A headphone amp and USB digital-to-analog converter for just $99 each

The Schiit Magni and Modi (left) and Schiit Asgard (right).

(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Schiit Audio's very first product, the Asgard headphone amplifier, left me shaken and stirred back in 2010. It sold for $249, looked and sounded amazing, and to top things off, it was made in the U.S. -- not just assembled here. Most of the Asgard's parts are sourced from U.S. companies.

The Asgard is still in company's product line, and it's still $249. But Schiit has grown since then, and now offers a full line of more expensive headphone amps and USB digital-to-analog converters (DACs) -- which is great. But the company's most recent offerings sell for just $99 each! The Magni headphone amp and the Modi DAC are also made in America, and they sound spectacular.

They're both the same ultra-compact size, just 5x3.5x1.25 inches, and they each weigh about a pound. Both feature an all-metal case, and the design looks pretty serious. The Magni amp puts out up to 1.2 watts, so it's considerably more powerful than your average AV receiver's headphone amp. And unlike those built-in headphone amps, the Magni is not a chip-based amp that costs 20 cents. Most headphones don't need all that power -- but some headphones, like my Hifiman HE-400s, really come alive with more potent amps.

Yes, what you plug your headphones into can make or break their sound. Heck, most $1,000 receivers have marginal headphone amps. (They're not a big priority for most buyers.) But the Magni's innards feature fully discrete FET/bipolar, Class AB circuitry. That means the Magni is built like a miniature high-end speaker amplifier. I don't know of another headphone amp built that way for less than $250, and most $250-$500 amps aren't built as well as the Magni. The amp has just one set of RCA analog inputs on its backside, and a 6.3mm headphone jack on the front panel.

The Magni amp uses an external wall wart power supply; the Modi DAC is powered via the USB 2.0 asynchronous input connection. The USB is the only digital input -- there's no coaxial or Toslink optical inputs, but there's a pair of RCA analog outputs on the rear panel. The DAC handles up to 96kHz/24-bit digital audio. The Modi features switched-capacitor filtering and an active filter section, so you can run long analog cables from the Modi back to your hi-fi system without any loss of quality.

I played the Magni and Modi together, and loved the sound. Like the bigger Schiit amps I've tested, the sound is rich, with lots of detail and oomph. I started with my old Sennheiser HD 580 and Grado RS-1 headphones, and moved onto the brand-new Yamaha PRO 500, Sony MDR-1R, Noontec Zoro, and Koss Porta Pro over-the-ear and on-ear headphones, plus a few in-ear models, including Ultimate Ears UE 900s. I have quite a few more expensive desktop amps on hand, including the other Schiits at my disposal. But there was nothing about the sound of the Magni/Modi combo that I found wanting. They deliver bona-fide high-end sound quality. A lot of desktop headphone amps aren't quiet enough to use with in-ear headphones, but the Magni is.

Then I compared the Modi with the $449 Schiit Bifrost DAC, and it was easy to hear the difference. The Modi is sweet and mellow and very tolerant of cruddy-sounding low bit-rate files and streaming audio sources. But when I played great-sounding CDs, the Bifrost was a lot more transparent and detailed. There's less standing between my ears and the music. But as I did the Modi vs. Bifrost shootout, my respect for the Magni amp's sound went up. The $99 amp easily resolved the differences between the two DACs over my Hifiman HE 400 headphones. Stepping up from the Magni to the Asgard produced similar improvement, but to a much smaller degree. The Magni would still be an outstanding value for double the price.

The Magni and Modi come with two-year warranties. That's twice the coverage of most desktop components in their price range. Schiit has a 15-day return policy, so you can still send it back for a refund if you're not happy with the sound, but there is a 15 percent restocking fee.

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Pictures: Civil War Shipwreck Revealed by Sonar

Photograph by Jesse Cancelmo

A fishing net, likely only decades old, drapes over machinery that once connected the Hatteras' pistons to its paddle wheels, said Delgado.

From archived documents, the NOAA archaeologist learned that Blake, the ship's commander, surrendered as his ship was sinking. "It was listing to port, [or the left]," Delgado said. The Alabama took the wounded and the rest of the crew and put them in irons.

The officers were allowed to keep their swords and wander the deck as long as they promised not to lead an uprising against the Alabama's crew, he added.

From there, the Alabama dropped off their captives in Jamaica, leaving them to make their own way back to the U.S.

Delgado wants to dig even further into the crew of the Hatteras. He'd like see if members of the public recognize any of the names on his list of crew members and can give him background on the men.

"That's why I do archaeology," he said.

(Read about other Civil War battlefields in National Geographic magazine.)

Published January 11, 2013

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Poisoned Lottery Winner's Kin Were Suspicious

Urooj Khan had just brought home his $425,000 lottery check when he unexpectedly died the following day. Now, certain members of Khan's family are speaking publicly about the mystery -- and his nephew told ABC News they knew something was not right.

"He was a healthy guy, you know?" said the nephew, Minhaj Khan said. "He worked so hard. He was always going about his business and, the thing is: After he won the lottery and the next day later he passes away -- it's awkward. It raises some eyebrows."

The medical examiner initially ruled Urooj Khan, 46, an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, died July 20, 2012, of natural causes. But after a family member demanded more tests, authorities in November found a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood, turning the case into a homicide investigation.

"When we found out there was cyanide in his blood after the extensive toxicology reports, we had to believe that ... somebody had to kill him," Minhaj Khan said. "It had to happen, because where can you get cyanide?"

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Authorities could be one step closer to learning what happened to Urooj Khan. A judge Friday approved an order to exhume his body at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago as early as Thursday to perform further tests.

Lottery Winner Murdered: Widow Questioned By Police Watch Video

Moments after the court hearing, Urooj Khan's sister, Meraj Khan, remembered her brother as the kind of person who would've shared his jackpot with anyone. Speaking at the Cook County Courthouse, she hoped the exhumation would help the investigation.

"It's very hard because I wanted my brother to rest in peace, but then we have to have justice served," she said, according to ABC News station WLS in Chicago. "So if that's what it takes for him to bring justice and peace, then that's what needs to be done."

Khan reportedly did not have a will. With the investigation moving forward, his family is waging a legal fight against his widow, Shabana Ansari, 32, over more than $1 million, including Urooj Khan's lottery winnings, as well as his business and real estate holdings.

Khan's brother filed a petition Wednesday to a judge asking Citibank to release information about Khan's assets to "ultimately ensure" that [Khan's] minor daughter from a prior marriage "receives her proper share."

Ansari may have tried to cash the jackpot check after Khan's death, according to court documents, which also showed Urooj Khan's family is questioning if the couple was ever even legally married.

Ansari, Urooj Khan's second wife, who still works at the couple's dry cleaning business, has insisted they were married legally.

She has told reporters the night before her husband died, she cooked a traditional Indian meal for him and their family, including Khan's daughter and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the Chicago Sun-Times, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She said she called 911.

"It has been an incredibly hard time," she told ABC News earlier this week. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Ansari has not been named a suspect, but her attorney, Steven Kozicki, said investigators did question her for more than four hours.

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Astrophile: Zombie stars feed on Earth-like exoplanets

Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse

Objects: Polluted white dwarfs
Diet: Small rocky planets

As the old, bloated star neared death, it started to devour its planets – and they were delicious. Even after it had collapsed into a small, white corpse, the craving for planets continued. It spun restlessly, an undead star fixated on getting another taste of those rocky little worlds. At last, its patience was rewarded.

It's a grisly tale, but also one that represents a boon to astronomers. They can observe white dwarf stars spattered with the remains of their planetary meals to perform a kind of cosmic autopsy – one that reveals the types of worlds that existed when the star was young and healthy.

When stars like our sun die, they go through a series of changes that can be devastating to their planets. First they puff up into red giants and engulf anything too close. Powerful stellar winds cause the dying stars to slough off much of their mass, exposing dense stellar cores called white dwarfs.

Heavy pollution

Elements heavier than hydrogen and helium sink down into a white dwarf's core, leaving behind an atmosphere of pure hydrogen and helium. But in 1987, the atmosphere of a white dwarf called G29-38, in the constellation Pisces, was found to be polluted with heavier elements.

Today about a quarter of all white dwarfs are known to have more heavy elements in their atmospheres than they should. Dusty discs, like the rings of Saturn, surround some of these white dwarfs.

The discs are probably the remnants of planets or asteroids that came too close to the white dwarfs and were ripped apart by gravitational forces, says Eric Becklin of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The remnant stars feed on the pulverised remains, so their atmospheres become laced with heavier elements.

This process could help us figure out what rocky extrasolar planets are made of. Recently the hunt for planets around other stars has yielded hundreds of confirmed finds and thousands of possible candidates. But we had no way of determining the compositions of smaller worlds, especially what is inside them.

Chemical signatures

Studies of the chemical signatures in starlight from polluted dwarfs may be just the tools for the job, says Michael Jura, also of UCLA. His team looked at 60 polluted white dwarfs and examined the proportions of different elements in their atmospheres.

Presenting this week at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California, Jura showed that oxygen, magnesium, silicon and iron are present in similar proportions to what exists on Earth, collectively making up 85 per cent of the mass of the heavy elements seen in their atmospheres. The team also showed that the stars had, on average, swallowed an amount of matter equal in mass to that of the asteroid belt in our solar system.

The finding, gleaned through observations in visible and ultraviolet light, suggests that rocky planets and asteroids in these far-off systems are made in a similar vein to objects in our solar system. "We are witnessing the building blocks of extrasolar rocky planets," Jura says.

"It's fantastic," says Becklin, who was on the team that discovered G29-38 but was not involved in the new research. "You can study what a solar system is like around other stars, and get inside the bodies. We didn't have the slightest idea of the composition of the planets in those exo-solar systems. This is actually showing there's a way to determine that."

The process must be ongoing, adds Becklin, or else the dwarfs should have long ago run out of victims. Gravity from surviving planets farther out may be constantly tossing fresh asteroids inwards, keeping the stars' feeding frenzy going.

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PSA International sees 5.2% increase in container throughput in 2012

SINGAPORE : PSA International has reported an increase in container throughput at its ports worldwide, despite the slowdown in global trade.

PSA handled 60.06 million Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs) of containers last year, a rise of 5.2 per cent from 2011.

Throughput at PSA's flagship Singapore terminals rose 6.4 per cent to 31.26 million TEUs.

Activity at its terminals elsewhere rose 3.9 per cent to 28.80 million TEUs.

Tan Chong Meng, Group CEO of PSA International, said: "2012 was another challenging year for shipping and port industries as global trade growth continued to be weak, undermined by volatile market conditions, including the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, sluggish recovery of the American economy, turmoil in the Middle East and the slowdown of economic growth in China.

"The PSA Group has pulled together well to weather the year with resilience."

PSA said it plans to continue to invest in new port projects and upgrade its current facilities.

- CNA/ms

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New intrigue on trail of cheaper iPhone

The mystery of whether Apple will come out with a lower-priced iPhone has taken a new twist.

The Reuters news agency this morning cryptically withdrew a story it had written yesterday pegged to remarks purportedly made by Apple's Phil Schiller in China. That story had been based on a report in the Shanghai Evening News, which Reuters now says, ever so tersely, "was subsequently updated with substantial changes to its content."

That's it -- "substantial changes," with no elaboration. Intriguing, yes. But also frustratingly vague.

We've spent a good part of the morning scouring the Web for further details. We've turned Google Translate loose on the Shanghai Evening News site. But so far, it's been an exercise in futility.

We put the question to Reuters, too, about what exactly changed in the report out of Shanghai. When we hear back, we'll let you know.

So what is it that Schiller, Apple's SVP of worldwide marketing, is supposed to have said in his interview with the Shanghai Evening News? This, as related by The Next Web: "Despite the popularity of cheap smartphones, this will never be the future of Apple's products. In fact, although Apple's market share of smartphones is just about 20 percent, we own 75 percent of the profit."

The comments attributed to Schiller came in the wake of reports this week suggesting that Apple, whose popular iPhone is pricey compared to many alternative smartphones and less powerful feature phones, may in fact be considering adding a lower-cost iPhone to its product lineup for emerging markets.

Just yesterday as well, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster mused that a lower-priced iPhone -- set at, say, $199 -- could open up a vast new market for Apple, on the scale of tens of millions of potential new buyers.

"We believe the opportunity for Apple is too large to miss as the low-end market is growing significantly faster than the high-end smartphone market," Munster added.

"We note that the cheapest iPhone, the
iPhone 4, currently costs $450 off contract and more in many countries where additional taxes are levied," the analyst said in a separate note this week. "We note that an off contract iPhone 4 is ~$490 in China and $750 in Brazil, thus the sub-$199 price would be a significant discount. Historically, we believe lower-priced products have had a measurable positive impact on overall revenue (iPad Mini,
iPod Nano,
iPad)."

The Bloomberg news agency earlier in the week reported, citing sources, that Apple could set a price as low as $99 for a budget-minded iPhone. Both Bloomberg and Munster indicated that Apple could come out with said new iPhone sometime later this year.

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Google and Twitter Help Track Influenza Outbreaks

This flu season could be the longest and worst in years. So far 18 children have died from flu-related symptoms, and 2,257 people have been hospitalized.

Yesterday Boston Mayor Thomas Menino declared a citywide public health emergency, with roughly 700 confirmed flu cases—ten times the number the city saw last year.

"It arrived five weeks early, and it's shaping up to be a pretty bad flu season," said Lyn Finelli, who heads the Influenza Outbreak Response Team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Boston isn't alone. According to the CDC, 41 states have reported widespread influenza activity, and in the last week of 2012, 5.6 percent of doctor's office visits across the country were for influenza-like illnesses. The severity likely stems from this year's predominant virus: H3N2, a strain known to severely affect children and the elderly. Finelli notes that the 2003-2004 flu season, also dominated by H3N2, produced similar numbers. (See "Are You Prepped? The Influenza Roundup.")

In tracking the flu, physicians and public health officials have a host of new surveillance tools at their disposal thanks to crowdsourcing and social media. Such tools let them get a sense of the flu's reach in real time rather than wait weeks for doctor's offices and state health departments to report in.

Pulling data from online sources "is no different than getting information on over-the-counter medication or thermometer purchases [to track against an outbreak]," said Philip Polgreen, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa.

The most successful of these endeavors, Google Flu Trends, analyzes flu-related Internet search terms like "flu symptoms" or "flu medication" to estimate flu activity in different areas. It tracks flu outbreaks globally.

Another tool, HealthMap, which is sponsored by Boston Children's Hospital, mines online news reports to track outbreaks in real time. Sickweather draws from posts on Twitter and Facebook that mention the flu for its data.

People can be flu-hunters themselves with Flu Near You, a project that asks people to report their symptoms once a week. So far more than 38,000 people have signed up for this crowdsourced virus tracker. And of course, there's an app for that.

Both Finelli, a Flu Near You user, and Polgreen find the new tools exciting but agree that they have limits. "It's not as if we can replace traditional surveillance. It's really just a supplement, but it's timely," said Polgreen.

When people have timely warning that there's flu in the community, they can get vaccinated, and hospitals can plan ahead. According to a 2012 study in Clinical Infectious Diseases, Google Flu Trends has shown promise predicting emergency room flu traffic. Some researchers are even using a combination of the web database and weather data to predict when outbreaks will peak.

As for the current flu season, it's still impossible to predict week-to-week peaks and troughs. "We expect that it will last a few more weeks, but we can never tell how bad it's going to get," said Finelli.

Hospitals are already taking precautionary measures. One Pennsylvania hospital erected a separate emergency room tent for additional flu patients. This week, several Illinois hospitals went on "bypass," alerting local first responders that they're at capacity—due to an uptick in both flu and non-flu cases—so that patients will be taken to alternative facilities, if possible.

In the meantime, the CDC advises vaccination, first and foremost. On the bright side, the flu vaccine being used this year is a good match for the H3N2 strain. Though Finelli cautions, "Sometimes drifted strains pop up toward the end of the season."

It looks like there won't be shortages of seasonal flu vaccine like there have been in past years. HealthMap sports a Flu Vaccine Finder to make it a snap to find a dose nearby. And if the flu-shot line at the neighborhood pharmacy seems overwhelming, more health departments and clinics are offering drive-through options.

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Teen to Hero Teacher: 'I Don't Want to Shoot You'

A California teacher'sbrave conversation with a 16-year-old gunman who had opened fire on his classroom bullies allowed 28 other students to quickly escape what could have been a massacre.

Science teacher Ryan Heber calmly confronted the teenager after he shot and critically wounded a classmate, whom authorities say had bullied the boy for more than year at Taft Union High School.

"I don't want to shoot you," the teen gunman told Heber, who convinced the teen gunman to drop his weapon, a high power shotgun.

Responding to calls of shots fired, campus supervisor Kim Lee Fields arrived at the classroom and helped Heber talk the boy into giving up the weapon.

"This teacher and this counselor stood there face-to-face not knowing if he was going to shoot them," said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood. "They probably expected the worst and hoped for the best, but they gave the students a chance to escape."

One student, who police say the shooter had targeted, was shot. He was airlifted to a hospital and remains in critical, but stable condition, Youngblood said. He is expected to undergo surgery today.

Two other students received minor injuries. One suffered hearing loss and another fell over a table while evacuating. Heber received a wound to his head from a stray pellet, police said.

Taft Midway Driller/Doug Keeler/AP Photo

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Police said the teen, whose name has not been made public because he is a minor, began plotting on Wednesday night to kill two students he felt had bullied him.

Authorities believe the suspect found his older brother's gun and brought it into the just before 9 a.m. on Thursday and went to Heber's second-floor classroom where a first period science class with 20 students was taking place.

"He planned the event," Youngblood said. "Certainly he believed that the two people he targeted had bullied him, in his mind. Whether that occurred or not we don't know yet."

The gunman entered the classroom and shot one of his classmates. Heber immediately began trying to talk him into handing over the gun, and evacuating the other students through the classroom's backdoor.

"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students, and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

The gunman was found with several rounds of additional ammunition in his pockets.

Within one minute of the shooting, a 911 call was placed and police arrived on the scene. An announcement was made placing the school on lockdown and warning teachers and students that the precautions were "not a drill."

The school had recently announced new safety procedures following last month's deadly shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in which 20 young children were killed. Six school staffers, including the principal, were killed as they tried to protect the children from gunman Adam Lanza.

The school employs an armed security guard, but he was not on campus Thursday morning.

Youngblood said the student would be charged with attempted murder, but the district attorney would decide if he was to be tried as an adult.

Some 900 students attend Taft Union High School, located in Taft, Calif., a rural community in southern California.

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Unborn sharks freeze to avoid predators

Michael Marshall, environment reporter

(Image: Ryan Kempster/PLoS One)

Faced with a dangerous predator, baby sharks hold their breath and stay still - even before they've been born.

Bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium punctatum) lay eggs, unlike many sharks that give birth to live young. As a result, the developing sharklings are more vulnerable to being eaten.

New research shows that the shark embryos can detect the bio-electric fields of approaching predators. When they do, they freeze by stopping their gill movements, as shown in the video below. This suggests that even at these early stages, embryonic sharks can recognise dangers and instinctively try to avoid them, say the researchers.

Staying still can be a good way of escaping the attention of hungry predators, as anyone who's seen the T. rex attack in Jurassic Park will know. But these sharks are positively precocious about it.

Journal reference: PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052551

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Football: Adebayor included as Africa Cup squads named

JOHANNESBURG: Emmanuel Adebayor will play at the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations after he was included in Togo's squad as the 16 sides finalised their 23-man squads.

Mahamadou Diarra will meanwhile miss the tournament, and a late-minute change left Brown Ideye thrilled and Nigeria team-mate Raheem Lawal devastated.

It was all part of the drama ahead of the January 19-February 10 tournament that will be played in five South African cities.

Tottenham striker and Togo captain Adebayor said last year he would shun the competition, citing security concerns after being part of the squad attacked in Angola ahead of the 2010 finals.

A player and an official were killed by separatists seeking independence for the oil-rich Cabinda enclave and Adebayor escaped injury by cowering under a bus seat.

As Tottenham, the Togo president and national football officials became involved in the saga, Adebayor refused to reveal his plans, and his inclusion became official only when the 23-man squad was named by coach Didier Six.

Perennial underachievers Togo are in the Rustenburg-based 'group of death' with title favourites Ivory Coast and other former champions Algeria and Tunisia and are given little hope of survival.

Mali, third last year and considered likely quarter-finalists after being drawn with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Niger, suffered a late setback when Fulham midfielder Diarra pulled out injured.

A recurring knee injury failed to heal, meaning the veteran will miss a second consecutive Cup of Nations, although the blow was cushioned by the return of another experienced midfielder, Mohamed Lamine Sissoko.

Turkey-based midfielder Lawal was included in a Nigerian squad leaked to the media a day before the final-squad deadline, only to be replaced by striker Ideye when it was officially announced.

Home-based players have traditionally been ignored by Super Eagles coaches, but Stephen Keshi has chosen six, including goalkeeper Chigozie Agbim and strikers Sunday Mba and Ejike Uzoenyi from Enugu Rangers.

Shock absentees from the 2012 tournament, Nigeria face defending champions Zambia and outsiders Burkina Faso and Ethiopia in Group C and are expected to make the knock-out phase at least.

Debutants Cape Verde made a couple of last-minute changes with injured midfielder Odair Fortes and unavailable striker Ze Luis replaced by Portugal-based pair Platini and Rambe.

Cape Verde face hosts South Africa in the January 19 opening fixture at the 90,000-seat Soccer City stadium in Soweto and also confront former champions Morocco and Angola in the first round.

- AFP/de

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