Schiit Modi Multibit - No Love?

[watchnerd]

I do get why people might like euphonic distortion, that is purely a subjective preference but it is a perfectly valid one as enjoyment of music is an inherently subjective experience. However, they're not marketed and sold on that basis, and more pertinently if that if what you want it would appear to make more sense to use signal processing in a DSP unit which you can adjust (or switch off) rather than being locked into a particular distortion because of the DAC design.

While primarily a DSP phono stage, the Puffin also accepts line-level inputs and has tube emulation DSP:

• Adjust Bass, Treble, Air, and 4th order HPF & LPFs
• Volume control with cueing mute
• Modes are Stereo, Mono, Left and Right
• Apply transfer functions like tube (2H) and tape (3H)
• Recall default settings (CD, MM, MC) and save your own

 

[Frank Dernie]

While primarily a DSP phono stage, the Puffin also accepts line-level inputs and has tube emulation DSP:

• Adjust Bass, Treble, Air, and 4th order HPF & LPFs
• Volume control with cueing mute
• Modes are Stereo, Mono, Left and Right
• Apply transfer functions like tube (2H) and tape (3H)
• Recall default settings (CD, MM, MC) and save your own

Love this but had never heard of them! Do you have one? A bit like the Devialet phono stage (+effects) in a box. Want one...

 

[gvl]

Seems like this multibit business is a larger conspiracy than I realized. Most of my assumptions have been based on what I have heard from other owners of multibit dacs. The claims they have made about the sound becoming smoother or warmed up and some even saying that particular implementations gave a "tubey" sound have contributed to my ideas regarding the reason behind multi-bit. I have never personally been interested enough to get one.

I went through like 7 MB DACs, 3 were boutique the rest were from established manufacturers, Schitt including. Only the boutique ones had colored warmish sound to my ear, so it's unfair to say all MB DACs are like that.

 

[DonH56]

They say that in just about every breath. Here is Schiit on modi multibit:

View attachment 18266

Exact level implies 100% fidelity to audio samples. There is no talk of screwing them up to make them sound better.

That statement from Schitt is completely misleading and a gross misrepresentation of what bit-depth means in a DS architecture.

As for multibit accuracy to 20 bits or more, it can be achieved, but DS designs have so taken over that it is just not worth the effort and cost in manufacturing and test to do so. And the whole linearity argument glosses over the fact that there have to be components in the output chain of a DS DAC that are accurate to 20+ bits; delta-sigma is not a complete panacea. It is about noise shaping, mostly targeting the quantization noise, but linearity must still be achieved to keep the distortion low. There is a lot of trimming and processing circuitry on those chips to achieve such high performance. The final demodulator must achieve high linearity and have good power-supply rejection and so forth or you start amplitude-modulating the bit stream and that will show up in the output.

There always seems to be a nostalgic "the old stuff was better" group around and I admit at times I am one of them. But a lot of times it is misplaced. Multibit DACs may not suffer from noise modulation but correction circuits in the very highest precision ones I have seen (30 bits) include -- gasp! -- delta-sigma modulation techniques and high-speed internal clocks to do random bit swapping and play other games to achieve extremely precise element matching. Large unary arrays for the MSBs (using a large number of unit-value cells. e.g. the upper 6 bits of a 16-bit DAC may use 64 cells instead of six, reducing the matching requirements by roughly 1/64) improve linearity but now you have more noise, more control circuits, and a much larger load for the buffer to handle. The large area means process, voltage, and thermal gradients across the array are more problematic. Etc.

My grandmother used to say that the young folk pining for the good old days didn't have to live through them. I miss her blunt wisdom.

 

[creativepart]

When did you buy yours by the way?

I just got it 2 weeks ago. It should be a new one. I PM'd you a day or two after receiving it.

 

[creativepart]

It may be a silly concept, but when you can buy a MB Dac for $250 and see for yourself it seems like everyone interested in Dac design would try one for themselves. (As apposed to bad mouthing the design without having any experience with one.) What if you tried it... and liked it?

I like to try LOTs of stuff and then make up my mind about it. Of course, I'm old, nearing 70, so my hearing is for schiit anyway.

 

[watchnerd]

Love this but had never heard of them! Do you have one? A bit like the Devialet phono stage (+effects) in a box. Want one...

I don't have one. For the main system, I use the Devialet, but I've thought of buying one, maybe even to use as a tape preamp for NAB/IEC EQ.

 

[amirm]

It may be a silly concept, but when you can buy a MB Dac for $250 and see for yourself it seems like everyone interested in Dac design would try one for themselves. (As apposed to bad mouthing the design without having any experience with one.) What if you tried it... and liked it?

I have tried multiple ones now. There is nothing to like when you level match them and test blind. The liking comes from the impression that they must be better. In that case with full knowledge of what you are testing, you will perceive more detail, air, fidelity, etc. and contribute that to multi-bit design. In reality, delta-sigma DACs would produce the same sound if someone told you they were multi-bit!

The enemies of correct audio perception are your eyes and brain. The two love to hand you a different truth in audio.....

 

[GGroch]

I have tried multiple ones now. There is nothing to like when you level match them and test blind. The liking comes from the impression that they must be better...

THIS! Schiit purposefully tuning in euphonic distortions would be unnecessary and counterproductive. Some boutique brands might do that but their products are seldom tested.

The euphony comes from customers buying in to the sonic benefits of multi-bit architecture....after paying $150 for the tech...they will certainly hear it.
There is nothing new about selling the multi-bit story....it was part of CD player pitches from Onkyo and others for years.

 

[watchnerd]

THIS! Schiit purposefully tuning in euphonic distortions would be unnecessary and counterproductive. Some boutique brands might do that but their products are seldom tested.

The euphony comes from customers buying in to the sonic benefits of multi-bit architecture....after paying $150 for the tech...they will certainly hear it.
There is nothing new about selling the multi-bit story....it was part of CD player pitches from Onkyo and others for years.

German and American DACs have the best bass, while French and Italian DACs have silkier highs.

British DACs have the best PRAT.

Japanese DACs have the best inner detail and plankton, but can be a bit dynamically soft.

[I've both heard this said and seen it written...self-reinforcing prophecy probably at this point.]

 

[amirm]

The review is up! https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-battle-of-schiit-audio-dacs.5487/

 

[creativepart]

Thanks for that @amirm much appreciated!

 

[DonH56]

It may be a silly concept, but when you can buy a MB Dac for $250 and see for yourself it seems like everyone interested in Dac design would try one for themselves. (As apposed to bad mouthing the design without having any experience with one.) What if you tried it... and liked it?

I like to try LOTs of stuff and then make up my mind about it. Of course, I'm old, nearing 70, so my hearing is for schiit anyway.

Assuming we have not tried "lots of stuff" is a mistake. Many of us, including myself (and of course Amir, King of comparisons, measurements, and all that jazz) have listened to many DACs over the years from the late 70's (when I heard my first one, not counting the ones I built before that) and early 80's through today. And $250 is a lot of money for some people to blow upon something with measurably worse performance, over-hyped misleading marketing, and the assumption that somehow none of that matters and it will sound better than my Oppo, XMC-1, or transistor radio (yes, still have one of those, and some old tube gear, but I prefer the modern stuff). And I have decades that say my ears are not the most reliable things in the world; many years ago blind testing proved much of what I knew and heard was wrong.

YMMV - Don

 

[creativepart]

Assuming we have not tried "lots of stuff" is a mistake.

I'm not assuming anything. I just commented on what I like to do. So, yeah, YMMV. Of course.

If something is cheap enough to sample and easily resalable for 80% of it's purchase cost it seems an easy decision. That's all I'm saying.

My first stand alone dac was the battery powered Ack! dAck! in 2003. So, you've got me beat by like 30 years. I'm a relative newby. My first transistor radio was a 6(!) transistor I got for my 7th birthday in 1957. But I don't still have it.

 

[RayDunzl]

My first transistor radio was a 6(!) transistor I got for my 7th birthday in 1957. But I don't still have it.

I still have my RCA 8 transistor from 1963 or so.

I won it for my skill at negotiating the bicycle obstacle course at the local park.

Still works, which would have surprised me as a kid, somehwere I got the idea that transisors would only last 20 years or so, due to cosmic rays or atomic drift or whatever upsetting the junctions.

 

[gvl]

What is it they call it, the super burrito filter. BS in this case could stand for Bad Schiit.

I think the khadas will let you see the light!

The Khadas board is in. I'll just say that now I'm familiar with what people refer to as "ESS sound"

 

[Svperstar]

I've been using the modi 2 multibit in my home setup for 2 years now. I just got a Gilmore Lite Mk2 and so now I'm itching to switch DACS.

Don't wanna use my Dragonfly 1.2 from work for home so I am thinking of this guy:
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-grace-design-standard-dac

Price is right and it measures better then the Multibit. The DX3 Pro looks neat but there is no chance I am spending ~$200 on a product that clicks over USB constantly. Spent too much money on my setup for that.

Anyone else heard the Modi 2 Multibit and the Grace SDAC and can comparE?

 

[amirm]

Don't wanna use my Dragonfly 1.2 from work for home so I am thinking of this guy:
https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-grace-design-standard-dac

They say the distortion is 0.0013%. Converting this to SINAD you get 97 dB. Topping D10 gets 103 in my measurements:

So it measures better and costs the same as the SDAC. It also has a very nice display, looks better and has more features (S/PDIF output, etc.). And no relay clicking.

That would be my suggestion.

 

[Svperstar]

They say the distortion is 0.0013%. Converting this to SINAD you get 97 dB. Topping D10 gets 103 in my measurements:

So it measures better and costs the same as the SDAC. It also has a very nice display, looks better and has more features (S/PDIF output, etc.). And no relay clicking.

That would be my suggestion.

Yeah but the ESS "glare" and all. Curious how the 4452 DAC sounds in comparison.

 

[amirm]

Yeah but the ESS "glare" and all.

That is a myth. Don't let that pre-bias you to not like those products.