Schiit Loki Max Equalizer

By Robert E. Greene

Taking Control

If the Loki Mini+, which I reviewed in February 2002, is an introduction to broad-band EQ on the cheap (but good), the Loki Max is a head-on assault on the best possible analog EQ of the broad-band type. It is, in a sense, a contemporary reply to the famous Cello Audio Palette EQ device introduced in the early 1990s.

It is less massive and less expensive, but it has similar sonic goals and similar aims of uncompromised quality, aims which are accomplished superbly well. Purists may find this

hard to accept, but Schiit has come up with an EQ device which is transparent down to the level of the cable connections involved. Anything one inserts in a signal path will do something, but the Loki Max is amazingly close to doing nothing at all except what it is supposed to do, altering frequency response and, as a minimum-phase device, altering phase response correspondingly. It is a remarkable component, indeed, worthy of a place in the most exotic, extreme systems there are—and a…