Schiit Jotunheim impressions

I'll be more than happy to arrange for an European loaner tour if someone in Europe is willing to buy the amp used for the tour. That was the original agreement but the original buyer developed other priorities.
I'm sorry. I'm just not in a financial position where I can ship off $1299 worth of product for free and just absorb the cost.

On the positive side: With the recent trade agreement between Canada and the EU, there should be no import duties to pay. I suspect there's still VAT and perhaps a processing fee, but at least the trade agreement eliminates a large chunk of the import fees. The agreement went into effect last month.

Tom

 

I wasn't angling, @tomchr

Sadly, I'm not in a financial position where I can commit to buying a $1299 headphone amp that I haven't heard right now, either, without a massive wall of brainwashing.. err.. evidence from people I trust. It looks like a great bit of kit, I even like the minimal aesthetic, but it's not a punt I am ready to take. If I were stinking rich, you'd have already sold me one, though.

For now, I will remain content with my Jot for day-to-day SS duties.

 

That's what sent my Jot to the work office from the home office. Not a gigantic difference, but enough improved depth and layering on the HP-1 I borrowed to make me get one. The Jot still wins in value/$, though.

 

No offence taken. I just wanted to let everyone know that options for a European loaner still do very much exist.

Fair enough. It's a chicken-and-egg kinda thing. Which came first?

Tom

 

@Kattefjaes, I got my Jot from here. It has been owned by several SBAF members, thus highly possible an "old" version product. I too didn't find the treble annoying, even with my Grado SR80e. I understand why people decried the Jot as having a little "metallic" treble. It is just a character of this amp and the amp is transparent. This has been said so much that people forgot to mention that the Jot is a dynamic, versatile, and also sweet sounding SS amp to my ears - I use tube amps in my speaker system. After carefully choose music source (R2R dac preferred) and roll some interconnects, I couldn't describe the Jot has "metallic" treble. On the other hand, one could easily make the Jot sounds ear-bleeding, using a cheap Delta/Sigma DAC and an neutral / analytical headphone. That is not Jot's fault.
Most would agree that the Jot matches with HD650 very well, especially using the balanced output. It is easy to make a balanced cable using a Neutrik NC4MX plug and a 1/4 plug stock cable (the ~$20 stock cable is of high quality). The improvement over single-ended is significant to me. Now I am a happy camper of Jot owner. I may get a Magni 3 or some more expensive amps at sometime, because I can get bored and have the itches of "chasing different sound" but not because the Jot is out-dated yet or inferior.

 

I've lived with the Jot for a year now. Still very content with its synergy with the HD650 - even with the lowly dac module installed.

I leave it on at all times and prefer the balanced output in high gain. The Jot sounds a bit dry when cold and low gain is a tad too polite for my liking.

The speculation of a silent Jot revision would've grated my OCD in the past. Glad to be at that "good enough" point, with a decent all-in-one component and the trusty HD650.

 

I'm continuing to be impressed with the Jot's handling of my HD6XX. I picked up a Saga and tried the pairing, and while it did temper the headstage a bit and add some subtle coloration via tube-stage, I still prefer the straight Jot route. The Saga is very transparent, but for me the bass response was a bit off and I couldn't get past my thoughts that it was potentially doing more harm then good in the chain.

 

I've been running the jot for a couple months now. Here are some random updated thoughts. All impressions are with the hd650, balanced to the jot, using gen5 Bifrost Multibit.

For awhile there I started to get annoyed with the jot's treble - it had a "ringy" sound to it. I could notice this on strings and vocals. But at least for my jot, I discovered that the ringyness goes away on low-gain. And with that out of the way I started to be able to really appreciate how good the jot sounds. It gives depth to the music and has excellent imaging. The sound is somewhat liquid, but not so wet that strings don't sound right. I find it easy to get involved in the music with this amp.

Compared to Valhalla2:
Compared to the Valhalla2 with stock tubes, I prefer the jot. I don't like the stock tubes though - they are just too dry. However, compared to the valhalla2 with some EH 6CG7 tubes, it's tough battle. I can't say for sure which I like better. The jot has a less expansive sound stage, but at the same its imaging is nice enough that i like the staging fine. For most genres I think I prefer the jot. I may prefer the valhalla2 for classical chamber music (small ensembles). They both sound fantastic to me.

 

@schiit - If there was a silent Jot revision, just nod your head once.

Edit: Wait a minute, that's not going to work!

 

More Jotunheim updated thoughts - I would swear that whatever the treble steeliness was that i heard when i first got this amp is now gone, even on high gain. Either my amp has burned in or my brain has burned in. I haven't ever turned the amp off though. I think it's a great amp.

 

It's pretty hard to beat for the price, if you want an SS amp. With the usual SS caveats, I still enjoy mine for general audio duties (or I warm the tubes up for "foreground" music listening). It's hooked up to the balanced outs of my Gungnir Multibit, which is an easy and painless way to run.

I am happy with it, and can't see an obvious upgrade path, even if I felt like one was needed.

 

@lm4der I think both [edit: hardware] and brain burn in are at work, at least for me. Once I get used to the headstage, treble is less bothering even when the amp is cold.


Some other thoughts:
Jot is fast, fast enough that it can get away with coarse/unrefined microdetails in the highs and mids. In photography terms, details are over sharpened with radius > 1 pixel and you are looking from far away. If you can add some tubes to the chain and pixel peep (round off the edges), you might be disappointed at how much actual details are retained.

 

What are you using for your source? I could hear the treble "glare" with the built-in delta/sigma DAC module, but I'm now using a Gungnir Multibit, which is much smoother. I think that some of the harshness that people detected was due more to the DAC than the Jotunheim as an amp...

I also leave my Jot (and Gungnir Multibit) on all of the time. The Jot may sound a bit smoother when warm?

 

Yeah, I agree, the built in dac does seem to sound a little glarey. If that's a word. I'm using a Gen5 Bifrost Multibit, and that does a lot better.

 

You are relieved of duty for the day. Dismissed.

 

Many thanks for posting this, it's super helpful to get your views! And it's good to get established data points.

I think I have a relatively recent issue jot, as I purchased mine from Schiit in August. But I have no idea if mine is any different. When I first got the jot I thought the treble was a bit ringy, but per my posts, this diminished over a short time, and has been gone now for awhile. Also, as mentioned, it may have been that I was hearing this more with the built in dac. My usual listening rig is a Gen5 Bifrost Multibit, but I experimented with the built in dac just for fun.

I use a stock hd650 and also now the just arrived massdrop he4xx. imho, the jot synergizes really well with both of these hps, and i am very happy with this amp. i use it more than my valhalla2 with speshul tube sauce. just my $.02.

 

I think I mentioned this some time in the past, but the phase reversal trick makes the headstage less weird.

 

It's too bad that @schiit and @baldr can't stuff the equivalent of a balanced Modi Multibit DAC module into the Jotunheim, instead of the Delta/Sigma... It would be awesome to have the convenience of an integrated DAC/amp with the improved sound of a Multibit DAC.