Schiit Modius DAC announced

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by JohnCarter17, Jun 2, 2020.

  1. Mithrandir41

    Mithrandir41 Friend

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    I forgot to test mine without the power supply. But it was very quiet with it, and usb is usually noisy on my comp.
     
  2. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    @Melvillian Yeah, that's what I meant. By nature, when power and signal delivered together via a single line, things never get quite clean. Had this issue with Fulla 2 as well. Good thing is secondary port (power only usb port) addressed this issue very well.
     
  3. robot zombie

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    I've been down the rabbit hole with this. A lot of motherboards just have a TERRIBLE USB bus implementation. USB audio just is not a consideration and you're basically screwed from the jump sometimes. I had an ASUS mobo last year that sends noise directly into the output side of any USB audio device connected to it. USB powered or not, it was just a matter of degrees. I tried everything that is possible to do. Modified cables, different ways of lifting the ground. I even spliced it out just to see... and I found that without the ground, dropouts made it unusable, but when it WAS still up, you got the same noise. Only ditching the board worked. To this day, I've never seen a single explanation for it.
     
  4. Peter78

    Peter78 New

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    I've reached out to Schiit support, but I figured I'd ask here, as well. Is anyone experiencing issues using WASAPI Event output, with the Modius and higher sampling rates? WASAPI Push works fine for me at all sampling rates, but if I select WASAPI Event, anything above 88.2kHz, gives me static and a reverb-like effect (along with the music). I am using foobar2000 (on Windows 10). My previous DAC worked fine with ASIO, WASAPI Event, and WASAPI Push at all sampling rates (plus DSD), using the same configuration in foobar2000 and same USB port. I'm leaning toward this being a driver issue, but there does not appear to be anything to update (I'm already using the latest version, according to Windows Update).
     
  5. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    Fb2k wasapi is famously a buggy mess and a dice roll.
     
  6. Baten

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    WASAPI component has not been updated since 2017-06-19. Yes, Event mode is broken with a lot of DACs. Thankfully, Push seems to work without problems as an easy work-around.
     
  7. Peter78

    Peter78 New

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    Thanks for the info. I wasn't aware of that. Maybe I was just lucky then that my previous DAC worked without issue in both WASAPI modes. It does seem strange to me that WASAPI Event seems to work fine at 88.2kHz and lower, though, with the Modius. I'll dig into it a bit more and see if any other settings make a difference.
     
  8. Peter78

    Peter78 New

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    Good point about the WASAPI component, and thanks for the information. I was not aware that this is a widespread issue.
     
  9. numbercube

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  10. cameng318

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    I think it's something with the Unison that the buffer in WASAPI even mode has to be ≤20. You can change it in foobar at
    Preference→Advanced→Playback→WASAPI→Hardware Buffer in MS - event mode
    Setting it to 20 works for my Gungnir A2
     
  11. Peter78

    Peter78 New

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    Bingo! That worked. Mine was set to 25ms (the default?). I changed it to 20ms, and now it's working (no crackling or reverb). I wasn't aware of that setting. I only knew of the "Buffer length" setting, under Preferences→Playback, which I had modified to no avail. How did you figure this out? I'll report to Schiit support that this resolved my issue. Thanks for the tip!
     
  12. cameng318

    cameng318 Friend

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    I found it in some threads about optimal settings for foobar. The buffer should be as high as possible as long as the sound doesn't break. You can also check the box "High worker process priority" under WASAPI, which might improve your sound quality by 0.1%
     
  13. Vtory

    Vtory Audiophile™

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    Enjoying a little shootout for myself.

    Bifrost 2 vs Modius reminded me of my own comparison bw Convert-2 vs Yggdrasil(a2) a while ago. Can't believe yet how Mike approved this direction of sounding lol. Modius sounds more like somewhere between Convert-2 and X-Sabre Pro than Schiit's own multibit big brothers. Take an average of those two ds dacs and multiply by x (x being some constant around 0.7~0.9 based on one's mileage -- to me it's close to 0.8-ish), then that's how I am looking at Modius. It's also interesting I couldn't find much similarities with "the ultimate akm", cranesong solaris.

    That said, I strongly argue Modius can't serve as a cheaper alternative to bf2 UNLESS one hates multibit sounding. While Modius does most basic tasks almost perfectly, in every category of "higher order" values such as plankton, life-likeness, 3D staging, meatiness, and many others, to me BF2 is still a league or two above. I didn't feel this way with Modi 3 possibly because its overall (relatively) lower quality. Modius' much better technicalities, however, make 'relative' weakness rather evident. For these reasons, very ironically, I can't recommend Schiitheads this dac for primary critical listening purposes.

    Instead, Mdu nicely mimics vivid and over-dynamic characters I loved in Convert-2, with a bonus of Xsp-ish transient. Even these scaled down to 80-90% of the original, it's not something we typically hear below $2k dac. Mdu also resembles convert-2 in how it converys staging. Everything pushed back, but not as extremely.

    All my impressions so far came from SE outs. Looking forward to testing Bal outs tomorrow.

    Downstreams used:
    • Hood --> M3 Turbo S
    • Asgard 3 --> Verite
     
    Last edited: Jun 16, 2020
  14. Mithrandir41

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    It's definitely not an alternative to the B2. Especially from SE outs. It's a different DAC and I don't think it's meant to fill that niche.
     
  15. Jay

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    I'm looking forward to your findings. I feel that, while no one will confuse the Modius with the Schiit multibit sound, the bal out connection helps cure some of the DS ills.
     
  16. redrich2000

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    So will we see a Mimbius? Or is that the BF2?
    I currently use Eitr>Modi Multibit and am curious to try balanced and a one-box solution but the BF2 is now $1600 in AUS :(
    A balanced, unison Modi Multibit though would interest me.

    Any other Aussies here, have you noticed that all the Schiit gear has jumped up about 50% at A2A recently? At first I thought it was the dollar but I don't think that's it. Maybe they can't sustain the business without higher mark-up? It now makes it significantly cheaper to buy direct from Schiit though.
     
  17. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Probably when excitement for Modius dies down. Modius measures good so Schiit can appease the measurements crowd and their prophet. This is absolutely necessary before releasing a multi-bit DAC that merely measures OK because it establishes cred that they can do things in accordance with their religious dogma. Only after this cred is established, can they release a multi-bit product that intentionally by design doesn't measure so well. Otherwise the measurement crowd will shit on Jason as say dumb stuff like he's an incompetent engineer. It's a matter of pragmatism.

    Don't worry, the world won't end and turn into Doug Self's (the original Amir) dream. 3+ sells more than Heresy.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2020
  18. Poleepkwa

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    I think that in order for them to insert Unison into the OG Modi Multibit was too tight in that form factor.So I would assume that this might be the REAL reason for the size of the Möbius :) The only thing I wonder about the Möbius Multibit is the price. Could be about 499, although I would not be surprised if it is 399. They sometimes have a tendency for the replacements to be cheaper the outgoing models. A very rare thing in Audio.
     
  19. haywood

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    Modius is interesting in that it includes a lot of features that were used as product differentiators on the other dacs. Bifrost 2 got part of the way there already with balanced outs but it wasn’t true balanced which left Gungnir some breathing room. Modius is true balanced out. If a multibit version were to be introduced it increases the risk that it would cannibalize sales of their higher priced dacs.

    The other way to look at it is they’re not competing with just themselves, and if someone is going to cannibalize those sales it might as well be Schiit.
     
  20. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Schiit's always cannibalized their sales of higher end stuff. Companies that aren't willing to do that but instead rely on sales of legacy products eventually get beaten by their competition.
     

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