Bob, I have the Jotunheim as well . . . nice headphone amp (I have it just as the amp, no preamp or DAC added). Mostly though I prefer to use my PS Audio GCHA–just a magic amplifier for the ZMF Ori I use in that system. I got the Schiit when the GCHA had an issue. . . but I found a dot of blu-tac solved the issue I was having!
Craig,
Using the RCAs on the DAC is how I connect the Jotunheim. I also considered the possibility of connecting it via XLR on an unused input on the SG Pre.
Bob
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I’d used the headphone amp on my Stellar Gain Cell DAC, but once I traded up the Jotunheim seemed the way to go. Great performance for the price.
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I’ll definitely consider it. I asked the Schiit website’s chat bot what they recommend for an amp if I only needed single-ended input/output, listening through Focal Clears, and it suggested the next model down, the Asgard 3. But I also saw a YouTube review of the Jotunheim 2 that said it’s way worth the extra $120 over the Asgard, even if you never use the balanced inputs or outputs.
I’ve got some time to decide. The new DAC, preamp and XLRs have pretty well done in my available funds for now. 
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I know you don’t need more help Craig, but if you ever get that far I can also recommend the Schiit Lyr.
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The Schiit headphone amp suggestion are all good. That said, I’m going to recommend you check out the iFi Zen CAN and the JDS Labs El Amp. I connect directly from the RCA cables on my DAC. Both amps are excellent. JDS Labs only makes SE amps.
I appreciate all the suggestions for headphone access. After a lot of reading and viewing of various reviews, I’ve been in touch with the folks at Schiit and they’re digging up a black Asgard 3. It meets a price/performance point that’s comfortable for me.
So now that that’s settled, when I get home from our holiday travels tomorrow I’ll be getting back to listening to the Gold. It’s been playing continuously during my absence, and should be about 200 hours in by the time I get home. Then I can leave this headphone sidebar and get back to the point of this thread.
It’s now been a month since I took delivery of the Stellar Gold Preamp, and by my rough estimate, I’d say I’ve got maybe 300 hours on it. I still have those first bargain-basement XLRs connecting it to my Mk1, but thankfully the channel imbalance disappeared after some jostling of cables and components, as I mentioned here in previous posts. I’m waiting on delivery of a new pair from Morrow Audio that should arrive in another week or so, but in the meantime I’m carefully keeping everything as is, employing my “if it works, don’t touch it” philosophy.
Even with less-than-stellar (ha, ha) cables from my digital source, I’m hearing marked improvements over the previous setup. I imagine most of this is because of the new preamp, but it may be more complicated than that. By that I mean that I’ve changed both the DAC and the preamp in the last 45 days or so, but not at the same time. That might lead one to think improvement “A” could readily be attributed to the DAC, and improvement “B” to the preamp, but it’s not that simple. The Mk1 replaced the malfunctioning DSD Jr back in late November, so I only had a couple of weeks with that swap being the only change. But while I was hearing an improvement, to characterize the changes as “subtle” would be to overstate them. The differences were exceedingly slight. I’ll just be upfront here and admit it - if the Jr had still been working properly, I’m not confident I could have consistently identified it or the Mk1 in blind testing, without having had an extended period beforehand, living with each unit in the system. Whether my failure to detect obvious differences is the result of the limits of my system, the effects of my room, or even my aging ears, I can’t say. Or it may be confirmation of what I saw one video reviewer of the Jr say, back when it was new, that it comes within a hair’s breadth of the DSD (now Mk1).
Regardless, that set the stage for inserting the Stellar Gold Preamp into the system. I listened briefly for a few minutes here and there before I set up my server to shuffle through every track on its 4TB drive while we were away for the holidays. When we got home it had been playing for about 200 hours, so I figured it was time to sit down and listen carefully. Unlike with the DAC swap, now I was hearing some changes. I’d gotten a hint or two of the sound qualities during those few early hours of casual listening before we went out of town, but now it was kind of like the sound had blossomed. What I heard was a) even blacker backgrounds, b) greater retrieval of small detail, which allowed for slightly better-rendered textures of sounds, allowing c) voices and instruments to sound even more realistic. What really hit me hard, though, was sound stage creation and imaging. I thought my system was great at that before, but this was pretty amazing. Recordings that hadn’t demonstrated much in the way of solid imaging now did, and on the ones that had done so before, there was a greater sense of precision in the locations of sounds. Just unshakably solid.
The seemingly obvious cause of all of this is the preamp, since I hadn’t heard anything like these changes (qualitative or quantitative) when I had the old SGCD in place, and had swapped DACs, but I think there’s more to it than that. I suspect one of the improvements in the new preamp is its ability to “get out of the way” of the source components. I can’t articulate why, but I suspect some portion of what I’m hearing, big or small, is due to the new DAC, and the better preamp is now allowing me to hear it. Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe it’s all the Stellar Gold. All I can say is I’m extremely happy with the change. The improvement is as great in magnitude as when I upgraded my old B&K ST-140 to my M700s several years ago. The old SGCD has already made its way back to Boulder.
Bravo to @Paul and everyone at PSA who had a hand in developing this unit.
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Thanks, Craig! We’re honored. I just helped lead the charge and did a lot of listening. The bulk of your praise is deserved by the preamp’s visionary designer, Darren Myers. This was Darren’s best work to date (and don’t tell anyone but the precursor of something yet to …dang, I ain’t supposed to say anything). Never mind.
Anyway, this is Darren’s baby and he is rightly proud of it as he should be.
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Morrow Audio finally delivered my new XLRs, so I pulled the cheapo suspect cables this evening and inserted the new replacements. No channel imbalance issues. Everything’s where it should be and rock solid to boot. I started with an SACD of percussion that sounded just glorious:
Followed with the ‘09 remaster of Rubber Soul:
And a couple of bluegrass favorites - early albums from Sierra Hull and Alison Krauss:
Since I waited for the new cables to come before I inserted the new Schiit Asgard 3 (so I’d only have to tear into the system once), I still need to get out the headphones and give that a listen. But right now I’m having too much fun with the rest of the system.
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Craig, also a Morrow Audio cable fan here. I’ve got Morrow speaker cables and a couple power cables. Just decided to switch it up though from AQ XLRs and ordered Fidelium XLRs based on lots of positive feedback in this forum. Just curious, and I may have missed it; which model Morrow XLRs did you buy?
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Since I operate on a budget, I got the MA4s. I have the same series in single-ended connecting my phono preamp to the SGP. I’ve been a fan of theirs ever since my old favorite value cable company, LAT International, closed its doors when the owner died. I’d have used Morrows for the turntable, too, if that model VPI hadn’t come with a very nice pair of Nordosts included.
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Thanks for the response. I think my power cables are the Morrow MAP4 (bought for powered sub-bass amps included on my Goldenear Triton Reference speakers – which I still love!). I bit the big one with the Anniversary level for the speaker cables. I had also tried the Fidelium ribbon speaker cables, but in my system, I really preferred the Morrow over the Fidelium (although the cost to me was like 3X for the Morrow, and I’m sure the difference isn’t 3X, but I loved the Morrows so much I kept them instead.)
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I’ve heard further evidence of this recently. I don’t recall if I discussed this here (I know I mentioned part of this in another thread on streamers), or if it was only in the PSA Facebook group I belong to, but someone in that group asked me to compare the sound of the PST to the sound of my Aurender server. I’d done that before when the system contained the Gain Cell, and I hadn’t heard much of any difference then, and I was prepared to just say as much in response. But then I decided to do the comparison again, now that the new preamp was in place.
Comparing redbook CD playback and those same files ripped to the server’s hard drive, carefully matched for volume, I heard immediate and obvious differences, mainly a small upper bass/lower midrange emphasis from the Aurender/USB chain that wasn’t there at all in the PST/I2S chain. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it obscured detail a little bit. The disc playback was cleaner and more detailed, and more even in frequency response, to the point of sounding just a little sterile in A/B switching until I’d listen for a few minutes at a time. Doing that, I was able to hear that the sound was more accurate in timbre and generally more realistic. I’m not terribly concerned about the fact that these differences exist, as the Aurender sounds fine on its own, certainly good enough for me to fully enjoy the convenience it brings to the table. I’m more interested in what’s downstream of the DAC, which is now allowing those differences to be heard. I’m just super happy with this preamp. Bravo to Darren and everyone else involved in the project.
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Craig, if you haven’t tried it before, could I ask you a huge favor and compare the sound using the preamp and without the preamp but instead going directly from the MKI DAC to the amplifier?
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I am also curious about that comparison.
Glad to hear this was a cable issue and not the unit.
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If I ever decide to try that, I’ll be sure to post the results, but as it is, my curiosity doesn’t outweigh the incredible pain in the butt it would be to change those connections in my system. I don’t mean to sound dismissive of your request, but I don’t have any access to the back of the shelves, and the shelving unit itself isn’t moveable. Every change in components or cabling requires me to either pull stacks of heavy components partway out, and while supporting them with one hand, blindly fumble with the cables in back; or pull everything completely out one at a time and reassemble them all.
I hope you understand my reluctance. I agree with you that it would be an interesting comparison, but there’s a reason any new component or cable change sits in my listening room for several days before I can work up the gumption to install it.
No problem. My system is set up the opposite way. My rack is positioned for easy cable access. I’m sure it’s hard on them to be moving my cables around all the time but, due to cost, I’m limited to just two pair for now.
I have been most impressed with my MK ll, acting as its own preamp, in terms of refinement. The downside is the necessity to reconfigure everything to accommodate the analog side of my system. Paul believes that the right preamp can actually improve on sound quality over going the direct route. Not sure I’m totally on board with that idea especially without having a bunch on hand to test the theory out.
Yes, I’ve seen Paul’s comments on that question before. In fact, there’s another thread going on the forum (which you’ve probably already seen or even participated in) in which Al in particular commented that every time he tried his DACs as preamps and was pleased with the results, but then reinserted his actual preamp in the chain, he was surprised at how much better things sounded with the preamp. Unfortunately I just took a quick look for that thread and couldn’t locate it.
EDIT: here’s that thread: Preamp suggestions? - #12 by aangen
For me, I’ve never been able to avoid using a preamp because I have an analog source I need to be able to hear. Maybe if the backside of the boxes was more accessible I might be like you, and switch between setups as needed. But that’s not going to happen in this listening room, which is likely going to be my last. At least until the Big Downsizing for the retirement home, when the analog stuff (and probably even the silver discs) will have to be jettisoned in favor of streaming, and the facility’s piped-in “medication time” music.
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