Schiit Modius DAC announced

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

  1. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Haha, give me some credit! I'm overly sensitive and highly reactive sometimes, but not that silly :)

    Totally agree that going balanced for the sake of it is nervosa at its finest, just been wanting a DAC that does balanced well to take advantage of something else I might (cough) already be getting that's optimised to run balanced; my current DAC (2015 Bifrost MB) is purely SE, ergo not the best fit.
     
  2. Taverius

    Taverius Smells like sausages

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    I mean sure, it's pretty clear the advantages, both in marketing and design/manufacturing - let alone sound - to moving everything to unison.

    I do wonder how they'll cram it into a microshiit chassis though.

    The poor things are already nearly 4-dimensional on the inside, and unison just isn't anywhere near as compact as ots usb-on-a-chip solutions.
     
  3. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    That's a good reference level though :)
     
  4. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    • The LMEs are very good. This seems like a good competitor to the MOTU M2 and M4 and SSL 2+. The power rails are gimped in all of them due to bus power. This will shit on Chifi and Focusrite Scarlets.

    @purr1n that all encompassing warmth in the MOTU AVB is very reactive. Like a cohesive blank canvas that reveals all change. It feels unfucked with. A lot of converters have disparate timbres across the frequency spectrum. Many Schiit converters suffer from this but so does a ton of other shit. Does the Modius?

    Another maker of nice cohesive warm bang for buck converters is SPL but the recent expensive efforts suffer from Velvet Sound. The Crimson and Madison with are great with the AK4621 but warmer than MOTU.

    Dangerous products are now more colored. They are now sheened over up top (gets rid of aliasing, sizzle, imd, and other high frequency nastiness) and have an expander type effect on transients for limited modern pop bullshit. It sounds awesome but it is a very “hi-fi” color. The Convert-2 was cleaner but way less reactive than the MOTUs to air band nastiness and very very slight glue and punch compression. That .5 dB or so of gain reduction that very subtly affects the timbre and dynamics.

    The webpage for the compressor explains it all: https://dangerousmusic.com/product/compressor/
    That 60 hz sidechain high filter gives it away if the “modern levels” didn’t. That is just there so the sine waves don’t pump in modern pop music that all sounds like shit anyway. Any music with real instruments wants 90-150hz ish. I’m sure the thing sounds killer even with the weird auto attack and smart dynamics though.
    By far the coolest Dangerous box for real music production with real instruments is the Bax EQ.

    The THX amps and Topping converters suck balls and aren’t worth of being in a setup with anything else mentioned here.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2020
  5. Ash1412

    Ash1412 Friend

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    I sense an incoming Thunderdome between two new Jotunheims using Nexus: Jotunheim S featuring a switcher (yeah I went there, especially considering Schiit's readily adoption of good switchers now) as a THX beater (Jotunheim was already pretty close) paired with Modius and Jotunheim 2 at higher cost than current Jotunheim, maybe incorporating Continuity cause bigger chassis for something spectacular with Bifrost 2.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2020
  6. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    That does make a lot of sense, Jot seems next in line for a bitching upgrade.
     
  7. TheIceman93

    TheIceman93 El pato-zorro

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    Which affordable balanced amps are worthy? Jot? Or are we talking something even higher?
     
  8. gahan

    gahan New

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    Have this dac good synergy with Jotunheim + HD650?
     
  9. mokobigbro

    mokobigbro Acquaintance

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    I agree with you on this one.

    Another one that has this character is AVID HD IO. I don't know what dac chip is used on this one.
     
  10. Yethal

    Yethal Facebook Friend

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    Anybody else finds it amusing that amir calls the xlr output 'his favorite' in the modius review even though he didn't publish Yggdrasil's xlr out measurements and later defended that by saying that no one cares about xlr?
     
  11. joch

    joch Friend

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    A question on using balance on this.

    The XLRs are only for "balance" right?

    I mean, you shouldn't put an RCA adapter on it to use the better XLR output if you only have an amp with SE inputs.
     
  12. HAL9000

    HAL9000 Almost "Made"

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    Let me get this straight. The best SQ of the Modius is delivered by the balanced output, thus sentencing Asgard, Lyr, Vali and Valhalla (which only have SE inputs) to the mediocrity of one note bass? So, much for "Back To Stacks"....
     
  13. Baten

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    There's really no point. No, you shouldn't.

    The best SQ of the Modius is its balanced, so yes it stands to reason there's no way around that except 1:1 transformers which cost as much as the Modius itself.
     
  14. GoodEnoughGear

    GoodEnoughGear Evil Dr. Shultz‎

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    Not only is there no point, you will burn stuff up.
     
  15. joch

    joch Friend

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    Yeah, thanks, I thought so.

    Just putting it out there in case someone (ahem) gets curious.
     
  16. joch

    joch Friend

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    Exactly my thought on pairing it with SE amps.
     
  17. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    Was going to ask you about that, thanks.
     
  18. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Yes, I noticed this cohesive quality of the Motu straight away. And it exists in the Modius with its balanced outs, hence I why was I freaking out in how good it was. I have to admit I was apprehensive about your description of the Motu being a warm ESS Sabre, thinking it would have been one of those warmpoo Sabre implementations with cloudy mid bass to lower mids (Invicta DAC comes to mind), but it turned out really nice, with a resultant fluid quality. Hence it becoming the go-to DAC for my computer. Quite frankly, the Motu Ultralite mk4 blew the Modi 3 and D70 away because of this. Different sound, but blew away nevertheless.

    The Modius with the SE outputs doesn’t quite have this cohesive timbre. However the Modius BAL outputs does. The effect of this "internal" warmth is less obvious, at a lower dose, than on the Motu. Speaking of cohesiveness, where the Modius wins out is with more consistent transients from top to bottom. The Motu is still a bit Sabre’ish with its transients up top; but instead of glare, stridency, and etch (as heard on Topping D50, Yulong, etc.) we have a bit of grain and prickliness. It still cannot escape its heritage. There are ways around this by using software upsampling and choosing a more gentle filter because we can get away with that at 174kHz sampling. But really, most of time I’m too lazy because it isn’t that bad.

    Modius is a slightly different sound than the Motu Ultralite mk4, unlike the D70 or Modi 3, it’s competitive, better. The Ultralite is a bit more colored, less resolving, but it’s going to stay on my desk. Way too many functions, particularly mic, guitar, mixer, and impedance curve measuring tool (I ditched the Focusrite - too many odd behaviors), to let go.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2020
  19. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Duh. Buy Modius now. It’s still an big improvement over Modi 3 from SE outs. Wait until matching chassis balanced Magni 3 THX ABC 123 +++ comes out. (I’m just guessing, but this would seem the most logical solution, and my bet is soon because it would be weird for this chassis to sit around for months with a companion). If you have Jot, no need to worry.

    If you have Valhalla or Lyr, you should be getting the shittier measuring Bifrost 2 anyway.

    If Modi 3 bass texture didn’t bother you, then Modius SE output bass texture won’t. SE is still a 25% better DAC. It’s just that balanced is 40-50% better. Remember, not a wet noodle anymore regardless of output.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2020
  20. Inoculator

    Inoculator Friend

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    Which is kind of funny, because doesn't the Bifrost 2 sound better SE? Get the $200 DAC for balanced use, get the $700 DAC for SE use. (nothing wrong with that, just an interesting observation)
     

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