USB sounded flat, two dimensional. The sense of air and space around the instruments and performers was gone. Vocals became more prominent and individual instruments were harder to separate. Slight edginess/harshness, not a significant amount but noticeable in comparison to BNC. Significantly less emotional involvement in the music. I honestly couldn’t wait to turn it off.
Switching back to the 502DAC, the soundstage opened back up. Air and space and layering returned. Everything was more balanced, textured, detailed. I soon found myself just enjoying the music instead of analyzing it.
The Gen 5 USB on the Gungnir kind of sounded like the Modi Multibit through SPDIF, which would be damning to the Gungnir if USB was your only input option and you didn’t want to upgrade to Unison. It’s also a compliment to Modi Multibit, in that it does sound good for what it is given the price delta. But SPDIF into the Gungnir blows the Modi away, as it should.
The RPi (at least RPi 3) is such a terrible USB source, even Gen5 couldn’t do much with it. Unison manages to make it possibly passable, but IMO, still not great.
Edit: Typing almost the same thing as rtaylor, too slowly :)
@rtaylor76@rlow That's totally fair, and a better USB source could change the equation, but the RPi setup works best for my main system, so for me that's the USB source that mattered most.
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