The approach for designing the Lokius is described by Schiit Audio as based on the advantages of 6 bands of equalization, offering more precise control for the typical use case of most of its users, which is in listening to different audio sources connected to the same playback system, and the need to compensate for some recordings "thinner" recordings that suffer in comparison with mainstream productions.
The Lokius also offers twice as many inputs and outputs, with both balanced and single-ended inputs, and balanced and single-ended outputs (XLR and RCA), making it easy to integrate into any system, and great to connect to a lot of more affordable home studio equipment, such as powered monitors.
As to why Schiit Audio would design an equalizer, when typically home audio companies have completely given up on tone control for "purist" reasons that reproduction systems should "do justice to the original recording" and "the artist intent", we do like Jason Stoddard straightforward approach: "If it sounds good to you, who cares?"
“When we introduced Loki Mini, we envisioned a family of tone control products,” confesses Schiit Audio’s co-founder. “Lokius is the first addition to the family. Now, we can accommodate both balanced and single-ended inputs, in a form factor that matches a wide range of our 9" wide products, and is easy to integrate into any system.”
Lokius offers a very low noise floor and sonically transparent performance, thanks to its single discrete, current-feedback gain stage driven by a two-stage discrete, load-invariant superbuffer, coupled with inductor-capacitor and gyrator-capacitor filters. Only high quality components are used throughout in Lokius, from WIMA and Panasonic film capacitors, to 0.5% thin-film resistors, to a two-stage regulated power supply with broadband noise filtering, and Neutrik balanced connectors for input and output.
“Lokius isn’t like other equalizers,” says Jason. “It’s not like a surgical software equalizer, or a bank of 31 constant-Q tone stacks per channel. It’s intended to be easy to use and transparent, to allow broad adjustments of poor recordings or imperfect systems — or simply so the owner can adjust the sound to their liking.”
Lokius is entirely DC-coupled throughout, and offers a completely transparent bypass switch that connects the inputs and outputs together with a relay — no active components in the signal path at all. Lokius' 6 bands of equalization can be activated with a front-panel switch and Lokius can integrate with any system, large or small, speaker or headphone, balanced or single-ended, for complete flexibility.
This is another Schiit Audio product “designed and built in Texas," which actually means designed, assembled, tested, and QC'ed in the company's Corpus Christi, Texas facility. The chassis, boards, etc, for Lokius comes from other US manufacturing companies. The new 6-band equalizer is now available for just $299.
www.schiit.com
