Modi Multibit: Multibit for the masses.

Chances are, they're not really going for the English market (the usual parlance about China, 1 billion, 1%, marketshare yadda yadda) so just threw in the token gTranslate.

And yes Chinese is a very symbolic language.

Breeze Audio actually sells DIY casings too, and the unit we're discussing. (Supposedly jitter can go as low as 4.6ps)

To be fair, it actually says "密封牛", or literally "tightly sealed cow". It's the contraction of "密封环牛环形变压器".

 

Moist.

 

Seems to be another situation similar to the Fang Bian "moist" translation, involving mainland Chinese slang. Can't remember how exactly, but I googled my way to this explanation of 火牛, literally "fire cow", being slang for "transformer". I think it's written in Cantonese which reads differently from Mandarin so I couldn't fully understand the pinyin translation, but it involves foreign ("ghost") engineers in Hong Kong from GEC saying "transformer" in English, leading to the local Chinese calling them "fire cow" because it was difficult to write(?).

This Chinese DIY audio site discusses the differences between E牛/R牛/环牛/C牛, that is E-type, R-type, ring-type (torroidal?) and C-type transformers.

We've been totally sidetracked from Modi Multibit by a Chifi DDC with really bad Chinglish marketing.

 

Today is turning out to be a very good day. Modi Multibit was waiting on me when I got home from work and after a 45 minute warm-up I am now giving it a listen.


For the second time in a week I don't really have an adequate vocabulary to describe what I am hearing. (The first was when I rolled the 75 Reflektor's into the Lyr 2, but that has already been discussed elsewhere) The sound is so much more layered and intricate than I am used to and even more surprising is, the pain is gone! I was experiencing some discomfort using the Fostex HP-A4BL as my DAC but until I connected Modi Multibit and started using it just now I didn't even realize I was hurting.

It's like a sharp edge has been taken off the sound but at the same time everything has gotten fuller and deeper. The words I am comfortable using to describe this Modi Multibit vs what I had before are: bigger, fuller, gentler, more layered, deeper. I am honestly blown away. I expected improvement based on the excellent reviews that the Modi Multibit has but I did not expect this. This is....hard to comprehend. Before I was facing a wall of sound and it was crashing over me. Now the sound is all around me and I am in the midst of it all. What a revelation.

And just to put this into perspective I am still listening via my TH-X00's which are my daily drivers until my ZMF Eikon gets built and arrives. I'm currently listening to iTunes AAC files because that's what I usually listen to and it gives me the best basis for comparison versus the HP-A4BL. Obviously I have a lot more comparison and listening to do but right now this feels like a huge leap forward in enjoyment considering Modi Multibit's asking price.

Also, bonus PYST cables in the background there. Schiit makes good stuff!

 

Hang onto your hat there, but what's the source feeding it SPDIF? There may be more left to give...

 

Looks like optical going in.

 

Yup middle light is toslink.

 

Ok. 2017. What's the best USB to Coax converter from my Surface 4 clone to Modi Multibit.

Do I make room on table with Tablet for this converter?

Or do I go with the 3 meter USB cable over to the Modi Multibit and do it there?

I just spent $58 on an AudioQuest Forest 3m USB cable. Did I waste my Money?

Modi Multibit rules. USB sound supposedly is horrible. Should I hide now?

Going to listen to some Tidal now on HIFiMan hp.

 

Start here:

http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...crapifiers-pro-interfaces-and-bears-oh-my.62/

The best reasonably priced turnkey ddc in 2017 is probably still the Singxer SU-1 but at $400 it's close to twice the price of your dac. Basically don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars chasing the last few percent when you'd get a more dramatic improvement using that money on a new dac or whatever. One of the most exciting things happening right now is replacing your PC with the very inexpensive and power efficient Raspberry Pi + an audio hat and using your phone or tablet as a client to control it. There are a few threads here about that:

http://www.superbestaudiofriends.or...-a-cheap-transport-that-made-me-happier.1970/

http://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/raspberry-pi-i2s-to-spdif-hat.1990/

I'd put the converter next to the dac.

If you feel like the AudioQuest cable is an improvement over something like Belkin Gold then there are worse ways you can spend your money, but for around twice that you could be running a Raspberry Pi and not worrying about usb anymore.

 

Maybe a little. Still, it's AudioQuest, you could have wasted a lot more, it could be worse.

Yes, that's obvious, but what's on the other end of it? That's more to the point.

Yep, this continues to be a stupidly good option. It provides a very audible difference to even a Modi Multibit- against crunky motherboard SPDIF, let alone USB.

I've been trying the various audio-centric distributions lately, with a Hifiberry Digi+ Pro (as it's widely available, cheap and pretty good). Here is a little pic of my anonymous and inexpensive little endpoint box:



The case, which fits easily over the Pi 3 and the Digi+ Pro, and has suitably lined-up cutouts for the SPDIF, is one of these. Hifiberry also sell a branded version themselves. It's not pretty, but it's very easy to fit, and provides decent protection/ventilation. The whole thing is fanless, silent, and about the size of a couple of packs of playing cards. It cost about £100 to build. The parts needed are:

A Raspberry Pi 3
A microSD card (an 8 gig class 10 would be plenty, more won't harm it if you have an old one lying around)
A case

I also grabbed an iFi iPower 5v, as while it's a little overpriced, it is apparently not terrible. There are all sorts of ways to power setups like this, including plugging a linear PSU into the HAT and having it power the Pi, but this is a relatively easy way to get better power. It's plug in and go, and will work in other countries easily. I wanted something that would be easy to other people, but would still be worthwhile.

Random comments:

Volumio doesn't yet work with the Digi+ Pro. They're really slow to update, and because of the way that it boots, you can't easily update the kernel yourself without a lot of faffing and re-rolling the initrd. Probably not a good option for this board, which is a shame, as it's otherwise a nice distro.

At the time of writing, Moode is the easiest to get the Digi+ Pro working, it works "out of the box". However, it fights a bit with the internal Wifi in the Pi 3 and tends to mess up the config a bit (mostly joining networks, the interface comes up but won't join your SSID). I'm sure it's fixable, but since it's more a third-party config auto-embuggeration than a legit Linux issue, I couldn't be arsed to pick it apart. You can sidestep it with a USB Wifi dongle, which works nicely. The web UI is a bit clunky, but functional. It's actually quite a solid player once you get it working, though.

Rune Audio can be made to work, but you need to update the kernel to a more modern one first. The instructions are a little incorrect, too, the config.txt needs to have all the dtoverlay and dtparam stuff commented out. After that, it works nicely. It has a nicer web interface than Moode, if that's any consideration- though I'd recommend using an MPD remote, or a UnPnP controller anyway*. It's probably a nicer option if you're able to surmount the hurdle of editing that text file.**

Essentially, if you're using this board, Volumio is currently right out, Moode is solid, but a bit ugly and fiddly, and Rune is the slickest and tidiest- though requires a tiny bit of extra config. At the time of writing, I'd say Rune is the best option.



Remember that after you've configured your source (usually your SMB/CIFs share full of FLACs), that everything will be a bit unresponsive for a while as it scans your thousands of tracks.



* MPDroid works well on Android. JRiver's UnPnP support works well, too.

** If you really can't, I may be able to help.

 

Oops, misread your question.

Thanks for the RPi3 + Digi+ Pro write up. Seems rather fiddly. I Googled a bit and perhaps the older Volumio and Digi+ (non-Pro) work more easily out of the box. But after reading their menu, it seems the Pro is the one to go for.
https://www.hifiberry.com/products/digiplus/

 

Yes, the pro is the one to go for- a couple of decent enough clocks, means you'll get gratiyingly low jitter at all your favourite sample rates- which is the object of the exercise, after all. Having tried most of the audio distros out (for the sake of curiosity), I'd say that the current best fit is Rune Audio, or Moode for the nervous (who don't mind wired networking, or plugging in a Wifi dongle). I'd say that Rune is worth the extra few minutes of effort, though.

Nah, it's not difficult at all, actually. You could get Rune up and running in under an hour of not at all hard work. Most of the time would be spent waiting for the image to write to the card (UHS-1 spec is very slow indeed) and drinking tea*. Assuming you can have your music available on an SMB share, you've done most of the work already. The only gotcha is that you need to ssh into the Pi and run a few commands to update the kernel- which is a piece of piss, and mostly a copy and paste job.

Seriously, it's incredibly easy. I can help if you're worried about that bit. There's a good free ssh client for Windows, too. It's super-trivial stuff.



* Always have a suitable beverage for config jobs like this.

 

So here is my take on this......

I want to stay with my Windows10 Surface4 Clone Tablet (Acer Stylus Pro 12)

Run my AudioQuest 3 meter cable to one of these 2 Singxer boxes
Singxer SU-1 $350
Singxer F-1 $179

Singxer Box is right next to Modi Multibit and short Coax Cable goes into Modi Multibit

This should equal sound much better than just USB into Modi Multibit

This is what SBAF is hailing as the Absolute Sound for FLAC files presently

Have I got a handle on this? I want to keep my Windows10. No going to get rid of the interface and ability to do anything and everything with that little turd of a machine. It's hooked up to AC wireless and is fast as shit to do anything with. Just love the little guy. Keyboard for it is magnetized and just sit tablet on it and it sucks up the tablet. Has a stylus pen. It allows me to pick up the tablet and do anything while listening to music in that part of my livingroom.

It seems that there is a noticable difference between straight USB and Coax. How much better is one Singxer than the other? That's the million dollar question. Modi Multibit is the perfect example of that. Bitfrost is not worth it. You would have to go to Gungnir Multibit if you wanted to really go any further in pursuit of better sound.

This is very serious shit to me. Thank you for answering my questions about this. I am not an armchair quarterback. I buy these things, not just talk about "what if". Dennis

 

I'd say the consensus here is that the absolute best sound for FLAC out of a computer would be through an AES card. I guess that wouldn't apply since you're using a laptop though but I wanted to put that there for others who may be forming setups and reading this in the future.

 

It'll improve Modi MB's performance, but these interface tweaks are "last few percentage points" level improvements. I would not spend $179 to do this let alone $350 (the SU-1 offers no advantage over the F1 for Modi MB) unless I had nothing else to upgrade.

The recommendation to use Modi MB via it's COAX input is generally directed at those that already have a suitable source and not really intended to get people to buy extra stuff to use it.

You're better off saving the money, saving for a bit, then selling the Modi MB and buying something like Gungnir MB - which will sound better than Modi MB regardless of how you drive it.

Is it?

I think you'll find that AOIP and/or pro AES/S/PDIF solutions are really where the "end game" is here. Both of which are absolutely massive overkill for a Modi MB.

 

@Big D Design - don't spend any big money right now. Schiit have something on the way that we absolutely don't know about that might cause a rethink. Don't spend big money to pimp your Modi Multibit, the money is better spent elsewhere- e.g. on a better DAC later.

Meanwhile, if you are still curious, I am writing a guide for making a cheap and decent-sounding Raspberry Pi source that will cost less than your Modi Multibit did. That's not a big investment/risk.

I'm not sure how long it'll take me, mind- as you've noticed, I do go on.

 

@Kattefjaes
Sounds pretty cool.

In reference to all others input.....

I think I want draw a line in the sand as to incremental solutions, as stated from some of you. That was my thinking yesterday. I would like a CD transport regardless. It's not vinyl, but I'm not going to take the vinyl route no matter how much I find it fascinating. Used to have a used Dual turntable with the 10lb platter back in the early seventies that got me thru life. But a CD player is only $209 and would be fun and I would thoroughly enjoy popping in a CD and listening thru Coax input to the DAC.

I just plugged in my Morrow Audio RCA cables from Modi Multibit to Freya, and another set from Freya to the NuPrime STA-9. They supposedly need like a 100 hours of break-in according to Mike the owner. I was lucky enough to talk to him the other day on the phone. The cables are his starter cables the MA1. For the price, I thought that I would give them a shot. 60 day money back guarantee. I bought them so I can trade up to the Reference MA4. You save money by trading up. That's just how he rolls. Very nice guy and the Absolute Sound put his stuff up in the "Best Cables" article. Worth a shot. When you trade-up...... no money-back guarantee. That's the caveat. Save a ton of money, but they are yours now. You can only trade-up for other Morrow Audio products. Sounds fair. I don't see anyone else offering anything close.

Can't wait to see what else Schiit has up it's sleeve. This is really getting interesting. It's like a secret Schiit society exists.

 

It is indeed toslink being fed from my PC. Unbelievably I was fresh out of USB cables (how does that happen to a guy who has 10 million cables and cords laying around the house, I don't even know!) and so went with what I had on hand. It is at least a good quality 2m toslink cable. My motherboard is an Asus Pro Gaming Z170 and seems to have some upgraded audio capability but without a USB cable on hand I am unable to compare the toslink to the Modi Multibit's USB. I ordered a PYST USB cable last night which should be here by the middle of next week and can do a proper comparison at that point.

 

Spending more money than the Modi Multibit to improve the Modi Multibit is idiotic. The Modi Multibit is veiled, mid-bass punchy, cheap DAC with good seperation due to the burrito filter. Spending anything more than the costs of RCA cables and a power strip to get better sound from it is idiotic.

Just buy a better DAC. The Bifrost Multibit, Emotiva DC-1 (if US/CAN), and Meier Daccord (if EU) all kick the crap out of the Modi Multibit for double the price no matter what gizmos you throw at it. The Gungnir Multibit is a thousand more dollars and is God coming out of the sky better.

 

Damnit, @psalmanzar, after the thread you started last week you've had me looking at an emotiva and it fits my need of switching between 110 and 220 (which is one of the original reasons I was constrained to the Modi Multibit - I'm moving to asia in less than a year). Where does it sit compared to Bifrost Multibit?