Audio: Listen to this article.
Short but SWEET!
As many of you know, I have this hunting gene that I cannot turn off. But Schiit may have found a partial cure with their new Halo amplifier system in the Midgard amp. Halo operates only on the balanced headphone connection (needs separate grounds for each channel) by including the headphone drivers in the amplifier feedback loop. As I write this sitting in my office listening to the Squeezebox Touch into the Modius DAC via toslink. It is hard for me to concentrate; I keep stopping to listen to BT's 2016 untitled album, sometimes titled "_"
I know this album to the last beat, yet I am more immersed in the music. The clarity of the vocals on the track Artifacture reaches out and touches you. The beat of the music hits your ears with an impact that I did not think the HD6xx headphones could reproduce. The digital expanse BT creates is etched into my ears and brain, just WOW! As the music progresses to the track Indivisim, I feel like my brain is on an endorphin trip or watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind for the first time.
I use the Schiit Urd with their Syn in my multi-channel system. The combination gives new life to my CD collection, extracting 5.1 surround from a Redbook CD. When I am not listening to all the new ATMOS mix’s on Apple Music.
I moved the Urd and connected it via SPDIF (coax) to the Modius DAC. This launched my headphone listening to a new level. I have to rearrange the electronics so the Urd can do double duty.
I am stepping back to 1973 for Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells CD. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a “TBVO” @Josh Mound?? I digress.
Listening to the instruments roll into the mix is a wake-up call, even before my first cup of coffee. With the Halo output, each instrument stands out and flows into the mix, and I get a better sense of the engineering. In the last five minutes of Part One, each instrument is introduced and fades into the rest. The glockenspiel is so rad. And, of course, the Tubular Bells slam in there.
As the music fades to a single guitar, I feel the space around it as it fades to black!
The system is not fully tweaked out yet, but here is the current design:
Squeezebox Touch, Urd, Modius, Midgard, HD6xx balanced headphone cable. Pysst cables between the DAC and the AMP. There is an Allo Shanti power supply for the Touch and the Modius. And finally, my BX-5a M-Audio Studio Monitors!
My Lyrion Music Server runs on a Raspberry Pi 5 with an NVME drive for music storage that hangs out on the new 2-channel system I have designed. (More on that very soon)
And for the App-Centric folks on iOS, try iPeng for LMS
You can also use the touch as an endpoint if you run Roon.
Or spin a CD on the Urd!
This is “Good Schiit” at a great price. The Midgard is on my CASH list. Please Schiit more Halo’s for us!
Schiit Modius $229 | Schiit Midgard $219 | Schiit Urd $1299
Drop HD6xx $199 | Balanced cable for HD600 ~$30 | M-Audio BX-5a $300 | Allo Shanti $159?? | Glass Toslink cable $45
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