Handsy Fivesome in Home Office with Nerd and Four Hot Amps (A Comparison)

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If you honestly believe that measurements contain all the information you need, then you have no need to read Hans' opinion on these devices. Or troll this thread.

 

Man, if you're going full antithesis against this very forum, the above words are not the wisest things to say unless you decide to be a hardcore objectivism troll...

 

This guy needs to be baptized with a customized title. Awhile ago, he was sending constant PMs to me on headfi arguing the very same type of thing here, which essentially amounted to "can you prove it with measurements? Can you? CAN YOU?" Very long, wall-of-text rants spouting aggressive pseudo-intellectual bullshit. He fits several of marvey's typology of trolls. I actually had to put him on ignore to stop the influx of the kind of self-entitled posts you see here. Neither Hands, nor this forum, deserves this kind of crap.

 

How do all these Redditors keep getting in?

 

To take things back to topic, I remember trying stock Mjolnir 2 with Gungnir Multibit and HD650 stock in a fully balanced configuration just a couple of weeks ago. With stock tubes the Mj 2 sounded a bit unrefined to me, and the resolving ability wasn't so high as described by Hands. I agree that Mj 2 has a brutal amount of power and having big dynamics.

 

I never said that (nor do I believe that measurements contain all the information you need....)

 

Stock tubes just sounds a bit distorted all over the entire spectrum. This ruins the marvelous bass more than anything.

 

Damn. Maybe that's my problem with the Schiit tube amps.

 

Great work Hands, enlightening read for me. I really wish Torpedo III could have made it into this comparison.

 

Eye opening thread for me for sure. Being a solid state OCD purist and coming from Chord Mojo (which I think is very good sounding with the Ether C)
a bit nervous what the MJ2 will do using it to amp the Mojo

I know the price difference is huge (but Mojo is so hyped and praised to be a giant killer 500x processing power etc...)
How does MJ2+GMB compare to the Mojo? Mojo sounds a bit clausterphobic with the Ether Cs and lacks extension both ways, but is VERY focused sounding and very good timbre imo and I'm wondering because its the most expensive DAC/amp I've heard (by a hair) sceptical if the Schiit stack would be an improvement. Mainly wanting more soundstage, details, extension and slam.

 

Frankly, for most headphones, throwing in even the cheapest second-gen Schiit amps will handily ROFLstomp the Mojo. I enjoy my Mojo a lot as a portable source for my IEMs, but it fails hard driving full-sized headphones compared to any competent amp. Even with easy to drive headphones (like my HE-400i), the soundstage was much narrower, and detail less apparent. Dynamics often seemed to be largely AWOL.

Plugging the Mojo into an external amp kicked things up a notch, so it wasn't a total bust as a DAC - as long as you feed it clean USB/reasonably non-jittery S/PDIF. Suddenly, a lot of the more obvious problems were gone. However, replacing the Mojo with a even just Modi Multibit did seem to be an all-round improvement, too.

Don't get me wrong, I use the Mojo on the hoof every week with my IEMs and enjoy it a great deal, but it's easy to outclass on the desktop, even with the cheap Schiit. The Gungnir Multibit and Mjo 2 would be in a completely different universe (and at the price, they should be, of course).

 

Thanks for jexbys and your thoughts! Very difficult to believe that the Mojo isn't that good in comparison since it wrecked my DacMagic Plus desktop amp/dac at almost the same price but I guess that was trash. Now very excited to add the MJ2 and see what tubes do

 

Hopefully you will enjoy the difference, it's quite a crazy (in a good way) upgrade leap that you're planning. The only thing- next to your Mojo, the Mjolnir 2 will look a bit like one of these: