NOT: Theory on the new Schiit

Yeah, or take the source interfaces (and their wires, USB, BNC, et al) out of the picture, and replace with a microRendu-like Yggdrasil daughterboard with Cat5 outlet for a completely computer-less DAC that runs Roon, accesses your NAS music collection, etc.

 

How long has multibit been around?

 

Basically decades. Some of the highly regarded multibit chips (pcm63 family) date back to the beginning of the 90's

 

Hmm....so is it accurate to think the Yggdrasil is the pinnacle or, maybe a more realistic assumption would be, the best multibit dac available?

 

Depends who you asks. Schiit is not the only company doing multibit dacs. Jason would tell you it's no use spending more. I know some others who think spending A LOT more money is worth it.

 

I notice an electrostatic amp isn't on this list, I wonder if that means you've changed your mind there? (although if that's the case then I don't expect a response)

 

The reason why I asked is because i'm wondering if one of the new projects could be an entirely new architecture being used in a dac. Maybe Yggdrasil is the absolute best performance they can achieve with the Multibit design and they want to try something new to see if they can achieve even better performance.

Just thought I would throw the idea out there.

I have absolutely no clue if this would even be possible but I thought it would be cool and very interesting if they were planning on doing this as one of their new projects so I brought it up.

 

This seemed absurd to me but then....

http://www.head-fi.org/t/784471/what-a-long-strange-trip-its-been-robert-hunter/855#post_12751387

It doesn't seem like a massive market to me but most electrostat amps are high-current DIY frankenstein monsters that cost a LOT. I remember Jason saying he didn't want to play with voltage that can seriously harm people or components. If they found a way to do it for cheap and there is some product in the wings (Sennheiser?!?!??!?!) then who the f knows.

Lemme roast myself right quick

 

How about Fulla 2 multibit...

 

Hah you would have to be schiitting me if you say that they can do a fulla multibit.

 

Some sort of Auto-EQ system I think is what it will be. Basically it EQs your specific headphone automatically to a given target curve.

 

This is sort of what I was thinking also -- some sort of signal processing doohickey -- although I feel like hints they've dropped about their "Manhattan Project" seem to be more along those lines, and I know the Aug 27 announcement isn't for that. So I guess I really still have no idea...

 

You all are insane.

 

I think a little insanity comes with the hobby.

 

I just read through the whole thread. Manhattan project wasn't the Modi 2 Multibit and isn't going to be announced at the Schiit Show. Whatever it is, if it's digital, and it's not a DAC, it has to do something pre-DAC, so USB/optical in and USB/optical out. Everyone saying it isn't DSP is silly. If it's digital in and digital out, unless it does literally nothing, it processes a digital signal by definition. What I wonder is which chassis it will go in, and therefore how enthusiastic are their potential buyers? Yggdrasil/Rag-sized? I'd be priced out for sure. Modi/Magni/Wyrd/Sys chassis, probably an instant buy for me.

My pipe dream is crossfeed, but I don't have a clue what that has to do with bluegrass. It's already been done in software for audio engineers, so not really "unprecedented in audio" either. Tuning the HRTF's filter and delay would definitely inspire discussion of presets, controls, and so on. Still, I don't think that's it. And as a consumer product, crossfeed would make more sense to do as a line-level preamp kind of thing so you could put crossfeed onto CDs, vinyl, a DAP's line out, and so on.

In line with the bluegrass comment, I'm siding with the people saying digital tube-ifier. In every genre of music, pure sine waves are awful. With acoustic stuff, the solution is instruments built to resonate at a lot of nice overtones. Early on with electric guitars, people noticed you add a lot of neat harmonics when you get the amplifier to clip a little. Electronic music is big on vintage analog equipment with technical quirks that happen to sound awesome. And then all of these inevitably go through tube amplifiers in a hi-fi system. Maybe humans inherently love extra overtones. I don't have a tube amp of my own, but I could believe that they can sound better than perfectly accurate solid-state.

I guess the Gadget could grab some samples, look at the frequency content, add in some extra harmonics of the peak frequencies, and maybe even hang onto samples for a while to add in later as reverb. Presets could be based on how certain tubes behave, since obviously they've rolled a bunch of tubes in their own amps. Controls might be the shape of peaks in the added harmonics, or how quickly they die off in the frequency domain.

That seems kind of uncharacteristic for Schiit, though. The specifications would be awful. THD: 30%. Still, it wouldn't steal any thunder (sales) from Yggdrasil or the Rag, and it would even synergize well with a flagship amp that can't run with tubes. That probably points toward it being an Yggdrasil/Rag tier thing, though. Poor folk could roll real tubes and compare with the LISST. But with the Manhattan project's Gadget released, those tube amps would for sure be obsolete.

And if they're actually going through all this trouble to replicate a tube sound digitally, I kind of want a Vali 2 now.

 

Excuse me for asking, but does Schiit have the software engineering expertise to pull something like that off in the time that they've existed as a company?

 

They do have Mike Moffat.

 

I'm sure all the Sonarworks users are flogging in line waiting for a Schiit-Box that does the same but requires awkward cabling etc.

A DSP box makes no sense to me unless it REALLY kills with features, like a platform of different installable/upgradeable/programmable effects.. and it includes tha megaburrito filter.. oh wait.. we already have MiniDSP, just doesn't have the filter..

 

I meant auto eq. All headphones have variances between units. An auto eq system could made Audeze consistent. It could also have a per song eq setting.

 

I don't know this stuff all that well, but doing a DFT on some data, messing with it, and converting the transformed data back into time domain would absolutely not be a groundbreaking feat of software engineering. TI makes DSP chips optimized for that sort of thing. If the Gadget is a digital tube sound, they could get the transform, bit-shift everything a few times to divide by 256, 4096, or whatever, then pad the array to bump it up an octave to the second harmonic, another fifth to the third harmonic, all the way to 20 kHz if they want. I don't think Schiit would do a general-purpose DSP box because it would be such a nightmare for end users to figure out. Tubes are something Schiit understands very well. So is a bunch of other stuff, of course, but the bluegrass hint seems like it has to be something related to resonance or harmonics somehow.