Schiit Gungnir 2 Impressions + comparo

I have trouble making sense of these Gungnir 2 impressions because when I look at that spider chart, my impressions of the A2/og vs MIB are sort of the exact opposite. I find the A2/OG to be much more resolving, more clear, to have more grit, better extraction of fine detail, more holographic by far, more spacious. the MIB is very flat in comparison. The MIB only wins in smoothness and black background.

There is something the MIB does better, when switching to it, it just sounds sort of "right". But it also has a kind of veil over it in comparison to the A2/og where notes have much more definition and clarity. The A2/og has its own sort of background hash that people have described very well in the past, but I can get used to that very well.

I also don't notice the bass or treble being significantly different. Subtly so, but I mean I find that different headphone cables change the bass and treble more than the difference between treble quality/quantity in the MIB vs A2og.

I should say though that I still think the MIB sounds great. When I first got it, I just hooked it up and didn't compare it to the A2/og and it just sounded "right" to me and I left it hooked up for like 6 months or more. It was only in comparison directly to the A2/og that I notice these things, so both DACs' I woud consider very good.

I have both DACs hooked up to a switcher with 2 inputs so I can just switch back and forth.

MIB -> SE outs -> switcher input 1
A2/og -> XLR outs -> Cinemag 600's -> switcher input 2

(I previously tested the XLR -> Ciinemag outs of the MIB and found the SE outs to sound better, you can find my impressions of that in the MIB thread)

So I am kind of at a loss about all of these impressions if I'm hearing things so differently. Maybe I need to compare again, I don't know.

It sure would be interesting to hear the Gungnir 2! But I'm more excited about the upcoming Yggdrasil with the same tech. And that uber Yggdrasil!

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Someone mentioned the Audial S5 earlier when you were debating Schiit DAC's in general. I did not think it was comparable to the Yggdrasil at all, I thought it sounded nice, but very very polite and fell short of the Yggdrasil (a2/og at the time) in every way except smoothness and black background, but those things came at a huge cost of resolution and spacial cues and holographic imaging, and soundstage size and dynamics, and well everything else.

I have a close friend who loves the S5 though.

 

@rhythmdevils I thought A1 was superior to A2 in all aspects, other than slightly more greyness. all the strengths you talk about in holography, and phasing of sound queues are better. But it is indeed too grey...yeah measurements of audibility by damned, but why can we still hear the greyness? Noise floor? It seems unfortunately better measurements such as lower noise floor and opamps lead to "cleaner", "flatter" sounding dac. Multiform seems to be ameliorating the problem, I'm hoping the proprietary singularity solution can measure well as sound good. Maybe crazy clean measurement DS with discrete output is better than R2R to cleaner opamps. It seems to be a fine balance, but anything leaning towards either end leads to compromises.

 

Interesting! Now I wish I heard one! I never tried to heard an A1 or GS because I got the A2 first before hearing the A1 and I love the tone of the A2, it sounds very "right" to me, and everyone says the A1 is sort of like the A2 Gungnir, which I did not like, I prefer the A1 Gungnir. People talk about how the two DACs went in opposite directions or swapped tone or something. So I just wouldn't want thinner or less warmth or more sterile, etc. But heck, I should give one a try if I can.

 

Given how all DACs effectively measure flat nowadays, besides distortion (which I do feel is a massive part of all this) I do wonder how time domain elements might factor into how a DAC sounds given how some older things like the original Bifrost Multibit did sound "disjointed" across the spectrum. I don't think burst decays would make as much sense for converters... maybe?

I've been a bit more mindful of how really complex the oscilloscope visualisation in foobar can be even with deceptively simple acoustic recordings. With something wilder, it just goes fully bananas. Probably something there, since I did notice a slight difference between how the same release of the same song sounded different across two different lossy platforms. Different codecs yes, but just in terms of FR (besides subsonics) they're very similar.

 

@Lyander a lot of a DAC's performance is in the filter. And a filter is pretty straightforward to measure:
Just a couple things that come to my mind:

• Rolloff profile (shallow VS steep)
• Passband phase response (where minimum phase and even NOS messes up)
• Passband ripple
• Rolloff slope
• Stopband attenuation (and esp. shape)
• Heck, even the latency

I suppose distortion can play a role in terms of sound, too. Higher harmonics can be detected more easily, but I'm still doubtful crap 80 to 100dB down really matters. Even IMD is very low with DACs.

I wonder if the Gungnir 2 would get me to critically listen to digital more since I've mostly been listening to vinyl nowadays. Digital just for convenience.
I find my Gungnir MB A1 to sound boring compared to my vinyl rig since I got the Skoll.

However I at least want to wait on what's about to come.

 

True but there's likely a reason that people still run different DACs with the same filters, no? I'm speaking mainly of HQPlayer sorts who have their gear set to NOS, paired with a TOTL GPU for reasons beyond my level of comprehension; hardware matters too.

I was playing around with Resampler-V in foobar after coming across an older post from Marv talking about how it was pretty fun to mess with, and while I know for certain that my hardware is *far* from being able to do such experimentation justice, I sorta figured that hey, it's a step towards learning stuff, and being able to play with the presentation on my headphone rig a bit.

Ended up just going back to the OS mode on the MMB2 since 1.) it was a far simpler solution, and 2.) I couldn't quite key in settings with that resampler that better suited my preferences. This is all to say that I am aware that even for lower-tier gear filters matter a great deal (heck even on the FiiO BTR7 there's enough of a discrepancy between fast and hybrid for me to have a definite preference), but I wonder then how much there is beyond the filter that can inform the resultant sound.

Think it'd be fun to somehow make for a standardised test maybe, somehow try loading in a specific filter and see how different DACs handle that. I imagine it'll mainly work for NOS designs though.

 

Quality of the power supply, basically clean power to the DAC components

 

Has the single-ended output performance of Gungnir 2 been discussed? I recently moved back to A1 boards from MIB in my GS2 and realized what a mistake that was (A1 boards weren't selling, and I hate having unused components around, so passed the MIB to a friend).

Aegis is my predominant headamp and only has RCA in. Really noticing the grey-ness and haziness of the A1 boards, along with a pretty drastic hit to image depth and treble resolution. Considering moving on down from the Yggdrasil to the Gungnir 2 for the time being while the Yggdrasil updates are developed.

 

@Nick76 post #15

 

Awesome, got a couple tube rolls to counter thinness if that's the case. Went ahead and ordered a Gungnir 2, will have some impressions vs. A1 and MIB a few days after it arrives.

 

I'm a big fan of the OG BF2 (own 2 of them). Briefly tried the 2/64 module when it first came out and returned it, preferring the OG flavor for its more natural, thick, rich, dense, 3D, analog-like sound. I also preferred BF2 to the A1 Gungnir, which had a more hazy tube-like sound and noticeably worse blackground. Never heard the A2 Gungnir Multibit.

Contemplating either picking up the new G2 or an OG Yggdrasil. Worried I will still prefer the BF2 to even the new G2. Besides diminished bass quantity (as I read earlier in the thread), how else does the G2 compare to the OG BF2, particularly in terms of density/3-dimensionality?

Typically, as I understand it, this quality is a result of distortion, and I wonder if the G2 still has much of that traditional thick/rich full-bodied Schiit multibit/R2R-ish DNA to its sound.

Currently leaning towards the G2 as upgrade option, since it's newer and has Forkbeard and is getting praise.

 

Would you classify its deep layering/density as on par or better than the OG BF2?

That's my main concern is does it have that thick 3D/weight/depth/tall layering like the BF2 or even the Yggdrasil OG (which I've not heard but have read good things about).

 

answered by purr1n

 

Have had my Gungnir 2 in for 2 days and my impressions with headphones much closer match Marv's initial impressions vs. his write-up with the speakers. I find Yggdrasil A1 and MIB have more bass presence and quantity, while the Gungnir 2 presents a bit leaner and more precise in the bass. However, I find MIB to be the best DAC overall for myself and my system. While Gungnir 2 has similar resolving ability in the treble and a blackground akin to the MIB, it's just a bit light-bodied and a tiny bit prickly in the treble. I also find the imaging/depth/staging a bit "restricted" feeling in comparison to the Yggdrasil variants. It's as if elements in a song are locked in a horizontal grid such as | | | | instead of being smoothly blended throughout the stage. Not sure if that makes sense, but it's the first time I've experienced something like this .

Unfortunately, my unit seems to have a grounding issue. It's quite cold and dry here in NJ and with the heat running there's always gonna be some static. I've brushed my hand across the Gungnir 2 a couple times which resulted in the whole DAC dying, lights shutting off and emitting no sound. Power cycling fixes it, but I've never had an issue like this with any other Schiit DAC or components from any other company. Now I've had my fair share of problems with Schiit gear, but nothing this intrusive.

In any case: I much prefer MIB in my headphone system (and even A1 as a flavor DAC) over the Gungnir 2, issues with my unit aside.

 

Could it be that little white thing you have it plugged into not being powerful enough? Does this issue still occur when plugged directly into your Furman?

 

The Gungnir 2 seems to have such a different personality with headphones vs speakers. I am a 99.99 speaker person and this in my rig is better then the MIB.
Is this something folks have found with other dacs?

 

Yep, happens with whatever the DAC is plugged into, whether it be that setup I had running from the Furman to the tiny 3-outlet for testing, directly from the Furman itself, or straight from the wall. It's a problem with the Gungnir it seems