he was slowing production and increasing costs. Sound familiar? Today, a Lloyd Loar signed Gibson is worth .1 to .6 million bucks. Dang!

Not being an expert luthier, it is my understanding that musical instruments have an air resonance and a string resonance, both of which exhibit harmonic properties. Above resonance, both tend to have harmonic peaks which affect the sound of the instrument, both individually and collectively. Below resonance, the response falls off quickly. So it makes some sense for the instrument to have a bit of low frequency extra air resonance.

Returning briefly to tuning, the third string of a violin in a classical orchestra is A4. Since the concertmaster of such an orchestra is the first violin chair, responsible for the ttuning of the entire orchestra, he plays his open third string at some pitch which has varied over the last hundred years or so from A=430 to A=446 Hz. The string must be an open one, since violins are fretless, which makes any playing other than an open string subjective. This is the what the orchestras play just before the conductor appears. If there is a standard in tuning today, that standard is A=440Hz. Today there is a grassroots, nearly religious belief that an A=432Hz restoration is an imperative – many youtube performances are available in that tuning.

The problem is that the correct tuning is C=256.

There is even an open source program (which was incorporated into at least one server) which I shall not name, free at open source sites which varies pitch to reach A=432. It is similar in function to Karaoke DSP chips to change song tunings to fit different voices. The problem is that they sound worse than hemhorroidal ass; more like open running sore ass. Anybody ever attempt serious listening to Karoke? This is something like dwarf-tossing – it is so wrong that it deserves to die.

Then there are the mentally homeless who sit cross legged while chanting something related to bad math, chakras, and spiritual energy. These types will chatter endlessly about Nazi involvement in orchestral tunings and present conspiracy theories about evil beings trying to cause homo sapiens blindness by excessive masturbation, or something like that.

So what if someone (me) built a device where you could vary the pitch while listening and center it on C3=256? That is the Gadget. The entry level in the Manhattan series. It will be available soon for under two hundred bucks. A true, honest to God music processor. What comes out is not what came in. Oh, is that all it is, you say?

Well, this is what I say about the gadget:



1. It does not sound like ass.

2. It has one adjustment pot and one “You should be close” light.

3. It adjusts only pitch with no change in tempo.

4. It adjusts music to an “aaaaahhhhhhh” mode. It is a sharp point on the adjustment. When you hit it you know.

5. The sensations it produces are as profound as and analogous to many of the positive changes proper to tube amps’ comfort, or hi-def files’ clarities for lack of adequate descriptors.

6. I am 69 years old and I have never heard anything as right as this in an over 50 year audio career.

7. I cannot imagine listening to music without it.

8. A=432 blows; C=256 f'ing rules.

8. It is an electronic joint. Absolutely intoxicating. I cannot put it down. It alters your mood. I say this as a deadhead who has no chemical brain invasions in over twenty years. I cannot imagine how a stoner will respond to this.



This is what it will not do:

1. Work for most forms of “scientific” or electronic music or monotonic music, such as rap.

2. Work for any forms of music where harmony, pitch, or rhythm is missing.



Thanks to Ivana, who came up with the algorithm and got this idea programmed and working for us. It took over a year to get it to where it didn’t sound like ass. It will take much more of her time to get the bigger one finished. We will have one at RMAF without the USB in hooked up yet, just S/PDIF in and out.

 

Sounds interesting. Probably. I wonder if this might be a Holy Grail for those of us who experience listening fatigue. Crap, I can't wait to try this. But I'll have to.

 

Since Mike spilled the beans, I'll add only two things:

1. The Gadget is another answer to the age-old question of "how do you improve recorded music?" In the past, this question has had a myriad of answers, including tone controls, equalizers (LOL) and multi-thousand-dollar cables. The Gadget is a new answer, one that gives you real-time, individually adjustable control.

2. Unlike some recent attempts to improve recorded music, The Gadget does not incorporate any possibilities for DRM, including phone-homes, algorithmic degradation, or device serialization/deauthorization, nor does it attempt to extract licensing fees from the recording industry, equipment manufacturers, or listeners; it does not require any kind of encoding, works with all music, and is 100% self-contained.

 

Will the production version of The Gadget have s/pdif in/out? Hoping to put it after my Eitr before Modi Multibit.