2023 Golden Ear: Schiit Audio Loki Max Equalizer

$1499

I gave the Loki Max a Golden Ear award last year in a first flush of enthusiasm, but I wanted to assure people that a year of using it (and writing a full review) has left me even more enthusiastic. I have been working with EQ, analog and digital, since way back when it was somewhat de classÈ to mention it in TAS (though I sometimes did even then). I always believed that frequency response was a dominant force (hardly my own idea!) in audio and that if one could control it, one should. The Loki Max allows one aspect of this control in a flawless (ultra-low noise and distortion), convenient, and, most of all, musically meaningful way. And the remote control makes it especially useful since you can adjust the balance from your listening position as you listen. This device is not designed to correct room and speaker interaction, but for its intended purpose—and a very useful purpose it is—of fine-tuning the balance of recordings, it is ideal. Recordings are moving targets even for the people who make them—they depend on their monitoring systems, which will never match your system exactly (or match each other even). Fine-tuning is something you need to be able to do Here it is! (338)