Schiit Kara Review - Wow, this was unexpected

Just a quick update as it seems some break in did settle down the midbass forwardness of 4x gain. Now 4x is righteously vigorous with no more mild bloat; just perfect heft and punch now, for my taste. Mids on up are still a little forward from a soundstage perspective (not tonally, I mean), but no soundstage depth lost either; Kara doesn't fall victim to wall-o-sound-ness.

 

Have you given the headphone out a shot yet, would like to hear your thoughts.

 

Mine has been on24x7 since i got it 15 months ago…. It is a great pre, and is comporting well thus far, with Stjarna. Yin and Yang. Kara and Skoll are excellent, in a Spectral or older school Krell or even Levinson way. Loved the combo. But the Stjarna add since yesterday, is like shining a musical spotlight on the music.

With Kara. Best of both worlds. Plenty of drive, clarity, soundstage and purity. Proper SS done right, in my experidence. I don’t miss my DOA (unfortunately) Classe’ DR6R; I’m learning more about Kara the last two days with pure LP and Stjarna, than I did in the previous 16 months… thus far, it’s good.

 

Man, I love my Pi2AES -> Yggdrasil LIM -> Freya+ (6SN7, tho with RCA & Sylvania tubes) -> Vidar -> KLH Model 5

I'm actually a huge fan of the tubes in the Freya+, and I actually have a Freya+ N in my other system with Yggdrasil OG, dual Aegirs, Devore o/96. When I put the Freya+ in either of the SS modes, I don't love it nearly as much - and it's not just the gain difference, or at least I tell myself that. I really like the ability to tame the high end of my KLHs with the Vidar 1. I presume that Kara >> Freya S >> Freya+ SS mode, but the question is whether I'd invest in order to decide if I agree strongly enough about the amazeballs clarity that I'm willing to give up my tubes.

 

If anyone is interested in selling a silver Kara (I don’t care if it is forkbeard or not), I’m looking to audition one against my Freya S.

 

Well, I LOVE my SIlver Kara, but now that I’ve added black Stjärna, I need to upgrade it to Kara F. But, Schiit does’t change chassis during the upgrade. So I either upgrade it (and leave it Silver: $100 + bi-directional shipping), or I sell it, and buy a new Kara F in Black.

Hmmmmm. Maybe PM me…

 

So update. Turns out I can have my chassis swapped to black from Silver as part of the Kara FB upgrade, separate additional charge of $80 for the new cover in addition to the FB upgrade bit. In case anyone needs to know, you just put a special comment in the upgrade shipping instructions to swap to other cover and that you approve and acknowledge the extra charge that will apply. I don’t actually know yet if I get the silver one back, or if maybe I can just ship Kara back sans Silver cover, in which case I’ll have an extra silver Kara cover.

Schiit support was super timely in answering my previous questions

But, it’s going to look SO much better! LOL. I’m currently #35 in the upgrade queue