Schiit Audio Loki Max Equaliser

Or, in English, this is our shot at making the best EQ possible, with maximum transparency and minimum compromise. It’s an EQ that can look straight at the storied EQs of yesteryear and say, “Yeah, we got that…and remote control.”

 

Go ahead. Try to find another remote control equalizer. If you succeed, look at what kind of potentiometers it’s using. They’ll probably be motorized slide pots. We decided to go all-out with Loki Max, though, and create our own 31-step precision relay potentiometers using 0.5% thin-film resistors and 60 relays, together with custom firmware. These aren’t just relay attenuators—these are relay pots, a very different thing. What relay pots buy you are 15 perfectly defined steps on either side of the knob, for precise control of your EQ settings, as well as perfect matching between channels. 

 

On our more affordable tone controls like Loki Mini and Lokius, we use gyrators to simulate an inductor on the lower frequency bands. This is because big inductors—and we’re talking 0.5H and 1.5H in Loki Max—are physically large and expensive. To get the performance we needed, we had to specify 80% nickel cores, making things even more exotic. But the result is that every band of Loki Max—from 20Hz to 16kHz—uses nothing but LC filtering.

 

For Loki Max, every stage is fully discrete—from the dual-stage superbuffers and balanced summers, to the current-feedback gain stage and Nexus™ balanced output. These stages are fed by a 4-stage power supply with two rail levels, up to +/-32V. This allows us the large output voltage swing necessary for an equalizer with lots of gain. You’ll never need to worry about overloading Loki Max with any standard source.

 

Forget complicated UIs and indecipherable screens. To adjust Loki Max, just twist a knob…or press a button on the remote. All bands are independently accessible on the front panel and on the remote. You can define your presets from the front panel or the remote, select from balanced and single-ended inputs, and bypass the EQ completely (as in, just a relay and resistor in the signal path, no active stages). Enjoy adjusting your EQ from your listening chair—no need to go back and forth to the rack.

 

By “designed and built in California" this is what we mean: we design, assemble, test, and QC Loki Max in our Valencia, California facility. And the vast majority of the total production cost of Loki Max—chassis, transformers, inductors, PC boards, etc—goes to US companies manufacturing in the US. Our chassis are made in California. Transformers and chokes are done in NorCal. Our PCBs are done in Simi Valley. You get the picture—this is not just a “put the final screw in it in California” product.