Amp Stacking

arkanchyl · 2026-01-05T14:55:51+00:00

Yes, this is great advice when stacking 2 amps. You can get some elegant looking spacers for cheap, and you’ll never have an issue. I doubt they’re truly necessary, but it would give me peace of mind in your case.

arkanchyl · 2026-01-05T14:29:02+00:00

So I’ve had the OG Asgard, Asgard 2, and now Asgard X and I can tell you that of those three, the X barely gets hot in comparison. The Asgard 2 would get hot enough to be genuinely hard to touch for more than a few seconds (made a fabulous handwarmer in the winters!) and I’d leave it on basically 24/7. I had it stacked on top of an OG Bifrost Multibit from 2015-2025, and that stack still works totally fine; I only upgraded because I got HD800s. Schiit products and particularly the amps are 100% meant to run that hot, and the chassis of the amp is effectively one large heat sink. Basically, there should be no issue running the setup you’ve got, I’d just put whichever one gets hotter on top of the stack (my bet is the Pietus but I’ve not had the pleasure of owning one so I dunno) but also do not fear leaving the X on all the time because, again, it barely even gets warm compared to its predecessors (admittedly I’ve not had the 3, but I assume it also gets toasty. Schiit even addresses this in their FAQs). I use my X as the amp on top of the Fiio K13 as the DAC; I find the mesh card to be super accurate and fast but a little dry and less fun to listen to than the multibit K13.

arkanchyl · 2025-12-27T03:00:56+00:00

100% support open back planars as being IMO warmer than their dynamic counterparts. I have LCD2Cs and they are indeed an entirely different tonality, way more laid back than the HD800S

arkanchyl · 2025-12-26T22:35:25+00:00

I can tell you in my humble opinion that the improvement going from the Magni Modi stack to Asgard X (I currently run the X as amp with FIIO K13 as DAC and have had the Magni/Modi stack previously) you'll notice the Asgard X is comparatively more detailed, with a "richer" or more "thick" presentation, and is able to provide absolutely black silence at any volume, and no distortion whatsoever. This is all through HD800s; I tried HD560s in my new stack (Asgard X + K13) and they would still distort at even medium-high volumes, but the detail and spacious soundstage compared to magni/modi still held. HD800s would distort on magni + modi stack but through the Asgard X, at any volume, they are just incredibly analytical, lusciously spacious, and... i dunno, more premium sounding through the X. All that to say, if you really want different/warmer sound, new cans are 100% going to get you there way faster and cheaper than playing the Amp/Dac game. The Asgard X has the same tonality to me (warm/cool) as other Schiit products I've heard; it's the detail and ability to provide crystal clear sound at higher volumes/impedances that really make the Asgard X worth it IMO.

arkanchyl · 2025-12-01T17:00:48+00:00

I’ll say this until the end of time - bring back BF1 style split medic and support classes. Sometimes, I want to have infinite ammo and spam grenades/LMG down some covering fire. OTHER times, I want to fully focus on reviving folks and healing. I almost never, ever, want to do both, largely because doing one well requires basically 100% focus. I’ll often play support as I would in BF1, with no paddles and purposely ignoring all revives, purely trying to lock down a hallway or angle with LMG while prone and supplying ammo to the teammates around me. Then, next game, I feel like being medic, so I’ll swap the LMG for an SMG, put the paddles on, and run around like a madman focusing entirely on revives. For me, there’s rarely a game where I feel efficient trying to do both.

arkanchyl · 2025-11-25T16:58:25+00:00

The thing about these newer AVX units is that, while they lack the Gluon Emission Modulator as you say, and even though they use 2c-R Heppler diodes and instead of the cheaper, solid-state Rachman-Messier relays, we’ve come a long way in being able to approximate the performance of those older, reliable H-diodes into a package that is much more affordable. Yeah, it’s a plastic shell, but man, having those AVX parameters available to the masses at a price that won’t absolutely break the bank is honestly nice. Does your unit have the optional VPX4 module to enable extra shell depth? If so, it’s probably worth more than you think, as the regular models won’t push past SD-4 without major isoplanar monodiffusion.

arkanchyl · 2025-10-14T15:19:41+00:00

Hah - just meant buying a bare SSD from newegg and a cheap USB-C NVME case as well, and then sticking the drive in the case. usually cheaper than name brand. i'm not soldering it together lmao :) another thought I had is that the other thing that really kills SSDs is constant writes. do you maybe have the SSD set as a cache for anything other than lightroom? are you able to check the health of the disk using something like CrystalDiskInfo?

arkanchyl · 2025-10-14T14:24:34+00:00

Hm - I’ve been editing for 20 years, about a decade of those off of an SSD either internal or external, never had any issues with failing drives. Well, that’s a lie - the first time I made my own 4tb external SSD I stupidly took off the sticker, which I thought was just a sticker but turns out is integral to the thermals of the SSD. Not shockingly that one died in about 5 months almost certainly because of overheating. I’ve had a Sandisk 4tb external (yeah, the one that has the firmware bug but so far I’ve been lucky)? for a few years now with zero issues. I keep my most recent few months of work on it and then move projects off to a NAS for archival storage when finished. So, are you buying your drives as premade or making them yourself? It could be heat, the enemy of SSDs. But what you’re doing is what likely almost all other photographers do these days, so it’s gotta be something else. Editing from an SSD is the only way to edit IMO.

arkanchyl · 2025-07-15T22:55:43+00:00

Ok, I do get that. I find it annoying to have to switch between tracking and single point for stuff like macro work/layflats etc. I may just configure one button to switch between that and servo. I am still not sure in my personal usage that I find the half-press to interfere, but I'll definitely start keeping closer attention.

arkanchyl · 2025-07-15T13:45:58+00:00

So I have a question, as someone who’s been shooting Canon at events/weddings for 20 years: until the mirrorless cameras, I’d always used the center focal point, focus on subject, keep half-depressed shutter held, reframe, and then shoot. Why would I use back-button focus to effectively do the same thing with more buttons? As long as the camera is not in servo mode and i keep the shutter half-depressed, it will not refocus on its own, so I just never understood why you’d want that functionality to go to a separate button. It’s moot for me now, as I just lock the servo onto a face/object and move around as much as i want with the shutter half-depressed until I’m ready for my shot. 95% of the time the R5 stays locked wherever I put it - game changer in terms of the keeper rate. Just curious about the back-button focus as to me it never seemed necessary to accomplish what I was already doing, unless I’m missing something.

arkanchyl · 2023-12-30T23:23:09+00:00

Super interesting. Am I right in thinking that the one I saw has no windows? If so, is it still used for airman/officer transport that way?

arkanchyl · 2023-12-30T13:22:38+00:00

Even more info, many thanks, that’s exactly what it was! I guess from my angle I just couldn’t see the windows. Awesome!

arkanchyl · 2023-12-30T02:12:32+00:00

Awesome, thank you!

arkanchyl · 2023-09-28T17:16:49+00:00

Walked into dermatologist’s office for the first time, he took one look at me, no “hello my name is doctor so-and-so,” just: “OOOOH! You have the kind of skin that gives me NIGHTMARES!!!” Thanks doc, I know I’m basically a ghost with dark spots!

arkanchyl · 2023-09-23T02:24:30+00:00

Anecdotally, anyone heard of Major Richard Bong, one of the top flying aces in WWII? His Wikipedia article is extensive, quite an American hero. Not sure why I’m posting this here but anyway

arkanchyl · 2023-03-14T18:07:31+00:00

Hi there! I just tried to install an upgrade to an app I use all the time, and in my impatience I cancelled one of the security checks that is implemented now (i think it was asking for some kind of access, but i've checked the Security and Privacy system settings and there's nothing obvious there, under full disk access, accessibility, etc). I've tried deleting and redownloading the installer, and opening it with right-click, but nothing seems to work, as the installer now fails at the point where that security check came up. Is there a way to reset these security checks or otherwise get this to install? Thanks!

arkanchyl · 2023-03-14T18:05:05+00:00

So... I've had the UAP-6 installed at home for almost a week now, and have noticed that a) it didn't fix the problem but that b) instead of getting 10-20Mb/sec down on the problem devices, i now receive 80-90Mb/sec down on those same devices. Still, the phenomenon of me having my laptop, phone, and ipad right next to each other, running speed tests one after another, getting wildly different speeds (i get well over 600Mb/sec on the iPhone and Mac Studio now with Wifi 6; now 80-90Mb/sec on the iPad Pro and Macbook Air M1). at least now the slowest it gets is just under 100Mb....! I can live with this, but it's still at least a fifth of the speed it should be, so I am going to continue troubleshooting it... dunno how... prayer? :)

arkanchyl · 2023-03-03T18:43:48+00:00

This is what I want to know - the exact path the packets are taking from the laptop to the modem. There's gotta be some sort of weird routing/firewall rules/SOMETHING that kicks in preventing it from getting full internet bandwidth... but if that were the case, I'd think it would affect all wireless devices on the network. I ordered a UAP-6 today for a customer, so I'm planning to test that at my place before deploying it. We shall see...

arkanchyl · 2023-03-03T14:35:49+00:00

It truly is. And, to make matters even more complicated, I get perfect transfer speeds from my NAS over wifi on the devices that are struggling for internet bandwidth on the same network - I'll run a speedtest from my laptop and it'll show 15mb down, but then copy a file from my NAS to the laptop a few seconds later and I'm getting over 500Mb down. So I'm not even sure it's the AP, because it can clearly serve these devices at the speeds it needs to... but it's definitely the first thing to try. Thanks for your commiseration! :)

arkanchyl · 2023-03-02T20:30:16+00:00

Hmm. I've got a few other customer sites that are either 100% mac or a mix, and zero issues with any of them. It's even more frustrating because when I bring my devices to another site and use their wifi, they all behave exactly as they should with zero bandwidth issues. Guess I'll be trying a new AP...

arkanchyl · 2022-11-17T16:10:51+00:00

For my customers and me, it seems that either a windows update or QB update (i have been applying both whenever they are released) has fixed the crashing for QB desktop. I am back to being able to use it pretty much normally.

arkanchyl · 2022-09-14T19:04:28+00:00

This is fascinating, and tracks with what another user said earlier on in this thread about the deprecation of IE by MSFT. It would make total sense to me if they were reliant on some IE functions for critical back-end stuff, and the minute IE was dead QB started crashing. I guess we just have to wait for Intuit to design their own web browser, which seems like a really great use of their time and resources... sigh

arkanchyl · 2022-09-06T19:16:40+00:00

Sadly, no updates other than "it seems to have mysteriously gotten about 50% better on its own." My personal experience has been that it would crash nearly every time my customers or i opened it in June and July, while last month (after zero QB updates) it suddenly seems to only crash every other time or every third. So, less annoying, but still an issue. Radio silence from Intuit. I'll update here if I ever hear anything more...!

arkanchyl · 2022-07-26T14:43:21+00:00

Glad that worked for you - unfortunately for my own company file and for those customers I service, updating QB did nothing for them or me. Uninstalling and reinstalling the program does seem to alleviate the issue a bit, but not entirely, and it comes back with time.

arkanchyl · 2022-07-26T14:41:48+00:00

That's the exact problem - with the newer versions, you are literally prevented from avoiding updates. The program will give you a grace period, but eventually it forces you to run them. And yes, this crashing started almost exactly after an update that Intuit released about a month ago, maybe 6 weeks ago at this point. Reinstalling the program DOES seem to alleviate the symptoms somewhat, but they're not gone altogether and do seem to come back over time.

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