Schiit Jotunheim has no grounding / hum issues.

Discussion in 'Audio Science' started by purr1n, Jul 22, 2018.

  1. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    I feel like there are subreddits for at least three of these...
     
  2. Elnrik

    Elnrik Super Friendly

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    @schiit - Dude...

    Measurements are a means of explaining what we hear. We don't listen to measurements. Beethoven's Sine wave in 1kHz Major doesn't f'ing exist. Thing is, twatwaffles like Amir don't get that. Hell, he's got it completely backwards. I sincerely doubt he could tell the difference between a S19 and a Yggdrasil, because he doesn't listen to anything! That dipshit doesn't have the ears for it.

    I'll trust my ears, and my ears tell me I like Schiit. I prefer your MB DACs over the other DACs I've heard. Love it. A lot. ...not as much as my dog, even though my Gungnir Multibit never pissed on the carpet or got on the counter and stole slices of pizza... but still.

    So, keep on keeping on.

    And f**k Amir (and insomnia) in his hairy goat ass.
     
    Last edited: Jul 23, 2018
  3. Priidik

    Priidik MOT: Estelon

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    Multibit is here to stay. If someone manages to make SD sound as good as multibit,
    it will be more expensive due to paralleled chips and ridiculously expensive clocks.

    Super low thd for the exchange of plasticky timber (steely, or downright nasty are also popular options),
    weird dynamics structure, lack of stage projection, lack of plankton or in some cases just incredible dullness?
    AMIR and his kind can roll up the thd&linearity envy and stick it where it belongs.

    For god knows what reason people can now get some good sounding headphone rig for less than a 1k$ total.
    People should be reminded that some 8 y ago with budget of one grand one could only cry about it or diy.
    I wonder if the personal hi-fi world changed by itself or Schiit had something to do with it?
     
  4. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    Yes, a shady Huawei phone with a dongle for everyone!

    Seriously though- you listen to your stuff, you have the sales figures. We're all pretty confident that you're a pragmatic and level-headed person. No doubt you and Mike would have got the f**k out if it didn't make sonic or financial sense.

    Maybe this is just a sign of success- you have your own corporate stalkers now- you've arrived.

    (..and yeah, you f**k up sometimes- if you didn't, it'd be suspicious. You tend to make good on it though, and that's the important thing.)
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  5. Greg121986

    Greg121986 Almost "Made"

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    I bought a 9 month old Jotunheim (amp only) from a member here a few weeks ago. The first time I listened to it I very quickly PM'd the seller to ask if he had used the amp before he sent it to me. My first account of this amp was the fact that it was incredibly noisy. I was feeding it with single-ended RCA outputs from a new Audio-GD NFB11.38. They were both plugged into the same Furman PST-8 power strip using Wireworld Electra 7 power cables. Nothing else was plugged into this strip, but of course it was on a shared circuit in the same room with PC equipment. Headphones are Focal Clear with single ended and balanced cable.

    I tried the same setup using an Auralic Taurus MKII. Much, much quieter than the Jot. I can only say that subjectively the difference in noise was extremely obvious. The Taurus was substantially quieter than the Jot, but there was still some noise present when the volume was cranked. The Jot had audible noise even at low volumes, and the noise was almost unbearable with the volume knob at max.

    Fast forward to last week when I brought my Holo Spring DAC into the office and used balanced XLR into the Jot. SILENCE. All of the noise that I experienced before is completely indiscernible to my ears, even with the volume of the Jot at max.

    Is this normal? Is there a grounding issue with this Jot? Should we just not use single-ended inputs on the Jot? Should they be eliminated altogether? I've had numerous amps that are not anywhere near this noisy using RCA inputs.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  6. schiit

    schiit SchiitHead

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    This could be a noisy source, bad cables, a ground loop, or there may be an issue with the Jotunheim. After you’ve gone through the Troubleshooting part of our website, if you’re still having issues, contact us at [email protected] and we’ll have a look.
     
  7. Kernel Kurtz

    Kernel Kurtz Friend

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    That place is just as douchey as I remember. I'm going to wipe my cache and clean my monitor.
     
  8. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Or it could be just XLR interconnects vs SE cables. I did experience that with no Schiit components. Emotiva DC-1 SE to a single NuForce HA-200, SE cable, was noisy like hell, I have two HA-200 and tried with both. The same DC-1, balanced cables to two HA-200 setup as mono blocks and was very quiet. EMI, power, whatever it was I think XLR interconnects are just better.
     
  9. famish99

    famish99 Friend

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    I know people who work there, this statement rings pretty true. Although hard not to with an office off Austin's infamous 6th street.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2018
  10. Pogo

    Pogo Friend

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    As a rando/noob/googan to this site I have to ask why no one is calling a spade a spade: seems pretty obvious that the denizens of Amiristan have an agenda which is motivated by payola. Having dealt with China contract manufacturing for almost 30 years this isn't the first example I've seen of it, both online and thru various trade organization meetings and publications. I never cease to be amazed by how much information about my company's order volume is shared between the supposedly competing vendors i deal with on the mainland.
    So what do you do when an outsider starts making serious inroads on your sales volume? Better quality,lower pricing, better service?
    Nah, costs to much vs assasination.
    Conspiracy theory? Sure,tell me what you think after dealing with the Dragon for a couple of decades.
     
  11. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    From that description, most likely your SE cables are picking up electrical noise from the environment. I also own a Spring DAC. XLR into Jot, dead quiet. SE into Lyr 3, hum until I used a shielded power cable with the Lyr 3 and raised the (good) SE cables well above the power cable. SE (RCA) cable routing really matters.
     
  12. Johnson L Wu

    Johnson L Wu New

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    I came across this forum and thread today when I was trying to find out who AmirM is. (recently realized he was the creator but later banned from whatsbestforum)
    Last year I had a friend of mine who innocently submitted a Klyne headamp to one of his "free testing events"
    Despite express protest by the owner and Stan Klyne Amir posted his set of spectacularly bad results on his forum.
    Same deal, 60Hz noise that would have made a phono stage unbearable.
    I dont know Stan Klyne in person but I sure know his products. Used them in the 80s and have to say they are still the quietest out there.
    I am not a vendor and I dont profess deep knowledge. But I do know how to fix a lot of gear, build quiet line stages, and most importantly question the validity of a test when certain measurements are outstandingly bad and should be audible to the ear. Just couldnt keep my mouth shut and recently voiced my opinion related to this incident on 2 FB pages called "SF bay Area Audiophiles" and a more appropriately named page "Audio Bullshit" and that's how I realize the very aggressive fan base this Amir character has lurking behind the scenes.
    I think high-end audio is badly polluted with snake oil merchants pushing incredible tweaks, at least one of them is humorous about it (I think most know who I am referring to). But I think pseudo-science is WAY more toxic in comparison.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2019
  13. BeyerMonster

    BeyerMonster Guest

    Recently flipped through a few pages on that forum and wish I could have those 15 min of my life back. Sheer idiocy.
     
  14. HumanFly

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    As much as I like a good Alternative Science Retard bashing I have to say that my Jotunheim stopped humming after the grounding mod on there. It came to a point where I tried everything and I just accepted that there would be humming on everything over 9 o`clock on low gain. The kind that changes pitch when you touch the volume knob. Tried noise-killers, powerfilters, changing interlinks and powercables as well as moving everything around the house. Even unplugging every other device in the house. So eventually I came across this thread and did a rigourous version of the ground-mod. After taking the Jot apart I saw that the paint had already been taken off with sanding paper around one of the screwholes on the bottom. I did the same with all the other holes on both sides of the bottomplate. I also did the topbrackets where the aluminium shell touches the bottomplate. (Taking off more than just the paint around the holes.It`s not visible anyway.) My Jotunheim is deadsilent now (high-gain and silence up to 4-5 o`clock). Very happy with the result because I already loved how it sounds with the hum and now it`s even better. YMMV or even kill you if you screw it up.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I suspect that your humming came from somewhere else and that your sanding efforts that resulted in a fix were coincidental for several reasons:

    1) Your hum was audible. The hum was not even audible at -90db in the ASR measurements with a 2V output which would explode most headphones.
    2) Your hum tracked with the volume - this tells me it might have originated outside the Jot, from the source or a bad cable.
    3) Your ground contact was already sanded. If this is the case, sanding 15 other spots won't do anything more. It just doesn't work that way. And if it were a bad contact, you wouldn't know without measurements because hum at -90db can't be heard (see #1)

    There could have been million other reasons why you might have had a hum.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2019
  16. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    Considering point #2 I suspect that hum was not a grounding problem. I spent a lot of time trying to fix my two Nuforce HA200, it was a grounding problem that disappeared when I grounded both amps, configured as dual mono, through one chassis. Humming was entirely volume independent.
    I may also be prejudiced in favor of Jotunheim: I bought an "old" Jotunheim from @LetMeBeFrank and, unlike my other amps, it is death quiet even with the most sensitive IEMs. I use balanced input, always better option in terms of protecting against external interference, and the DAC BDA-1
     
  17. HumanFly

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    True. But nothing in my system is the same. Only the Jot remained. Everything else changed.
    Source changed. All the cables have been swapped, even the powercables have been upgraded because I was desperate enough to try that as a last resort. There was no difference between balanced and single ended. On top of that there was humming with nothing else connected but the headphones. And yes, I also tried different headphones and outlets in other houses. Now I don`t know enough to contradict your statement but it seems like a huge coincidence to me. The more because I had humming this morning, changed nothing but the sandjob on the Jot and when I put it back it was silent.
    One thing I can come up with is that the little bit of sanding that was there, was only on the inside. So if the screw was not tightened 100% and stuff got slightly bent, there might have been no contact.
    And please don`t get me wrong. I am just entering a datapoint. I really like my Schiit and I don`t want to change it for an O-Dac or a Topping a30.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2019
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    My concerns are with the deleterious effects, the mass hysteria, from borked measurements, or silly conclusions (i.e., stuff that cannot be detected by the human ear).

    It's easy enough to screw up DMM measurements with a bad contact in the probe. I also simply cannot give Emir the benefit of the doubt given stuff like his borked measurements of the Yggdrasil (different from 3 other independent measurements), and his obvious bias against Schiit ("reviewing" Bifrost 1.0 and refusing to measure the sigma-delta version of the Jot - misrepresenting / completely ignoring the exceptional measurements performance of the Jot as an amp).

    I don't know what was done in this case to troubleshoot the hum, but the first steps would have been to check cables or swap sources, maybe outlet ground. Not play with power filters or sand down the chassis contacts. After checking cables and source would be to directly contact Schiit support.

    We can see the harm that Emir has done here.
     
  19. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    No, not your fault. But poor chassis grounding wont cause this kind of humming. Might be DC offset on mains or bad ground on mains. Or maybe a bad trace or joint on the PCB that happened to snap itself into place during handling.

    I would have submitted an RMA with that kind of hum instead of attempting self-repair.
     
    Last edited: May 12, 2019
  20. HumanFly

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    Let`s just say I got really lucky! I didn`t break my Jot, didn`t die from electric shock and got rid of that hum.
    Maybe something is loose on the board and me handeling it fixed it temporarily.
    I don`t even care what fixed it, I`m just superhappy with the result!
    I have to say the Amir statement was a little hurtfull. I am totally aware of his Schiitbashing ways and I know he is wrong because I love Schiit dacs (and amps). But even broken clocks are right twice a day and this was something else to try so I did. None of the other suggestions had worked so far. And aside from buying a 5000 euro powerplant I tried them all.
     

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