Do you believe this Schiit? I don't.

Kingsrule

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There is no way Schiit sold 65,000 units in 2017 let alone in their entire lifetime.......
 

JackD201

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Al M.

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There is no way Schiit sold 65,000 units in 2017 let alone in their entire lifetime.......

According to Robert Harley they did, as he mentions in his review of the Yggdrasil DAC (actually it's that number "per year", but the review was published in June 2017, so it's earlier numbers). I suppose he got the numbers from Mike Moffat. I don't have a reason to believe it's made up, but I'll be happy if you prove me wrong after some investigation that I assume you will be eager to carry out, given your skepticism.
 

Kingsrule

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According to Robert Harley they did, as he mentions in his review of the Yggdrasil DAC (actually it's that number "per year", but the review was published in June 2017, so it's earlier numbers). I suppose he got the numbers from Mike Moffat. I don't have a reason to believe it's made up, but I'll be happy if you prove me wrong after some investigation that I assume you will be eager to carry out, given your skepticism.

Actually I could care less but your voracious postings regarding all things Schitt leads one to be skeptical......
 

Al M.

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Actually I could care less but your voracious postings regarding all things Schitt leads one to be skeptical......

Ok, if that's all you got I consider this particular issue to be settled.
 

Pb Blimp

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If the OP is accurate in his claims and I have no reason to believe otherwise, it seems to me all this fuss about the name is out of place. The only thing wrong I see is the inclusion of a "c" and the extra "t". So they have a few QC problems with their dacs and can't spell....no big deal.
 

Al M.

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but your voracious postings regarding all things Schitt

And by the way, what's wrong with being enthusiastic about a product? Perhaps you could tell the folks on the SME 3012R thread to also post less 'voraciously'? Not that I would. Everybody is free to be as enthusiastic as they want.
 

Empirical Audio

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Let's get serious please, we are also off topic. A ground loop would not be fixed by changing one AES/EBU cable for another; you either have a ground loop or you don't. Think about it: you are saying a digital MIT cable can break ground loops with digital components - wow. It's like telling me I can break any ground loop by changing a simple power cord. So again, let's get serious. And read on, no issues with my Berkeley.

I am serious. The fact that you have hum is telling. A ground-loop could easily cause this problem and it could be fixed by changing the AES cable, particularly if you are right on the edge of poor signal integrity with one cable and not the other. Eliminating the ground-loop could make all cables work reliably.

Have you tried using other outlets for the DAC and transport? have you tried it without a conditioner?

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

ack

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I suggest you read the thread again, Steve N - you are responding to the wrong guy about something the original poster complained, quoting the wrong text. If you think HE has a ground loop - something I did not address, only the locking issue - then I would tend to agree with you, although I think Ken is a bit closer to root cause.
 

NorthStar

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Just to be clear; my comment regarding "not the best name for an audio company" is just that, a less than stellar name.

I own zero products from their company, so I know less than zero from personal experience.
The OP had a hum issue, asked us if we believe in their products.

I cannot answer that one because I've only read about their products from audio reviewers and saw some measurements here and there. I've also read comments from owners.
Some of their products measure better than others. Their products are not manufactured like high end jewelry, say like Accuphase, Classe, Audio Research, Esoteric, ...and they don't use some premium parts like in the Oppo 205 (top DACs), and they don't cost as much from other products like Boulder, Lamm, Kat, Empire, ... They are affordable for the masses, like Technics, Magnavox, Hitachi, Sansui, Pioneer. Samsung, Panasonic, Akai, Sanyo, ...

Still, the name is terrible, it sounds awful, worst than all the others above and worst than all the ones not mentioned in the whole world. ...The name, and the name only.

As for the hum issue; it can happen with lots of products and for many reasons.
First it's important to make sure that the internals of the product are solid...meaning well constructed without loose ends and bad soldering joints. You start there first, then you check everything else from the connections and power supply to the cables and electrical grid of your home.

Last, hire an electrical engineer and let him do his job.

P.S. Al, it has zero to do with you as an owner, and nothing to do with all the owners in the world.
It's a comment on a name, like a color, like grey on a rainy day above in the sky; it looks and feels like a chitty rainy day. That is all.
I made more money on rainy chitty days than blue sky sunny days in my life.
It's just what it is...comes with the job I performed.
 
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Al M.

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P.S. Al, it has zero to do with you as an owner, and nothing to do with all the owners in the world.

Don't worry, Bob, I didn't take your complaint about the name personally, I just wanted to express how I and apparently other people feel differently.

It's a comment on a name, like a color, like grey on a rainy day above in the sky; it looks and feels like a chitty rainy day. That is all.
I made more money on rainy chitty days than blue sky sunny days in my life.
It's just what it is...comes with the job I performed.

Totally understood.
 

morricab

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Apr 25, 2014
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Sounds to me like a ground-loop may be the culprit here. The transport may have bad signal integrity or a poor match to 75 ohms, making it sensitive to everything. This is really quite common. Saw it many times in modding transports for 10 years.

Also, if you are not using a 1.5m digital cable, you are likely getting reflections that add jitter.

Is the DAC and source plugged into the same AC outlet? Are you using some kind of conditioner? What about the preamp?

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Reflections will depend on the impedance mismatch, the length will impact the timing of the reflection and not whether or not it occurs. I had a situation in grad school with a mass spectrometer and 5 meter coax cables reflecting. When ions hit the detector they sent s signal to the scope followed by signal ripples that were a function of the cable length...longer cable, longer interval between ripples. We redesigned the interface circuit to improve the impedance match and were able to improve the return loss by over 30db using a $100k HP network analyzer to measure our test circuits.

A longer digital cable will then change the nature of the reflection but only the right impedance match will reduce it.
 

ack

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Reflections will depend on the impedance mismatch, the length will impact the timing of the reflection and not whether or not it occurs. I had a situation in grad school with a mass spectrometer and 5 meter coax cables reflecting. When ions hit the detector they sent s signal to the scope followed by signal ripples that were a function of the cable length...longer cable, longer interval between ripples. We redesigned the interface circuit to improve the impedance match and were able to improve the return loss by over 30db using a $100k HP network analyzer to measure our test circuits.

A longer digital cable will then change the nature of the reflection but only the right impedance match will reduce it.

Steve knows a lot more than what he writes over here. Your points - which are correct - are beautifully explained in great detail in this article of his https://positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm which is reference material
 

Al M.

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microstrip

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(...) A longer digital cable will then change the nature of the reflection but only the right impedance match will reduce it.

The length of cable will change the time pattern of the reflections, but also their amplitude in cables having losses. Matching impedance in nuclear electronics is a trivial matter - sometimes we needed to measure times in the range of the picosecond, reflections are not allowed!
 

ack

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Yes, good article. Reading it was one reason why I have a 1.5 meter cable.

Here's a very important point in Steve's article, at the very end, which people may gloss over:

Once the impedance is accurately matched and the transition times decreased, the Transport will become less sensitive to different digital cables, shorter cables can be used with confidence and the result is cleaner audio with better focus, definition and clarity.


As the article says, and as morricab pointed out, impedance matching all along the way is really the key here.
 

Empirical Audio

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Oct 12, 2017
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Reflections will depend on the impedance mismatch, the length will impact the timing of the reflection and not whether or not it occurs. I had a situation in grad school with a mass spectrometer and 5 meter coax cables reflecting. When ions hit the detector they sent s signal to the scope followed by signal ripples that were a function of the cable length...longer cable, longer interval between ripples. We redesigned the interface circuit to improve the impedance match and were able to improve the return loss by over 30db using a $100k HP network analyzer to measure our test circuits.

A longer digital cable will then change the nature of the reflection but only the right impedance match will reduce it.

There will ALWAYS be a reflection. No cable or connector is perfect. The question is how much of a reflection and does it occur when it does damage to the destination edge that is audible?

The reflection is less important if it occurs at a time at the destination when it's a "don't care". This is why the longer cable is advantageous.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
 

mountainjoe

Industry Expert
Mar 25, 2015
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There will ALWAYS be a reflection. No cable or connector is perfect. The question is how much of a reflection and does it occur when it does damage to the destination edge that is audible?

The reflection is less important if it occurs at a time at the destination when it's a "don't care". This is why the longer cable is advantageous.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Longer cable lengths typically help with reflections as they will introduce higher propagation losses - which improves the return loss. The timing of the reflections as to being on an edge or not is a periodic function that can happen at short or long lengths - it's just that the delay of the reflection has to be within a certain multiple of the symbol time of the waveform.

Cheers, Joe
 

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