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Schiit Fans ?

StimpyWan said:
Jason has commented, on his Head-Fi forum, that all gear gets a burn-in test and listening check prior to shipping. He seems committed to his product and their purchasers, which is one of the reasons I buy from Schiit. Good sound for the price is the other. That said, I hope @krautmaster gets his equipment issues resolved asap...! :oops: :D
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You can watch videos of their "burn in" procedure: they put them on a rack, plug in electric power and turn them on and leave them sit for at least 24 hours, sometimes longer, but they have nothing hooked up to them to check the output, they are just idling.

It seems that if they sound checked this Freya+ they didn't install the tubes and check the tube mode, they probably just played it briefly in passive mode.
 
StimpyWan said:
I wanted a silver Freya N, but Schiit never produced them. Now, no more Freya N's either. While I admire Jason for not sitting on his laurels, I do feel that Schiit prematurely kills off some of their product. Good designs that didn't sell in the numbers hoped for. So, now Dead. Unfortunately that mentality keeps used Schiit prices elevated. Freya N's still sell used at near new cost. Bummer. :(
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I thought when they produced the N they were thinking they might be able to replace the + with it. They still have a ton of the 6n1p's, found now in the Buf and now they've moved to the 6ns8 in the +. I suppose because of supply or lower cost. Nobody seems very high on that tube.
 
krautmaster said:
You can watch videos of their "burn in" procedure: they put them on a rack, plug in electric power and turn them on and leave them sit for at least 24 hours, sometimes longer, but they have nothing hooked up to them to check the output, they are just idling.

It seems that if they sound checked this Freya+ they didn't install the tubes and check the tube mode, they probably just played it briefly in passive mode.
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This from Jason, so I know they try to catch issues before shipping:

"You guys know we have a serious QC procedure for all products, including instrumented and listening tests (yes, 100% instrument, 100% listening on ALL products), 24-hour burn-in, recheck, etc?"
 
fredgarvin said:
I thought when they produced the N they were thinking they might be able to replace the + with it. They still have a ton of the 6n1p's, found now in the Buf and now they've moved to the 6ns8 in the +. I suppose because of supply or lower cost. Nobody seems very high on that tube.
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those stock 6ns8s are low grade sound wise, imo.
 
fredgarvin said:
I thought when they produced the N they were thinking they might be able to replace the + with it. They still have a ton of the 6n1p's, found now in the Buf and now they've moved to the 6ns8 in the +. I suppose because of supply or lower cost. Nobody seems very high on that tube.
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My Stjarna tube phone amp uses four of the 6N1P tubes- Jason stated that they have about a bazzillion of the 6N1P's so he designed several pieces around that tube (particularly the Freya N, Stjarna, etc). These are pretty decent sounding tubes, but the octal 6N8S are nothing special.
 
Trays said:
What's wrong with the balance "control" built into Forkbeard?
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The balance control and three band EQ is built into my Forkbeard Mimir DAC, not sure if it is in the Freya F as I could not get it to play long enough to try out the Forkbeard features in it.
 
Trays said:
It will be cool if Schitt provides krautmaster with a "what happened" report on both the Freya+ and Wotan just for the curious here.

(By the way, I agree Schitt customer service is excellent.)
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I will ask them lots of questions ! My current thinking is that since the differential buffer and tube modes in the Freya were bad, it sent an abnormal output signal through my Lokius EQ (which then increased that signal) to the amp and it was more than it could handle. Luckily the Lokius, the LISST tube thingies, and my speakers were not harmed. The Freya was unusable right out of the box and likely was abused by the shipper. Malfuctioning tubes will likely be the first indication of mishandling.
 
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Trays said:
What's wrong with the balance "control" built into Forkbeard?
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Per the Schitt Talker on the websiie:

"No. The training data does not list balance control among the Forkbeard functions for Kara F or Freya+ F (unlike certain DACs such as Gungnir 2 or Mesh-equipped products). Those preamps focus on their relay attenuators for channel matching. For the latest details on a specific model,"
 
When I occasionally need balance control I use one channel of a Sys as an adjustable attenuator between the preamp and amp on the hotter channel. It’s dead quiet and 100% passive. You can switch turntables upstream of your phono stage with it. It’s such a handy little box.
 
Gigantic said:
I'm beginning to sour on my Schiit. I sent my Freya + to Texas twice last year and it is once again making a sharp "crack" ten seconds ofter it's powered off, meaning I've likely got another bad power transformer. My Skoll, which isn't two years old, has started to hum and I don't believe that it's simply forgotten the words, so that will have to go back to Texas, as well. Even if they don't charge for the repairs, the shipping will set me back a pretty penny and after so many repairs, I've begun to lose faith that the repairs will have any sense of permanence; I'll probably have to send them back again and again, and again and again. I can't afford that and at the current moment, I can't afford to replace them with something better, so I'm stuck with my schitty-ass, noisy Schiit.
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I tore into my system yesterday, trying to get to the bottom of the hum on the Skoll. I put on new forked spade connections on the ground line, it still hummed. figuring that it was a ground loop, I pulled everything out of the cabinet where my smart power strips were located and plugged the Skoll into another circuit. It still hummed. I tried my headphone amp and the hum did not quit. At my wits end, I opened the case to see if something was loose and saw that the ground stud was simply attached to the chassis, with no lead to the circuit board, which surprised me. Is that normal? Can you confirm, @krautmaster ?

Ultimately, I remembered that my AVR had a binding post for phono, so I ran a 6’ lead from the Skoll post to my Pioneer Elite SC LX502 and it is now dead quiet. It’s a stopgap measure at best. I reached out to Schiit- we’ll see if they respond on Monday. I’m under warranty until September 12.

With my Freya+, I have to switch it to passive mode before I shut it off so the doesn’t send voltage out through my system. They replaced the output transformer last summer, it’s frustrating to have to send it back again for the problem they’d supposedly fixed- I doubt they’ll comp the repair and although their repairs are extremely reasonable, it’s more than I can afford to spend since I’ve been critically ill for the past year + and haven’t had any income.
 
Yes, the post only grounds to the chassis, but adding a ground wire from the Skoll to your receiver is not unusual and perfectly fine- some systems just need that. Neither of my Skolls has ever made any noise at all, both are dead silent.

I did notice that when they made the Skoll with Forkbeard, they switched everything around- the inputs are now where the outputs used to be and vice versa, probably because some folks had issues with the inputs picking up noise from the power plug.

109_4320.jpg111. OG skoll rear 1920.jpg111. forked skoll 1920.jpg
 
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Same here regarding no hum issues at all with the Skoll. Dead quiet.

(Btw, I have always considered the ground connector on the back of phono preamps to be for a ground wire from the turntable, at least primarily.)
 
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Trays said:
Same here regarding no hum issues at all with the Skoll. Dead quiet.

(Btw, I have always considered the ground connector on the back of phono preamps to be for a ground wire from the turntable, at least primarily.)
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Yes that what it is for, but it is also useful to get rid of a ground loop by connecting another wire to the amp ground.
 
Trays said:
Same here regarding no hum issues at all with the Skoll. Dead quiet.

(Btw, I have always considered the ground connector on the back of phono preamps to be for a ground wire from the turntable, at least primarily.)
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it is, but my phono cable is less than a meter long and the TT is a little more than 2 meters from the AVR, which was the only other ground post. Rather than move everything around, I figured a lead to that post would either establish a ground or it wouldn't. It did. The next option would be to pull everything apart and reconfigure, which was no easy feat considering I have a TT, pre, preamp, DAC, CD Transport, AVR, DSP and 6 mono amps in my setup, with smart power strips buried in a cabinet. The final option would have been to spend money I don't have on power treatments and ground loop isolation devices.

Luckily, a lead to the grounding post on the AVR worked.
 
So the replacement Freya+ arrived this afternoon and it plays... PERFECTLY... even the cheap Russian 6N8S tubes sound half decent (they sound like my Russian reproduction Tong-Sol 6SN7 tubes that came with my first Freya+ years ago, but a bit warmer and pretty quiet too). From what I have been able to determine these are NEVZ tubes from the late 1960's (they have a "Pentastar" on the glass- made in Siberia !). At least all four of these have some getter flashing, the first set only had two with flashing, the two that had no flashing made the devils noise.

Schiit says the circuit board on the defective Freya was cracked and shorting between the front and rear tubes, and the tubes were junk. They believe it must have taken a swan dive from way up high during shipping to damage the tubes and crack the circuit board so badly. They are tossing a coin to see whether to put a new board in my Wotan or just send a new one (apparently they are tinkering with it trying to figure out what went wrong). Hopefully I'll get it back soon.

After I played the new Freya+ for 6 hours I put on some 3/4" tall rubber stick on feet, made a mark on the volume knob, and installed a set of socket savers to get the tubes up out of the case as it was running pretty warm reading120F on the case. With the tall feet and socket savers the case is now reading 92F (tubes are still 140F)

001.jpg003.jpg004.jpg008.jpgNEVZ 6N8S tube.jpg
 
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Wow, that was a fast turnaround, with a happy ending:) I've been following this thread with interest
 
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