Does Anyone Buy Schiit for the Sake of Schiit?

Great post! thanks...

I will only add that my not so silly moral imperative is the ratio S.Q./ price tag, it is a "relative" tag on our flowing navigating audio journey...Relative yes for each of us , but very important for most of us...

i am with you for the gear criticism jealousy...

Criticism of gear is sometimes like boasting about ONE piece of gear though the inverse of jealousy....Not always useful... Reviews made some sense in great numbers to make a choice...Especially if we comparatively analyse them...

i am in the impossibility to listen to the gear before choosing it.... I read hundred of reviews before choosing each piece...i choose my dac and amplifier and the speakers this way with success...No regrets after 7 years with the same gear...

The brand names of my piece of gear matter for me yes, but way less than the controls method and devices used in and for their embeddings electrical, mechanical and acoustical working dimensions...because many other good pieces of gear could have replaced them, but nothing can replace  embeddings control in S.Q. improvement... Even not most upgrade on the same massive scale of improvement caused by these control methods.....

Thats all i have learned in my last INTENSE 10 years of my audio journey now....

😁😊

I love the way people take criticism of equipment personally. Even more humorous are those of us who lecture others regarding spending habits and posit motivations for such "foolish" expenditures. Such insecurity must be grounded in jealousy or some silly economic moral imperative.

@audition__audio 

+1

I think a number of people on this thread have imagined a chip on my shoulder that really isn't there. I would have thought that when I admitted that I didn't have enough direct experience of their products to make a judgment (i.e., two headphone amps at the lower end of their price range) I would have defused that. The purpose of the question is this: There are brands such as to pick some at random, Focal, B&W, Hegel, Luxman, Martin Logan, that you would seek out because you've heard them in someone else's system, or in a showroom, or even just from reputation, and your frame of mind would be "am I ever going to be able to afford one of these", and you endeavor to get to a point where you can. The question was whether Schiit was a brand you would be sought out for its own sake. I've seen Schiit equipment well-reviewed and held to be better than other competitive brands, so this is not impossible. It could very well be that a piece of equipment specifically engineered to meet a certain price point would be superior to a piece of equipment from a prestigious brand watered down to make an entry level product. I think it would be fair to say that the majority of the people who buy Schiit do it without ever hearing it beforehand. What generally draws people is that they can offer something credible at such a low price. In the case of the Asgard, which was $200 at the time, I was buying something for a not-critical use to me and felt I could get away with paying that little, much like I'd buy washcloths at Target because how good does a washcloth have to be? I am reasonably satisfied with my purchase, for which I actually have no point of comparison with other brands.

No chip seen by me. Your perception is correct. Really good value for the money. I don’t think you can audition anywhere… and they are not comparable to McIntosh, Audio Research, Boulder and the like. Very safe bet for the money.  

certainly Direct Sales companies do have a pricing advantage...