More Disruptive Schiit (Vidar)

[fas42]

I did my own chip amp design some years ago, only 60W devices, but I made sure the power supplies were top notch for the job. These could pump out Big Sound, but they had internal protection which made nasty noises, or shut down, if you cooked them too much - in spite of the fact that the heartsinking used in this instance was quite robust - the point relevant here is that heavy duty rock at pounding volumes, and similar stuff, was never a problem; what triggered the protection was female operatic voices. They could hit a high note, with full vocal force, and hold it - this is getting mighty close to running some sine wave test signals through the amp, and pushed the temperature too high for the part.

[fas42]

The number of watts is pretty irrelevant - it's the quality of those watts that count. A totally competent 20W amplifier feeding reasonably sensible speakers will annihilate a monster amp claiming 100s and 100s of raw watts of grunt, in the SQ stakes, if the latter is poorly done. How do I know this? Because I've been here many times - listening to "mega" amplifiers doing a terrible job of getting the sound right ...

[fas42]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

 

How do you measure the Quality of those Schitt watts?

 

By listening to a system that was using that Schitt amplifier, and seeing how it behaved as the volume requirements were steadily upped. If it could go right to clipping for the particular speakers with no noticeable change in quality then I would give it a big tick - extremely few amplifiers are capable of this, most start 'compressing', or begin to make a mess of the treble.

[fas42]

21 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

what's quality mean in terms of looking at the waveform on a scope?

 

A way of doing it on the scope would be to feed an input signal consisting of a very high level bass frequency, combined with a pair of treble frequencies dramatically lower in level - and just see how those treble components fare as the volume was raised, into a dummy load perhaps. A dodgy amp would likely start injecting all sorts of IM from the treble input waveforms, at points along the bass frequency waveform

[fas42]

Ummm ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridged_and_paralleled_amplifiers#Bridged_amplifier

 

[fas42]

31 minutes ago, esldude said:

Now some small capacitance value would tune that out of the amp, but a shot in the dark value might not be a good idea.  Would be nice if Jason would give us an idea about how they have the output setup.

 

Pics of the board here, http://www.schiit.com/products/vidar - intelligent guessing might provide some insights.

[fas42]

32 minutes ago, mazuly said:

 

Good idea but how would I know if I need more power?

 

I have been running these speakers with the Rotel amp and have never needed more power since I can play them very loud and still no clipping or distortion (any louder and I wiould gert kicked out of my apartment )

 

I am looking for best sound quality and was thinking mono amps will porobbaly give me more separation and less crosstalk, XLR connection which would be less noise and of course more power.

 

Any comments?

 

Thanks

Maziar

 

The word I would use is "effortless" - most systems display a marked inability to go loud cleanly, irrespectively of what the labels on the amplifier profess - usually the treble starts to disintegrate, and the punch and sparkle goes bye bye. When one comes across an amplifier that is totally capable in this department it stands out dramatically, to me at least - the impression given is that there are no limits, that there is always headroom beyond the volume one is using. And this corresponds to the best sound quality - the system conveys the impact and intensity that listening up close and personal with live music making delivers.