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Should I go Schitt?

B

bencho

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 15, 2007
Messages
2,093
Hello!

I just recently moved from an Essence STX to the Impact VII's SupremeFX II... and I have huge regrets in the audio department :(

I'm going to maintain the mini ITX build for now but would like to retain some of the great sound I had previously... would the Schitt Modi 2 be the best way to do that? I use my A5+'s 99% of the time and my headphones 1% of the time.

And I guess I can add a Magni 2 later on when I start using my headphones again?
 
You could also try out the O2 DAC and then the O2 amp later on. Or the O2 DAC/AMP combo, which you can customize to have DAC outputs.
https://www.jdslabs.com/products/48/o2-odac-combo-revb/

Bit pricy though. It's a bit more expensive than Schiit's stuff. I have a Mayflower one.

Incidentally... does that sound card not fit in your case somehow? Seems hard to believe, because if you can't fit that in there, then I don't know where the GPU is at...
 
The Modi is great. You can also occasionally score used high end dacs on places like head fi and audiogon.
 
... Does no one on here seriously have (or has tried) an O2 DAC or AMP? >_>

Well whatever. They're well reviewed, but I suppose that considering that Schiit likely has a better warranty, not many people are just gonna hop on. Don't blame you.
 
The O2 DAC is a little more expensive than the SCHITT combo. I'll have to decide if I want to just drop the capital now or regrets later lol.

Anyways, how does the Essence STX stack up against the O2 and Schitt?
 
First off you really can't go wrong with anything from Schiit. I own every DAC they have except a Gungnir MB.

Without knowing your ears and what headphones your talking about a modi DAC easily will beat any on-board sound. The price/performance is good in their line. Assuming you're running Windows make sure you use the USB driver from Schiit. Your could use the digital outputs from your built-in so long as you have it setup for BitPerfect output. You'll get no audible difference using either unless the on-board is sheilded with way paper. Overall I'd suggest sticking with USB.

The only one I would say is an even better value is the Bifrost but it is more expensive and your transducers(speakers/headphones) must also be of high enough quality to need the added clarity. Your A5s are of about the same class as a modi so I'm not sure you'd get much of a gain. A good rule is your transducers should always be the most expensive part of a stack.

To more directly give you advice - go with the modi, its less expensive whrn all you need is RCA right now to hook into your A5s. If you go with the O2 you'd be buying a DAC/amp when you already stated you don't use your headphones much. So when you decide you want to use them you can pick up a headphones amp at that time.
 
Makes sense.

I have DT770s, but I don't really use them much. I knew I was downgrading on the audio but didn't realize how bad it would be because I've had my STX for years now.

Sounds like I should just get the Schitt for now... but I don't believe anyone has stated the "performance difference" between the Schitt and the STX....
 
maevethp said:
To more directly give you advice - go with the modi, its less expensive whrn all you need is RCA right now to hook into your A5s. If you go with the O2 you'd be buying a DAC/amp when you already stated you don't use your headphones much. So when you decide you want to use them you can pick up a headphones amp at that time.
Click to expand...

The O2 does have a standalone DAC version.
https://www.jdslabs.com/products/46/standalone-odac-rev-b/
You can choose RCA as an output type, though honestly if you wanted to save some money it's not hard to to go 3.5mm-> <whatever you need>.

As far as the sound card, does it matter how well it measures when you can't use it?

From what I've read online, most people don't seem to notice much difference between the O2 and Schitt DAC as it is. I mean the O2 was made by some guy that was overly discerning and unsatisfied with everything else for the price (or maybe he just hated Schitt; there's some bad blood between them), so he went out to make a statement. Overall the O2 probably measures a decent amount better in testing, but it's hard to say whether it's better for your purposes. Since Schitt probably has a better warranty and is slightly cheaper, I doubt you'd lose much by going to that option. I just felt like getting an O2 because I thought it was neat, and there was a Massdrop for it going on. I was only putting it out there as an option.
 
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I have a schitt valhala headphone amp. drives my sennheiser hd 650s very nicely. Best way to listen to music. I haven't tried their other gear though.

I'm not using a Teac AI-101DA for my PC audio.. loving it
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
I mean the O2 was made by some guy that was overly discerning and unsatisfied with everything else for the price (or maybe he just hated Schitt; there's some bad blood between them), so he went out to make a statement.
Click to expand...

I don't think the O2 amp & DAC was the result of what happened with Schiit but I'm not sure since I never followed it's development other than it was a basic objective amp and DAC combo with no audio woo snake oil bullshit. The Schiit vs NvWavGuy is basically NvWavGuy noticed a flaw in one of Schiit amps that could damage some expensive headphones and pointed it out on Head-Fi. Schiit denied it and the Schiit band wagon got NvWavGuy banned from Head-Fi where Schiit is a major sponsor. Eventually enough people started noticing the flaw and got Schiit to admit their mistake but the damage was done. You can read about it here (at least from NwAvGuy's POV):
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html

I'm personally inclined to side with NwAvGuy since I long ago came to conclusion that Head-Fi is one of the absolute worst offenders online of pushing ridiculous lies and bullshit in the audio industry by exploiting people's ignorance on how audio works.
 
I just switched from a asus xonar stx to schiit modi/magni combo a really love it so far. It also keeps up very well in gaming audio
 
I personally use a rev.B ODAC from Massdrop. I'm very pleased with it. Audio quality is excellent and I really like that it just works out of the box with no additional drivers to install. Its how plug and play should work. I opted to go with the ODAC instead of the combined DAC/AMP since, like you, I have speakers but (currently) no headphones for my desktop. Its currently feeding a TPA3118-based stereo amp connected to passive Pioneer speakers
 
I found the Bifrost to be analytical as hell, which is weird since I paired it with a tube amp (Valhalla).
 
Megalith said:
I found the Bifrost to be analytical as hell, which is weird since I paired it with a tube amp (Valhalla).
Click to expand...

The bifrost, especially the uber version is a great DAC that really punches above its price point. I run a Bifrost Uber as a secondary DAC to my Yggdrasil. The yggy is a fair bit better when the source demands it but for 99 out of 100 things out there they are basically identical.

I've listened to the Valhalla a few times and didn't really find it had the warmth you'd usually associate with tube amps. I did find the Lyr 2 with stock tubes did have some of the warmth. The LISST tubes were an interesting experiment as well but obviously the warmth was lost.

I right now run for headphones a Cavalli Liquid Carbon which is solid state but does handily beat the pants off the the Lyr 2 even with tubes. It is however fully balanced to the Lyr's single ended setup.

That being said right now my Lyr 2 has been demoted to just being a preamp for my speakers as I am in the market for a new preamp.

To address the rest of the thread - the ODAC is a great entry level DAC that is absolutely parity of the Modi. To some ears one will sound better while to others the opposite will be true. You really can't go wrong with either in that price range.
 
maevethp said:
I right now run for headphones a Cavalli Liquid Carbon which is solid state but does handily beat the pants off the the Lyr 2 even with tubes. It is however fully balanced to the Lyr's single ended setup.
Click to expand...

Right now I'm running the Cavalli Liquid Carbon + Schiit Gungnir MB all balanced out and it is heaven. I also own an Asus Essence STX and have for years. The Essence is no slouch for great audio at a lower cost. The biggest difference I've noticed between them is the Cavalli/Gungnir MB's level of detail and instrument separation is insane. The Liquid Carbon is quite remarkable. I didn't expect it to have that much of an impact. I'll continue to use the STX downstairs with the JBL 308's.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I don't think the O2 amp & DAC was the result of what happened with Schiit but I'm not sure since I never followed it's development other than it was a basic objective amp and DAC combo with no audio woo snake oil bullshit. The Schiit vs NvWavGuy is basically NvWavGuy noticed a flaw in one of Schiit amps that could damage some expensive headphones and pointed it out on Head-Fi. Schiit denied it and the Schiit band wagon got NvWavGuy banned from Head-Fi where Schiit is a major sponsor. Eventually enough people started noticing the flaw and got Schiit to admit their mistake but the damage was done. You can read about it here (at least from NwAvGuy's POV):
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html

I'm personally inclined to side with NwAvGuy since I long ago came to conclusion that Head-Fi is one of the absolute worst offenders online of pushing ridiculous lies and bullshit in the audio industry by exploiting people's ignorance on how audio works.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I've read that blog before. I think it's really pathetic the way this thing played out. The problem is no one knows whether he really did threaten Head-Fi or not. There are no logs of anything going down either way on the forums. The only people that have access to that are the administrators. For all we know any private correspondence has long been cleared out (or frighteningly enough, it could even be forged). The whole thing is under the rug now, but it's just sad. The fact of the matter is that there ARE headphones that have been killed by Schiit, though. Thanks for reminding me, I think that's another good reason I stayed away from Schiit. I've been fine with my O2, and I'm happy to report that it's never fried my earphones (which means nothing considering the relatively low incidence rate of the original issue anyway).

What I can respect is that he built his own system. An open source one, free for anyone to criticize and pick out the issues and even improve upon. It's kind of neat. Of course I don't know if he really is making some money off of this on the side, but who knows?


Long divergence here:
I agree with you regarding the whole snake oil thing. The thing is, people can like deliberately inaccurate sound. Liking the way something sounds is about as subjective as it gets. So when you see something that says "oh this sounds great, it punches well above its price point, etc etc etc"... who the heck knows whether it actually does or not? Everyone's ears are different, as is the mind processing their input. That's why you have to look for hundreds of corroborations before you can say that "hey, maybe this is a good value." But even then, how do you know you're not simply taking a subset of individuals who are either not critical enough listeners to tell whether something sounds "good", or just have a predilection towards the sound signature of said speakers? The only objective listeners are computers. But frequency response charts don't show the whole thing, either. It takes a while before the real engineering types get involved and try to test everything accurately, and/or take the whole system apart and try to figure out why everything behaves the way it does. Most listeners telling you their "X" or "Y" setup is good are like people going "I like purple a lot, and I think this purple sweater punches well above its price point. The indigo one you're using at the moment is a bit worse in my opinion." Or maybe "I like this super purple that costs a few thousand, and it's worth every penny. It's the purplest purple I've ever tried." >_>

Double blind testing isn't the answer, either. I think it has its own set of issues that keep it from being valuable. Most of the issue involves us being humans, which are inaccurate measuring devices to begin with. To me this was an issue in the validity of flac vs MP3 testing, because the fact of the matter is that the flac version IS more accurate. The test should end at "can you tell a difference between the two at all?", not essentially "which sounds better?" Likewise, with double blind speaker tests, asking which one sounds better is meaningless for the same purposes. What's defined as "better"? More accurate or neutral? If that's the case, then objectively there should be measurements as to which one is better beforehand. The only thing you can measure is whether people can actually tell the difference.

What I can respect, also is that the O2 was made for measurements first. That is regardless of my tastes, objectively it should be better. Can't say that for many things in the audio world.
 
st4rk said:
That's what I figured. But I always liked the warm blanket of an EQ :)
Click to expand...

If you use a PC setup you can use EqualizerAPO with some GUI plug ins if you want Graphic EQ style (default is PEQ) with any DirectSound player which pretty much everything. For WASAPI or ASIO output you need JRiver for a player/DSP. For hardware there's miniDSP products.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
Probably because most occult style audiophiles consider EQ to be a desecration to the holy purity of the signal.
Click to expand...

It's not quite that serious but in general the idea is more hearing what the original mixer/artist intended us to. With live recordings there is also an idea of being able to hear the room. Sending the signal through addition DSPs or EQs can mess with that potential. This goes back however to the fact that your audio will never sound "better" than your source. When I say better its more along the lines of objectivly more accurate to the original recording.

Many people prefer gear that intentionally colors the sound such as Bose or Beats.

If you like what your listening to them great, if its inexpensive even better. No audiophile has a desire to purely spend money, they just have a quest. Just like many others do with other hobbies. To them its no more ridiculous to them than it is HardOCPers spending thousands in SLI setups.
 
|Tch0rT| said:
I don't think the O2 amp & DAC was the result of what happened with Schiit but I'm not sure since I never followed it's development other than it was a basic objective amp and DAC combo with no audio woo snake oil bullshit. The Schiit vs NvWavGuy is basically NvWavGuy noticed a flaw in one of Schiit amps that could damage some expensive headphones and pointed it out on Head-Fi. Schiit denied it and the Schiit band wagon got NvWavGuy banned from Head-Fi where Schiit is a major sponsor. Eventually enough people started noticing the flaw and got Schiit to admit their mistake but the damage was done. You can read about it here (at least from NwAvGuy's POV):
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html

I'm personally inclined to side with NwAvGuy since I long ago came to conclusion that Head-Fi is one of the absolute worst offenders online of pushing ridiculous lies and bullshit in the audio industry by exploiting people's ignorance on how audio works.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much the gist of what happened from what I can tell.

I came to the same conclusion you did - NwAvGuy seemed to be the more credible party involved. There was/is some shady stuff going on at Head-Fi with sponsors' products.

I also recently built my own O2/ODAC, which was a fun project and is worth looking into if you like doing that sort of thing.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Long divergence here:
I agree with you regarding the whole snake oil thing. The thing is, people can like deliberately inaccurate sound. Liking the way something sounds is about as subjective as it gets. So when you see something that says "oh this sounds great, it punches well above its price point, etc etc etc"... who the heck knows whether it actually does or not? Everyone's ears are different, as is the mind processing their input. That's why you have to look for hundreds of corroborations before you can say that "hey, maybe this is a good value." But even then, how do you know you're not simply taking a subset of individuals who are either not critical enough listeners to tell whether something sounds "good", or just have a predilection towards the sound signature of said speakers? The only objective listeners are computers. But frequency response charts don't show the whole thing, either. It takes a while before the real engineering types get involved and try to test everything accurately, and/or take the whole system apart and try to figure out why everything behaves the way it does. Most listeners telling you their "X" or "Y" setup is good are like people going "I like purple a lot, and I think this purple sweater punches well above its price point. The indigo one you're using at the moment is a bit worse in my opinion." Or maybe "I like this super purple that costs a few thousand, and it's worth every penny. It's the purplest purple I've ever tried." >_>

Double blind testing isn't the answer, either. I think it has its own set of issues that keep it from being valuable. Most of the issue involves us being humans, which are inaccurate measuring devices to begin with. To me this was an issue in the validity of flac vs MP3 testing, because the fact of the matter is that the flac version IS more accurate. The test should end at "can you tell a difference between the two at all?", not essentially "which sounds better?" Likewise, with double blind speaker tests, asking which one sounds better is meaningless for the same purposes. What's defined as "better"? More accurate or neutral? If that's the case, then objectively there should be measurements as to which one is better beforehand. The only thing you can measure is whether people can actually tell the difference.

What I can respect, also is that the O2 was made for measurements first. That is regardless of my tastes, objectively it should be better. Can't say that for many things in the audio world.
Click to expand...

You make a lot of good points here, and I agree with most of it.

Regarding double blind testing, I don't think the point is to determine which of two things is better. The point is simply to determine if we as humans can tell a difference. NwAvGuy gets into that a little bit on his blog - confirmation bias. If people spend a lot of money on something, or hear something that costs a lot, they're inclined to think it sounds good. Double blind testing can identify whether there is even a tangible difference, regardless of which is "better."

As far as NwAvGuy making money off the O2/ODAC, he published the design under an open source license. As such, if he is making money off the design, it's due to the generosity of the companies that are selling his design, not because they have any obligation to pay him anything. The interesting part of the whole saga is that he vanished a few years ago, and nobody has heard from him since.
 
maevethp said:
It's not quite that serious but in general the idea is more hearing what the original mixer/artist intended us to. With live recordings there is also an idea of being able to hear the room. Sending the signal through addition DSPs or EQs can mess with that potential. This goes back however to the fact that your audio will never sound "better" than your source. When I say better its more along the lines of objectivly more accurate to the original recording.

Many people prefer gear that intentionally colors the sound such as Bose or Beats.

If you like what your listening to them great, if its inexpensive even better. No audiophile has a desire to purely spend money, they just have a quest. Just like many others do with other hobbies. To them its no more ridiculous to them than it is HardOCPers spending thousands in SLI setups.
Click to expand...

I agree with your assessment, but I think it gets interesting when you consider that many well regarded audiophile quality headphones don't actually have a very flat frequency response. Grados for example, are well known for this, and they're also well loved in the audiophile community. I think Grado absolutely makes a better product than Bose or Beats, but the fact that they color the sound and are also regarded as an audiophile product muddies the water regarding EQ and audiophile products. Tubes color the sound too, and a popular audiophile hobby is tube rolling - swapping out different vacuum tubes to achieve the desired sound signature.

Even some of Sennheiser's offerings are generally considered to be some of the most neutral available, but are differentiated by their frequency response. The HD650 is regarded as putting more emphasis on the bass than the HD600. What's the difference between using the HD600 with an EQ to add emphasis to the bass, or using the HD650 with an EQ to de-emphasize bass? I don't know.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Long divergence here:
I agree with you regarding the whole snake oil thing. The thing is, people can like deliberately inaccurate sound. Liking the way something sounds is about as subjective as it gets. So when you see something that says "oh this sounds great, it punches well above its price point, etc etc etc"... who the heck knows whether it actually does or not? Everyone's ears are different, as is the mind processing their input. That's why you have to look for hundreds of corroborations before you can say that "hey, maybe this is a good value." But even then, how do you know you're not simply taking a subset of individuals who are either not critical enough listeners to tell whether something sounds "good", or just have a predilection towards the sound signature of said speakers? The only objective listeners are computers. But frequency response charts don't show the whole thing, either. It takes a while before the real engineering types get involved and try to test everything accurately, and/or take the whole system apart and try to figure out why everything behaves the way it does. Most listeners telling you their "X" or "Y" setup is good are like people going "I like purple a lot, and I think this purple sweater punches well above its price point. The indigo one you're using at the moment is a bit worse in my opinion." Or maybe "I like this super purple that costs a few thousand, and it's worth every penny. It's the purplest purple I've ever tried." >_>
Click to expand...

The subjective stuff, yeah fine if people like tubes, vinyl, or play with EQ go right ahead do what you want. I just have a problem with cables or other equipment that is crazy expensive with marketing mumbo jumbo saying it improves X, Y, and Z when more than likely it's no different on an audible level than the el cheapo Home Depot or Monoprice cables. There's tons of it and it reminds me of faith healers and patent medicine charlatans, selling people lies through their ignorance by subjective pseudoscience marketing lingo that appeals to emotions.

Regarding Frequency Response charts not showing everything, yeah they don't but there's other charts/graphs that do such as waterfall, group delay, RT60, and impulse response etc. Most people just focus on the FR graph and forget the rest, though some aren't particularly helpful for headphone users, more for places where the room influences the sound more.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Double blind testing isn't the answer, either. I think it has its own set of issues that keep it from being valuable. Most of the issue involves us being humans, which are inaccurate measuring devices to begin with. To me this was an issue in the validity of flac vs MP3 testing, because the fact of the matter is that the flac version IS more accurate. The test should end at "can you tell a difference between the two at all?", not essentially "which sounds better?" Likewise, with double blind speaker tests, asking which one sounds better is meaningless for the same purposes. What's defined as "better"? More accurate or neutral? If that's the case, then objectively there should be measurements as to which one is better beforehand. The only thing you can measure is whether people can actually tell the difference
Click to expand...

Double blind testing is a pretty standard scientific method for trying to eliminate subjective biases and proves it's worth often in the medical field. This isn't directed towards you but I've always found it amusing that it's good enough to find effective drugs and treatment for many serious ailments and conditions but not good enough for audio testing... I do acknowledge that DBT is difficult and tedious due to listener fatigue.

maevethp said:
It's not quite that serious but in general the idea is more hearing what the original mixer/artist intended us to. With live recordings there is also an idea of being able to hear the room. Sending the signal through addition DSPs or EQs can mess with that potential. This goes back however to the fact that your audio will never sound "better" than your source. When I say better its more along the lines of objectivly more accurate to the original recording.
Click to expand...

That was my attempt to be humorously offensive. In regards to headphones I usually don't mess with EQ with them. However regarding speakers, well nothing fucks up the purity of the signal worse than the room the speakers are in. People get too hung up on altering the line level signal yet completely forget the room can excite modes or cause nulls which is way more damaging than say using a PEQ to reduce a peak by 4dB @ 40hz to be flat as an example. The room often skews it and EQ can help if used properly, like reducing peaks. EQ isn't about sounding better than the source, it's about taking out what the room adds and room treatments can go further.
 
^^^ such truth. The room has an unbelievable impact on what you're hearing, as well as the setup and position of your speakers. Flat, unaltered, straight output from source is ideal as you will hear the music/track as it was intended...assuming your speakers are up to par. The distance the speakers are from the wall your desk is against, the angle of the speakers, the height, the distance a part, the distance from you, can make quite the difference. The floor your room consists of, the walls, the geometry of the room, all impact your listening experience. Sometimes it's not the hardware that's the problem, but the setup and environment.

anyway


bought a schiit modi 2 DAC, hopefully worlds better than Dell's onboard bullshit.
 
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