Modi Multibit: Multibit for the masses.

Any opinions on the optimal warm up time for the Modi Multibit? I know some leave it on 24 hours a day but I go days between use sometimes so that doesn't really make sense for me. I normally turn it on when I get home from work and it heats for about three to four hours before use. It definitely sounds better than when I use it cold but I fail to understand the science behind double digit warm up times. Does it really take 10+ hours for this thing to stabilize thermally?

 

Unless you leave it unattended for a week plus, it makes sense to leave it on.

 

I travel a lot so that is quite common.

 

I bought my Bifrost Multibit several months ago. It has been running 24/7 for...several months now.

Really no reason not to, even if you're out of town. It's not going to hurt anything and the power consumption is negligible.

Same thing with my Jot.

If it doesn't have tubes, then let it hum happily away.

 

I'm kind of obsessive about switching everything but my fridge off when stepping out so my warm-up time is about 1-2 hours usually. In my opinion electric devices should work without this kind of trickery - I basically refuse to do it, even if it might help a little bit (no pun intended).

 

Now that is funny. "I will show you, i'll refuse. Hah."

 

Depends on how you look at it. I had an argument with someone about whether leaving the lights on is really wasting electricity. I said it wasn't because I used electrical radiators for heating and that the 'wasted' energy from lightbulbs just becomes heat energy. Which would mean you are just trading whether you are heating with the light bulbs or the heaters. I think of audio gear in the same way.

Of course this argument only really holds in the winter.

Bifrost draws about 12W and using the average price for electricity in CA at 12 cents/kWh, that comes close to $1/month. The Modi MB has a 8W transformer which would means it would cost $0.66/month. 8W is an overestimation too so it's likely to be less then that. You can do a lot worse with other things.

 

Pretty sure this thread already got off-track with the cost-of-electricity minutiae once..

 

My Modi Multibit used much more energy getting from Schiit to me and back to Schiit than it ever did in operation. I realize that I'm in the minus three sigma minority here (again), but I just didn't like it. I have a Yggdrasil in my headphone system and a Mytec Stereo192 DSD (that I don't like) in my workshop. With all the hoop-la surrounding the Mighty Modi I thought I'd save some money and use it in place of the Mytec instead of the Gungnir MB that I was planning to get. Didn't work out. The Mytec is back in the chain. Part of the problem might be that the workshop system is balanced all the way to the power amp inputs, so I had to do a SE > XLR conversion. I tried a Radial J+4 and when I did not like the congested sound I switched to an RDL FP-UBC2 which retained the congested sound but added some intermittent very low frequency hum. Or the problem might be that when I go home at night and turn on the headphone system, it is music as it was intended to be.

So, the puzzle remains unsolved, but the Modi Multibit is not going to be part of the solution.

 

Yeah, we all have our quirks. This is mine. I'd say I'm not suffering too much from this one in the grand scheme of things.

Overall the ModiBit sounds very clean and adds instrument separation and a nice feeling of SS. Beautiful stuff with mellower stuff, but. My largest quible vs a basic Sabre-DAC is the loss of some bass, subs especially (is this maybe about power?). The highs aren't quite as energetic either, but that isn't that big of a deal for me.

 

I had the weirdest little wig-out from my Modi Multibit earlier.

I was flipping between two sources playing the same thing via coax and TOSlink and noticed what sounded like quiet shaken percussion that I'd never heard before in the extreme left of the sound field. Initially, I was pleased- normally hearing more layers/detail is a good sign when you've just done some tweaks to your chain.

I plugged in the HD800 to listen a little closer, and listened for a couple of minutes. Two things became apparent- the "percussion" was tracking the transient peaks with a little delay, and secondly, if you listened closer, it didn't sound very nice.

My first reaction was to worry about weird tube misbehaviour- some sort of self-oscillation/microphonics maybe. I flipped the switch on the Fulla to use a different amp, and heard exactly the same. So, phew.. my CV181s weren't on the fritz, that's a start.

Flipping back to the first amp, I carried on listening and noticed that the reason that the sound wasn't very nice was because it sounded like a quite low sample rate, and was heavily aliased. That meant that it was likely something in the digital part of the chain. Eeenteresting.

So, remembering that the Modi Multibit had flipped out once before, I decided to do the simplest test first, before following the JRiver/UnPnP/FLAC decoder breadcrumb trail. I power-cycled the Modi Multibit.

When I re-powered it, it woke up in a bit of a spazzy state, and didn't settle- the lights on the front cycling for longer than usual. I whipped the power out again, and left it out for a full twenty or so seconds, to give everything a chance to drain down a bit. I re-powered it, and it woke up, flashing briefly, and locking onto the coax input.

Sound was back to normal, no matter what I threw at it. No more quiet, delayed, aliased "percussion" in the left channel. It all seems normal now. I'm guessing that Herr Doktor SHARC got into a bit of a weird state, possibly due to all the flipping around, or maybe strange electrical transients (though it is fed from a somewhat filtered mains strip, though nothing too fancy).

Anyway, TLDR: sometimes (very rarely) Modi Multibit goes a little special. Have you tried switching it off and back on again?

 

I believe @baldr has addressed that issue before. Maybe it was on another forum. Gave possible reasons for it and suggested a power cycle like you did.

 

Yes, I had a the same problem in the left channel when I owned a Modi Multibit. It was covered earlier in this thread

 

I got my Modi 2 Multibit yesterday and without any delay I connected it to Pi 3 Digi pro coax and Toslink. I knew right away I would keep it.
Yes, it colored the sound, in a nice way, but not at the expense of resolution or instrument separation, it was a clear improvement over any DAC I have heard, granted very few, except Sony HAP-z1es. The only amp I have here is class A Talisman T-3H, old but sweet, but it was good just to seat and listen for an hour enjoying Modi Multibit.
I left it for a night to warm up and then tried USB.
I had problems with Win 7 seeing Modi Multibit, once I passed through this stage there were problems going through powered hub, I resolved those, I listened to some tracks and I wonder why I bothered.
I have seen many posts abut USB in this thread and the conclusion was as always: if you have no other choice then well you have decrapify the crap you got, otherwise use something else. I always use one track first to see if I like anything in my signal chain: Bach Orgelbüchlein: XXXX. Ich ruf' zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639. If I can hear everything that is going on there, all three voices separately, and I like the sound, I am happy. I am happy with RPi coax and Toslink connection. Win 7 Toslink sounds great, USB to Win 7 well.. that's USB.
So far I am really impressed with Modi Multibit. I am not sure if it is multibit or something else, this is the first Schiit I have ever tried, but I am glad I bought it.

 

I'm getting closer to what I consider to be a "complete" gear chain. Last week's order of the ZMF Eikon answered the ToTL headphone question for a closed back design and today I have decided to go ahead with the purchase of a Modi Multibit to use with my Lyr 2. The Modi Multibit will allow me to sell my all in one DAC/amp Fostex HP-A4BL and will basically be cost neutral (or even a slight gain as the new price of the Fostex is $399) while also being an upgrade in sound quality.

Happy headphone times are coming soon!

 

Do yourself a favor and take time to enjoy it. Hide your wallet and delete the SBAF bookmark for a while. It'll do you good

 

Some brief impressions of the AU/NZ Modi Multibit loaner which I had last week.

Since I have a nice setup with Yggdrasil -> Val 2/monitor speakers at home, there didn't seem much point in swapping the Yggdrasil out for a Modibit "just because". So instead, I took the Modi MB into work along with a Jotunheim, and compared the Schiit stack against my usual office setup which is a GOV2+ Infinity. Both were feeding a pair of Oppo PM-3s in balanced configuration.

Now, the GOV2+ Infinity is a really clever piece of kit. The inherent weird timbral deficiencies of the Sabre chip are cleverly accommodated and actually become a feature of its slightly euphonic, smooth listening experience. It's a little bit sweet without being syrupy.

In direct comparison, the Modi MB completely demolishes the GOV2+ in terms of timbral accuracy. On some tracks I slightly missed the GO's tuning (clean picked electric guitar sounds great through it) but for 95% of stuff the Modi offers a clearly superior and more accurate timbre. For other technicalities, at least through this system, I actually thought the two DACs were pretty close, though I would give the edge to the Modi.

In terms of the entire chain, Modi->Jotun->PM3 balanced is a great combo, and I was rather sad to see the Modi on its way. The dubious PM3 soundstage is much improved on a balanced connection. The PM3 has slightly sunken mids just where the Jotun is forward. The Modi and the PM3 are a bit rolled off just where the Jotun is steely. Once everything had been cooking for a couple of days this was a super smooth combo that I could listen to all day without fatigue. I was also pleased with how much low-level information it could extract.

Finally, it's been said before, but it bears repeating: the USB input on the Modi is a shocker. From crappy Macbook Air USB the GOV2+ was obviously better. So instead I used an iBasso DX50 as SPDIF source. It's not the ultimate, it's still a bit jittery and noisy, but it's good enough to stop everything sounding flat, grey, scratchy and collapsed.

 

@Garns Thank you very much for the review. Your work setup has some similarities to what I will be using (Modi Multibit -> Lyr 2 in my case) and is very useful to me. Your reports on the USB input also confirms for me the need for the investment in a good SPDIF converter (leaning towards the Singxer SU-1) to get the best out of Modi Multibit. I am excited to give it a listen and according to the email the nice folks from Schiit sent me today my Modi Multibit has been dispatched and should be arriving in a few days.

 

I wonder if using the ifi Spdif ipurifier would work just as well using the SPDIF output on a PC.

 

Thanks for the impressions. Just for clarity, were you using the GOV2+ as a DAC only and the Jot as an amp in both A and B of your comparison? Sorry for being pedantic.

It would have been interesting to to see what differences you heard swapping out the Yggdrasil for the Modi Multibit at home, but I guess it's too late now.