Schiit Gungnir Multibit impressions

It was kept plugged in, used balanced outs and compared to other things feeding a THX massdrop amp at a private minimeet at the owners house. I believe it was the host’s Gungnir Multibit, thus on for at least days beforehand.

 

The Pro gear is more expensive than the Gungnir Multibit & in some cases the Yggdrasil. If you go up in price, might as well go up a little further & get some High(er)-fi DACs.

 

I didn't bother comparing Source to the new Gungnir Multibit or Soekris feeding the THX massderp amp as there was no point given that I quickly realized the THX massderp amp was wimpy. I didn’t even think to bother unplugging the source to even try it feeding the THX massderp as it was a wimpy amp and the thought never even entered my mind. The RME ADI-2 DAC and Dangerous Music Source both wrecked the Soekris in an earlier ab comparo feeding external amps so I didn’t care to do Soekris vs Source again either.

Private local meet with no real pics. Eudis, UncleRuckus, Silverion, sheldaze and other notable DC area headphone people were there and can attest I was there.

 

Oh really? Clearly nothing will do for you but the TotalDAC, MSB, or DCS RingDACs. The Bricasti and Lavry Golds are beneath you.

 

Just sayin', there are the $1000 range of DACs, $2000 range of DACs & after that (in the used market at least), there are the $3000-$6000 DACs that none of the Pro gear has any competition price-wise with.

 

@Thenewerguy009

Some pro gear is more, but my Lavry 10 sounded similar to the Gungnir Multibit at less money and my Prism Lyra sounds better in my setup vs the Gungnir Multibit and yea, I had to skip a few coffees, it was $70 more than the Gungnir Multibit. And I suppose the Source is a competitor. Liked it, just not loved it when I had it.

 

lol good pro boxes are mostly priced on features and separate converters without other features like interfaces and pots barely exist anymore. Even the convert 8 and the cut down convert 2. There’s always flex fi but if some guy is making $$$$ from his gear that stuff better sound “special” (lavry gold plate and saturation features, prism fat smooth and airy dry British sound, Burl distortion) or look cool and have cache for flexing to clients as most brands and products just sound different from each other after a certain point.

Audiophile flex fi dacs charge whatever they can get the most for. Different market who will pay and not expect anything but raw flexibility and unobtanium in return. They don’t have to necessarily use that to sound cool or get clients.

Price and specs don’t matter anyway versus preference. Take Schiit. Different members like different Schiit and many prefer Schiit other than the latest and greatest Yggdrasil 2.

 

This is absolutely true, like the Chord DAVE. A $10,000+ DAC for just a small PCB board & a switching power supply.
The price is solely based on their R&D.A lot of people back them up on its worth, as they say it sounds better than anything they've heard. Even though the costs to make it, are obviously nowhere close to what they are charging it.

 

Chord was ridiculously overpriced crap to begin with. They’d probably figured they could sell 500 at 10k vs 2000 at 1.2 k and make more. There’s also people buying it just as it’s the most expensive thing they could buy that day and all of those rich idiot suckers would go away if it was cheaper.

The cost to make almost any electronic is pretty trivial compared to r&d. Prism uses 30 cent NE5532 opamps and CS4398 chips. The time to reverse engineer and clone whatever the hell they’re doing isn’t worth it compared to the cost of buying it. Even if you’re a competitor, an exact clone isn’t often worthwhile to market; it must be value engineered into mediocre crap Behringer style or have everything switched out for pirated electrical parts making it into a fire hazard to sell wholesale on AliBaba.

 

Other Chord DACs may be crap, but the Dave certainly is not. If you think it is crap, well, I can't trust your opinion on any DAC. The Dave is over priced, which is why I would never buy it, but that is a different issue.

 

So there are DACs worse than the RME ADI2!!
Dunno which soekris is being referred here but a friend owns Soekris DAM 1021 powered by a salas shunt. Using bal out it was one of the better dacs. Good dense tone, mid bass has distinct heaviness that hits like a sledge, very smooth highs. Resolves fine too. Best of all it doesnt sound weak like an adi 2. And this was while using Soekris on usb while ADI was tried with both usb and coax (from a digigram pci card).
I am sure soekris would have sounded even better were its coax functional.

 

Maybe the diy Soekris is just way better. The Soekris made DAC I heard sounded ultra compressed feeding the T3 compared to the Dangerous Source and RME ADI 2 DAC. Everything anyone has said about the Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil 1 being compressed? They're bombastic orchestral recordings compared to the Soekris' ultra-limited soundcloud rap despite clearer mids than the Gungnir Multibit 2. Feeding the THX Massderp amp, the Soekris' lack of dynamics was not nearly as evident as that thing is stupidly wimpy. Into the T3, the Dangerous sounded like a monstrous drummer, the RME like a tamed studio recording of that drummer, and the Soekris like he's practicing in the unfinished basement of the house next door.

 

No-one can escalate subtlety into Sturm und Drang like Psalm. He personally murders every oat he eats for breakfast and rolls it on a tiny medieval rack.

 

Whether I agree or not, I find it refreshing tbh.

LOL. That's some funny shit right there.

 

I was going through the specs for pre built DACS on Soekris page. All three commercial units 13xx,14xx,15xx weigh extremely low. I have a feeling some chip based PSU is being used.
The DAM 1021 was original built with a SMPS PSU and it sounded like a super clean yet even sharper and tinny sounding than the RME. Beefier PSU gave it the dynamics and bold sound. Dirtier background but who cares. Although it still sounds little glossed over but i blame USB for that.

 

Thanks for this advice - I got round to connecting up my Rega Apollo this evening via s/pdif to the Gungnir Multibit's s/pdif.
To improve my sources overall I also bought a Metrum Ambre for streaming Roon. That is now fed via s/pdif to BNC.

The CD player sounds much better than going straight in to the amp via analogue RCA - and to my ears at least, better than the Ambre streaming to the Gungnir Multibit from Roon.

Except for my TT, I feel I have my sources well sorted now.

 

Power supplies are usually the first thing cost reduced in "value engineered" audio products. I noticed all of the Soekris DACs use different branded power supplies up and down the line. Those pretty much noise free, regulated switching mode power supplies with high headroom used in better modern gear aren't cheap; they can cost more than 20 to 50 dollars in bulk, and you'll only make most gear worse by replacing them with internet meme LPS. You're probably adding some pleasing distortions to the 1021 but probably also have much higher headroom.

That gloss is probably just how it sounds. I never heard a discrete resistor dac that wasn't smoothed over. @Hands has talked about this a bunch. You should probably just get something else beefier sounding, less smoothed out, with darker treble to suit your preferences rather than mod the Soekris more if you want to get rid of it.

 

It had been on for a month, definitely not cold. Meet was at the owners residence. Was unplugged briefly, definitely less than a minute when we moved it. Had it and the soekris hooked up to the BHA-1, gugnir was connected from its balanced output, soekris from the SE.