This Schiit is pretty decent

What is there to be said about Schiit that hasn't been said by basically anyone that has ever heard their gear. It punches way above it's price range. I'll be comparing this directly to the Apple USB dongle as it's a great, clean, baseline to compare to. Every built in DAC/AMP will sound different on phones or laptops that have them still fit in, so it seems like a fair comparison to something people have heard, and are cheap to obtain, and my personal baseline for portable audio on the cheap.

R2R on the go!

Something a bit different coming from me here, but this is a portable DAC/AMP. I'll have to review this as an entire unit as the DAC and AMP can't be separated unlike most of what I look at. It's also not a Delta Sigma, so this is going to be a bit longer than usual. I'll try to break it down as far as I can, because this one is for sure not something everyone will like, but it is wonderful in ways that nothing else I've owned has been able to do.

This may be cheap, but this Schiit isn't shit

So you just got your first set of decent headphones and need an amp, but you don't know what to get. If it's under $500, and you aren't looking to break the bank, I can't recommend this enough.

Why do I need an amp?

Everything that makes sound needs an amp, but why a dedicated amp is probably what you meant. Without being pedantic, this is the part of the audio chain that takes the sound from the very quiet "line level" and brings it up to audible volumes. The amps job is to give your headphones both the voltage, and current they need to not only get loud, but have enough power to control the driver tightly so it can make more than one note at a time. Unless you like hearing only one sound at a time, and not something as complex as music, this becomes important.

We went really fast

Vzbot was great. It really was. Speeds and feeds were off the charts compared to my Switchwire, or even a fiend's Trident. This machine has been as much of a learning experience as Switchwire was, even though it wasn't my first printer. I built it to be as simple as possible. Less moving parts, less features, less QOL. The bare minimum. I knew that I was going to blow things up. Break them, change them, not be happy with this and that, so I went minimal to leave it as a playground, and it became one.

Time to go really fast

I spent quite a bit of time designing modifications for Vorons, and couldn't really agree with their limits and bad design choices. That lead me to looking for a better base printer design. I stumbled onto Annex and Vzbot series printers, and for cost reasons alone, I decided that a Vzbot 330 scratch build was what I was insane enough to build.

Speedy boi update

I've been learning some CAD to start planning. I'm leaving the design to be ready for 48v steppers, so they will be shown, though may take a cuple of iterations to actually include. So far I've got the carbon fiber gantry modeled, as well as a backpack to relocate all of the DC electronics to, banishing the 24/48v AC power supplies and SSR to the basement where they won't be touched. Also shown is the Mantis toolhead that will be pushing some massive plastic, as well as giving a much needed cooling upgrade over a single 5015 fan of the Stealthburner, not to mention the weight reduction. Note that the backpack won't be translucent, but it's impossible to see things if it's shown in black in the slicer, so bear with me on colours ect.

Time to go fast

While my switchwire has been a lot of pain, and fun, but mostly pain, I'm back at it. There's some things that I love, and hate about the switchwire, and while I intend to still use it, I think it's time to build something that not only addresses those problems, but goes faster. This is just a really rough writeup of my thoughts that will change over time, but is here to keep track of what the plans are, and how they change over time.

The plan

The current plan is to start with a Voron Trident kit from Formbot, similar to where my Switchwire started from, and modify it to hell and back. The Trident is a fixed gantry CoreXY printer, which is generally pretty fast, even compared to my Switchwire already, but the need for speed is a thing. Mods will be broken down into 4 categories. QOL, Speed, Quality, and Eventually.

This has been.... A journey...

I have submit for, and gotten, a serial number! I am now the proud owner of VS.288 and yes, the audio quality is bad, but I have no clue how to use Davinci Resolve.

I'm not dead

It's been a while since my last update. Life has been busy. Friends visiting from across the world, constant work on the Voron Switchwire, and the usual life things all keeping me busy. Content has been a bit light, but I have a backlog of things to talk about now that I have some free time thanks to the holidays, I should be able to get more content out. I don't keep a backlog of content to delay out posts, and would rather keep things as up to date as I can. I'll be posting an update on my Voron soon, and I hope this one was worth the wait. It sure has been an adventure for me, and it's still not over.

It moves!

After much much failure, I have it able to move. The Y belt seems really loose, near impossible to fix, the gantry is a bit stiff, but it's moving. I'm not going easy on this printer, and going for Voron speed right out of the gate the first print. It's by no means done. Enclosure is still not on, y belt is skipping, parts are missing here and there, but it can at least print the rest of it's upgrades if I tame it in. There will be at least a few more follow up posts as I'm looking into some upgrades that can solve some issues. So far I'm printing the Y belt mod found here. That should help me get better acceleration, but I'll need to wait to see until belts come in. The parts are printed. I also printed a temporary solution to not wanting to solder the bed connectors, which I think looks nice enough for now.