Schiit Modi Multibit vs Gungnir Multibit -> Mjolnir 2: What's the difference, and should you upgrade?

Introduction
As a Modi Multibit and Mj2 owner I remained incredibly curious about the Gungnir Multibit. How much better could it really be, and in what way? The short answer is that it is, by some margin. But you need a headphone good enough for it to reach real significance, and as one moves up the equipment ladder many of the improvements are increasingly in the nuances. I'll use multipliers at a few points to describe how much better I feel certain aspects are, these are just a gut feeling so take them with a pinch or two of salt.

Chain
iPhone 8 Plus -> Tidal -> Schiit Eitr -> Behringer DEQ2496 -> Schiit Gungnir Mutibit -> Schiit Mjolnir 2 w/ WE396a Vaccum Tubes, ATL DC Blocker, Furman RFI/EMI Filter -> Focal Utopia w/ foam disc over front of drivers

Comparison was primarily done with Gungnir Multibit BAL output vs Modi Multibit SE output. Members in this thread and others have indicated that there are limitations with the Mj2’s SE in, and that the difference between the Gungnir Multibit’s outputs may well be debatable. I do not have the setup to accurately ascertain differences between the Gungnir Multibit's SE vs BAL output, or the Mj2’s SE vs BAL input. So this comparison won’t necessarily be fair outside of specific use with the Mjolnir 2 amplifier, so please take all impressions in this context.

Terminology
Micro-detail - Plankton, low level information
Macro-detail - Overall detail, resolution
Micro-dynamics - Small gradations of volume, like reverberations
Dynamics/Compression - Total range of volume, or lack thereof
Slam/Impact - How hard bass hits, how much air pressure you feel on your ear drum
Clarity - Lack of veil, purity
Speed - Separation, clearly defined individual sounds, how well you can hear each individual string in the strum of a guitar
Texture - The detail within individual sounds
Tactility - Solidity of presentation, tangible feel
Ethereal - Ghostly nature of presentation, low density
Air - High frequency ambience/presence, top most audile treble range
Closed-in - Lack of air, high range treble cut-off
Sweet - The rich defined treble


Impressions
My very first impression when hearing the Gungnir Multibit for the first time was “huh, this Modi Multibit is really good”, and that they’re very much from the same family. Though still true my feelings changed the more the new DAC warmed up and the more time I spent with it. I think it may soon become my favourite piece of gear. All following statements regarding the Gungnir Multibit and Modi Multibit are relative to each other, each via Eitr. Now, hold on to ‘yer butts 'cus I’m about to throw a bunch of vague nonsense words at you.

It’s dynamism hits you first. Creating a grand sense of scale unrelated to imaging, it’s younger sibling’s presentation appearing somewhat meek in comparison. Across the board sound is much purer, most evident in vocals which take on a great deal more texture and nuance. Female vocals in particular are really quite beautiful. You hear more of things like the vocalists throat sound, or air passing their lips in certain moments.

Although the vocals are the most immediately impressive aspect it’s the two extremes of the audio spectrum which surprised me more. The upper treble is incredibly rich and well defined. To use a word that is perhaps not entirely appropriate I kept thinking to myself that the treble had a wonderul sweetness to it. A strum of the finer strings on a guitar demonstrated this well. The peaks of the treble were just incredibly present and separated with nuance in their reverberations. Where they were very dulled and un-noteworthy with the Modi Multibit. Bass is fuller and bolder. Impact increases notably, resolution increases too. I often felt that there was a sense of air and resonance to the bass I’ve not heard anywhere else before.

Micro-detail is another place it shines. Background sounds are much more present and discernible. You can hear these things with the Modi Multibit but you just aren’t particularly aware of them unless you are deliberately focusing. It’s increased speed also contributing to this with better separation all around.

I didn't use the phrase micro-dynamics anywhere above, but it's ability in that regard is pretty much instilled in every paragraph. It's a big part of what makes it so impressive and engaging. They’re much finer, delicate, and textured.

If you take all the positive words in the terminology section above and make them up to around 2x to 3.4x better, along with the Gungnir Multibit being pretty neutral to the Modi Multibit's slightly warm and fairly rolled-off at the top end tuning. Then that’s Gungnir Multibit, vs Modi Multibit, in a nutshell. Though this is of course with the Utopia.

Gungnir Multibit SE Outputs -> Mjolnir 2
Dulled and smoothed over, or veiled, vs BAL. How much of this is due to which input or output or both I cannot say. I did not spend enough time comparing the SE of each DAC, but they seemed somewhat closer.

Back to the Modi Multibit
The Modi Multibit in comparison is murky, with dulled treble, poorly defined bass, and somewhat compressed overall. The Gungnir Multibit is just delivering much more information and doing it so much more accurately and clearly, simultaneously. Producing a more life like more and vibrant sound. Don't take that as criticism toward the Modi Multibit, overall it's good for the money. As far as the Utopia goes it was unsurprisingly holding it back fairly significantly. I’m getting quite a bit more enjoyment out of them since the upgrade.

Sennheiser HD650
With the HD650 I think it’s OTT for the improvements gained. Most things stated above remain true but to a limited extent, especially in the bass area. I would like to have spent more time with it but roughly speaking from quick impressions the mids see maybe about 2x improvement, treble very roughly around 1.75x-1.90x. Bass improvements are minimal.

Schiit Mjolnir 2
From previous experience I think in stock form it would really hold back the Gungnir Multibit. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if my setup was holding it back now. The stock tubes just wouldn't be up to the task, too slow for one thing. Whether the power conditioners are necessary will be dependent on each person’s mains quality, in my case absolutely. Supposedly the Mjolnir and Ragnarok are pretty susceptible to poor quality power.

Conclusion
Should you buy one? What I can say is that if I were talking to my past self then I most certainly would recommend doing so. Try and get yourself an extended listening session to get a good feel for it, as despite the flowery words written above it is not a night and day difference. At least not at first, it takes a little time to appreciate the changes, assuming you have a headphone performant enough to get the most out of it. Once you do though, you will not be going back.


Edits
10/11/17 - Various nips, tucks, caveats, and clarifications. Reduced the scope of the write up to the Mj2 as I do not have the appropriate setup to assess the Gungnir Multibit SE out, or the Mj2’s SE in, for myself.

 

The SE sounding worse with your Gungnir Multibit > MJ2 is most likely due to the MJ2's circlotron circuitry, which favors balanced in's and out's. It could also be why the Modi Multibit sounds worse in comparison. If you get the chance, you should compare the Modi Multibit and Gungnir Multibit with a different amp.

 

No, the SE outs of Gungnir Multibit do not suck. Using SE with the Mjolnir 2 can sound rubbish, generally (from memory, I don't own one).

Any DAC will sound suspect going into it SE, I suspect. I stopped using my [I forget the name] fancy balanced to SE converter with the Gungnir Multibit, as the SE outs are just fine for driving my SE amps.

 

Nice writeup.

Echoing others already, I too was a Gungnir Multibit/Mjo2 owner, and came to the same conclusions about the Gungnir Multibit SE outs because I was using Mjo2 to test. Subsequently, now using Gungnir Multibit with a SE headphone amp, the difference between Gungnir Multibit SE out, and Gungnir Multibit balanced out converting to SE with a Jensen transformer, differences are VERY subtle to me, if there are all (aside from a difference in raw volume and noise floor, the Jensen is both quieter in volume and in floor)

 

Yeah, with SE outs into Torpedo III the difference becomes 1.0912x instead of 3.4x.

 

Thanks for pointing this out, I'd meant to state this as a condition as I don't have a way to verify the differences.

To my ears the SE outputs of the Gungnir Multibit were worse in a similar way to the Mj2’s SE headphone out. Too dulled and smoothed over, or veiled. Previously my understanding from reading the threads here are that the SE inputs on the Mj2 use a phase splitter and are fine, but of course summed outputs are not. I've had no way to satisfactorily test this for myself though, and am unaware of a DAC that can output both natively, or DACs similar enough in SE and BAL versions.

I had my Fulla 2 to hand and had a quick listen. What I am hearing is pretty much in line with what I heard when comparing the SE outputs of each DAC on the Mj2, though the Fulla 2 is holding the Gungnir Multibit back quite a bit. I also went back and tried the Mj2 headphone SE out to verify my prior experience, and went back and forth with the HD650 with which the degradation was slightly less apparent. EDIT: The Modi Multibit may have been a bit less murky in relative terms, but then the Fulla 2 is pretty raw and clear sounding. In fact it made the Gungnir Multibit sound a bit harsh and the Modi Multibit somewhat smooth rather than murky.

Maybe "Sucked" is too strong a word to use. Personally I wouldn't be happy using the Gungnir Multibit with a SE only amp knowing how it sounds normally. (EDIT: Based upon listening via the Mj2, and limited time via Fulla 2).

EDIT: @Neal lol, they're only meant as a loose metric. I don’t have enough gear or experience to do spider chart style ratings well enough.

 

I recently bought a Gungnir Multibit to replace the D/S DAC module in the Jotunheim, and I think that my impressions parallel your comparison with the Modi Multibit. Tighter/clearer/more distinct bass, smooth, detailed mids and vocals, crisper/clearer highs with better sustain/decay of cymbals, but the treble is not harsh or piercing. I felt that there was some treble harshness or "glare" with the Jotunheim using the D/S DAC module, which I don't perceive with the Gungnir Multibit as the source.

I've found several tracks that had a piano part (Chicago II) or guitar part (Steely Dan "Gaucho") in the background that was almost imperceptible before, but are now distinct with the Gungnir Multibit. Background vocal are more distinct, rather than blended together.

I'm using the balanced output on Gungnir Multibit to balanced input on Jot, with an HD600 and balanced cable. I've not tried the single-ended inputs or outputs...

 

If you have the RCAs I’d be interested to hear what you think going SE in -> SE out vs BAL in -> BAL out from the Gungnir Multibit into the Jot, as the Jot doesn’t sum it’s SE headphone out. Still not an ideal test but more direct a comparison and easier to A/B.

 

I'll try doing this over the weekend...

 

Be careful to volume match as best as possible when flipping the switch between SE/Bal.

 

Appealing to those more knowledge...

Could you use a Jot to do the balanced to SE conversion, and then run the SE out to your SE amp? Use the Jot as a pre?

Any sonic differences, pro or con, as opposed to using a Jensen transformer?

 

It'd do it beautifully, but man, in the back of my mind the extra gain stages, potentiometer in the signal path would bug me.

 

I don't have Jot on hand, but I do know Mjo2 SE out to NBM is a wonderful pairing that I found accidentally, Long story short, I was so pissed off by NBM volume pot imbalance that I cranked it all the way up, and let Mjo2 as preamp to NBM. It makes my oldie but goodie SA5K opened a little bit

 

Inspired by this experiment I tried Modi Multibit and Gungnir Multibit on my main speaker rig. The Eitr was IMO what brought the Modi Multibit closer to the Gungnir Multibit. Eitr/Modi Multibit combination is really very good.

 

Thanks for the write up, it's an interesting comparison. I think it speaks well that the Modi Multibit, at 1/5 the price of the Gungnir Multibit, is good enough that you'd need to have some fairly high-end cans to really appreciate the difference.

 

I very much doubt that you could consistently pick out the Gungnir Multibit SE outputs vs the Gungnir Multibit going into a nice Jensen converter. Having tried to do exactly that, I've found that I value less clutter on my desk more than what's probably a near-imaginary difference.

The Mjo2 is a special case, it can sound pants with single-ended stuff, it's a major caveat for what is otherwise a pretty impressive bang-for-buck amp.

Yes, this is the old problem that the Modi Multibit just PLLs against the SPDIF input. You need really clean clocks into it, or you lose a lot of transient detail and instrument separation due to sidebands caused by jitter. Fed well, it's a surprisingly capable little DAC.

You really don't, the difference is fairly easily apparent, both in the resolution and the quality/quantity of bass. Even through a Vali 2 (which is cheerfully rolled off at both ends, and far from the last word in resolution) it's pretty pronounced.


Edit:

This thread is going a bit Head-Fi. It's important to know when more stuff only gives you bragging rights, rather than a useful upgrade. Spending more money, having more clutter in the stack and more things in the chain are all liabilities in and of themselves- so it needs to actually be a useful difference when you add another unit.

This is sort of why this site is here, to let people learn from the mistakes of the hive mind, and get the best results in their price bracket. We're in danger of a blind rando retail circlejerk here, with chains full of spurious stuff.

To clarify, there's nothing wrong with the Jensen converters, they're great, measure nice and flat and are built like tanks- fantastic to have in situations where they're actually needed.

 

@jnak00 Doesn’t mean that you need a Utopia to hear that difference, it’s just that the better the headphone the less it will hold it back. In regards to the HD650 it's level of clarity, macro-detail, and bass-performance held it back. In terms of micro-dynamics it's up there with the best of them, with the right amp.

@Kattefjaes I can only speak in terms of what I have heard, and state the conditions. Upon reading through things again this morning it is evident that at this time I do not have an appropriate setup to confidantly judge the SE output of the Gungnir Multibit in a broad sense, or the Mj2’s SE input. So to avoid misleading anyone with an unfair comparison I have added further clarifications and caveats to the original post, and reduced the scope of the write up to the Mjolnir 2 specifically.

Is this the Jensen BAL-> RCA transformer: http://www.jensen-transformers.com/product/pc-2xr/ Ouch, £329.99. What does it do differently to an internal summer?

EDIT:
A good summary:
http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...iscussion-for-noobs-and-boobs.733/#post-18920

 

While it was quiet in the house this morning, I've done a comparison of Gungnir Multibit balanced XLR outs vs. single-ended RCA outs into the Jotunheim, listening with HD600 on a balanced cable. I have some old-school mid-80's Discwasher Gold-ends RCA interconnects, that are short, probably .5m? Aside from the higher gain out of the balanced outputs on the Gungnir Multibit, I cannot detect any significant difference between the balanced or singe-ended outputs of the Gungnir Multibit.

I suspect, as noted above by those who have the Mjolnir 2, that the difference observed is more likely due to the amp rather than the outputs of the Gungnir Multibit.