SchiitHEDD

THIS ISSUE: Herb auditions HEDD Audio’s HEDDphones and Schiit’s Jotunheim and Jotunheim R amplifiers—the latter intended specifically for use with Herb’s favorite ‘phones, the RAAL-requisite SR1a.

Today is March 22, 2020. Outside my door, the plague is gaining intensity. People are wearing masks and rubber gloves. But outside the window by my desk, there is a Callery pear tree, and every day its blossoms are becoming more intensely white. Each day its brightness (measured in units of luminous flux) increases noticeably. The optical radiance of its zillionpetal whiteness illuminates the whole garden.

Looking out that desk window, I notice also the spring-warmed radiance of the sun, the racing shadows of ravenous sparrows, and daffodils. Each one of those things, in its way, affects my thoughts about what matters in life: art, music, and [cough] high-fidelity audio reproduction.

Unavoidably, these peculiar circumstances have caused me to reconsider: What are the most important criteria for music reproduction? Today I am thinking they might be levels of brilliance, measured in units of awestruck pleasure, and some tangible sense of the life force that propels all music making. Looked at from a different point of view, accurate tone character is always ahead of whatever criterion is in second place.

And what a lucky guy I am. Sitting right in front of me, on a pine-board shelf, at arm’s reach, is a Schiit Audio Jotunheim R amplifier (which I call the “Jot-R”) powering the RAAL-requisite SR1a full-range ribbon headphones hanging directly under it. Right next to the Jot-R is the “Jot”: a regular, non-R Schiit Jotunheim (in silver; the Jot-R only comes in basic black), powering a pair of HEDD Audio full-range airmotion–transformer HEDDphones. How much brilliance and life force can this exotic