Bang-for-the-Buck DAC to complement The Jotunheim

Interesting. I don't doubt your perception, obviously you listened to a lot more gear than I have, I was just relying on the kind of dynamic range I remember from sitting dozens of times on the front row at SFJAZZ or Yoshi's no more than 10 feet from the drummer vs what I hear on well-recorded sets with the same jazz drummers.

 

Listen to "The Pink Panther Theme" (Original Version) from the soundtrack of the "Son of the Pink Panther" movie. It has great cymbal work along with great sax work by Phil Todd. Listen to timbre, clarity and detail of the cymbals (and other percussion instruments) at various volume levels. With my Yggdrasil, it is simply stunning and in no way compressed.

I don't get the Modi Multibit hate either. But I guess we all can't like all the same things, can we? The world sure would be boring then....

 

if I may say, every DAC ive ever heard, in comparison to good analog (vinyl setup), always seem compressed dynamically, sometime dramatically so and this is one of the most evident pitfall of digital vs analog. With vinyls, I notice immediately the transient nature of a drum, cymbals. Some sound seem so fast that it may scare me. With digital, transients always seem slightly smeared/compressed/ laid back.

 

That explains a lot. I thought maybe I had lost my ability to hear and needed to put myself out of my misery. At least now there is a glimmer of hope that I can hear and should live on!!

 

After coming up with that list, I could not resist sitting down for yet another full listen of Vijay Iyer's "Accelerando." I should have remembered that it finishes with Duke Ellington's "Village of the Virgins" where Marcus Gilmore does some wonderful cymbals work with quite a dynamic range filling in Vijay Iyer's percussive piano. Oh, and the opening has some amazing rhythm work by Stephan Crump on bass, showcasing the tight bass that is one of my other favorite Yggdrasil features.

 

Speaking of great Yggdrasil jazz, listening for the first time to Mingus's "Blues & Roots" (what took me so long?). The dynamics and liveliness are fantastic on this 2014 digital reissue by Rhino/Atlantic, bringing out the somewhat chaotic but superbly creative atmosphere of the original 1959 session. The freshness of the music and playing at 58 years distance are almost scary. That's what a nice Yggdrasil-based system does for me, brings me to the musicians in their natural environment.

But back to Jot, need to listen to this again upstairs on my headphone system. I got a Holo Spring KTE 3 DAC last week or my headphone setup. After 5 days burn-in I started listening to its output via Jot>Ether C Flow and I have to say that quite a bit of upside was revealed relative to the Bifrost Multibit that did DAC duty before, indicating that the Jot was not the bottleneck in the system. Amazing considering that it was the cheapest component even when the Bifrost Multibit was in the chain. That a $400 amp does at least some justice to a $2500 DAC and $1800 headphones deserves respect.

Eventually I plan to take the Jot to work with the Bifrost Multibit for my need-to-focus-don't-interrupt-me listening, but it's not as if I have an obvious successor yet upstairs. It will take some big feet to fill its shoes.

 

60% hyperbole 40% bill hicks esque humor. Sometimes 110% wrong but 200% lovable.

A good member, @Psalmanazar serves many purposes beyond humor, like Charlie Sheen in Major Leage, sometimes naive new members need to feel the metal and the heat and the rage. If he were a Nordic god he would be a trickster. Chaotic neutral on a good day. I will always have a soft spot for him -- oh wait he's not dead sorry for the eulogy.

 

Love your analysis, which "sounds" (I know, bad pun) just right to me. I moved to Schiit multibit DACs for exactly that reason. Other DACs, including pretty good ones in not-cheap Naim, Bel Canto, and Hegel equipment sounded too polite relative to my experience of live jazz (and to a lesser extent, orchestral music). IRL, cymbals, guitars, horns, double bass have many layers of harmonics that create some "roughness" from the beats between different harmonics, not to mention non-harmonic sounds from blowing, plucking, and drumstick hits, and brushes on drum skins and cymbals.

 

Retail price has (often) nothing to do with the quality of a component. Don't take that as a reference for gear evaluation.

Some components matter more than others as well.

 

Sure, I hesitated in writing that because I knew a comment like that was coming from someone I know well the components I mentioned (except the Holo Spring that I've only listened to 8 hours this weekend after > 100h of burn-in), and I have comparable components downstairs that I listen to a lot more. I also understand that a headphone amp can be good with a much smaller component count and simpler circuit than a R2R DAC, and headphones have serious manufacturing costs beyond what's involved in assembling a small amp. But it's still striking (to me at least) that the Jot does so well @ $400 surrounded by such good components (good in my experience and that of others I respect). Another way of putting it, maybe avoiding your concern: the Jot has the best bang-for-buck among all my gear, by quite a margin. Update: <slaps forehead/> I know, someone says, I paid too much for all that other gear

 

there are two reasons why I planned my chain balanced, one being that most of the gear that I already own, it is balanced. Specifically my Airmotiv 5s, 6s and Stealth 8s and a set of JBL's. Plus I have a rack full of beringer recording gear and a few mixers. So keeping the chain balanced allows me to mix and match gear in and out and play around without changing much. But the most important part was then I heard the Jot for the first time from the balanced out with my HD650. Switching from Modi2U > Jot SE > HD650 to AK4490x2 > Jot Balanced > HD650 was a big difference for my ears and a difference that I like, a lot. I can't hear a lot of stuff that most people claim they can. I don't hear detail deferences between the most popular DACS discussed around here. If it is a pile of shit? sure I can tell you if it sounds like shit, but between good gear, it is really hard for me to hear differences that have Value proposition. ($$$) For example, I hear ZERO differences between the AMP in the Fulla 2 and the Vali2 with stock tube. Zero! so when I find something that it is actually audible to my ears, it holds weight.

I am not adverse to tubes, I actually like them, and I can't wait to try them with the Jot. It was part of the plan all along. But my fear is that since I like the separation and imaging I get with the balanced DAC in the Jot so much, that If I add SE components upstream (DAC, Tube Preamp), that I would lose those things that I like of the Balanced set up. So I was willing to spend money to keep it balanced the whole way from DAC through HP. Now if you believe that making my upstream SE won't take away of those things I hear and like with the Balanced Jot, Then I am all ears to suggestions. To be honest I wouldn't mind a Gungnir > Freya set up, as that is kinda what I am trying to accomplish here, but in a more budget friendly way, because I hate spending money on shit I can't hear the benefits. Like I said before, My library is mostly 16bit Flac. Also I like to keep the footprint close to that of the Jot. The Gungnir Multibit/Freya footprint Its just too big for what I am trying to do here.

Based on what I am learning around here, and from this Thread I will probably settle on either the Bitfrost AK4490 (with the option to Upgrade to MB later), and Build a SE Tube Pre Amp and just continue to feed my Monitors from the Jot's XLR's. Thanks Marvey, I have made a lot of gear choices based on your advice here and on CS, and I have yet to be disappointed in those decisions.

this Desktop setup will be 95% headphone use with HD650M and STAX SRS-3100.

 

Thank you very much for that analysis! When I was into audio 30 or so years back, I was reputed to have a decent ear. Lots of time has passed and my ears have been subject to some loud noise over that time. So I certainly am willing to doubt my ears more than when I was young. Maybe that is just some maturity too. There is always more to learn!

One of the traits of Modi Multibit that I found so impressive compared to other DACs (iPhone, MacBook, Mojo, Modi, Mac Pro, any Dragonfly, etc.) was how it could pull out details in songs that I had never heard so clearly or, in some cases, at all. "Veiled" was never a term I would have associated with Modi Multibit. Yggdrasil took that to a whole different level. Some songs that used to sound flat and muddled became dynamic and clear. A good example is Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". It certainly isn't a great example of a dynamic song. But, through Yggdrasil, it actually sounds much more musical than I had ever heard it on records, on the radio, on an iPhone. Another example of this is "In the Year 2525" Zager & Evans. Well recorded musical tracks just sound amazing. The separation and clarity with detail consistently impress me when I hear tracks for the first time on Yggdrasil.

An interesting side affect of this is when I listen to these songs through lesser DACs or on the radio, I can now pick out more of the detail that is hidden therein. I suspect my brain knows what the details are now and can discern them better in the less clear and detailed tracks. Or maybe even filling in what isn't there!

 

I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth. Gungnir Multibit/Yggdrasil capture the BITE of cymbals fine and better than most DS DACs due to their better timbre up top. However, they present a lesser RANGE of volumes than many other DACs with those same percussive instruments. Less range as they have more uniformity of volume thus more COMPRESSED. This I have noticed with a great many recordings and is not connected with detail, timbre, realism, recording quality, or BITE. The Yggdrasil obviously has more BITE than most DACs due to its more forward presentation. If you want to argue that rimshots shouldn't be that much louder than regular snare drum pounding so be it but I feel otherwise.

I like the Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil a lot. Stop freaking out about colorful nitpicking. Emotionally defending metal boxes that all have peculiarities or minor flaws to their sound and attacking me as I say that I actually like some of them but point out their peculiarities or that the cheaper ones from the same brand of metal boxes do not sound nearly as good, and that the other expensive metal boxes from different brands do not have those peculiarities to their sound but come with a different set of peculiarities is a little ridiculous and why I disliked even though questioning of impressions for more information is always good.

The gear that did not capture the BITE was the EC ZDS amplifier, which I said before in this thread and the ZDS thread. If I ever hear the ZDS with the tubes that supposedly fix what I didn't like, then my opinion will change but right now I have my opinion of it and I am sticking to it and won't go out of my way, i.e. spend money, to change it.

Good one line review to your tastes but a good parody of my impressions.

Asgard 2's problem is noisefloor with sensitive cans/IEMs and slight mosfet haze revealing itself most evidently in the treble. It's also not the most dynamic and lacks that the v-shaped consumer friendly punchy sound, the "rock eq", that is present on a lot of consumer gear as a setting or the sound of the gear itself and compressed remasters of older music where the mids/guitars/vocals are slightly sucked out compared to the original master. V shape sound is worse to me as it presents stranger levels of instruemnts in a mix with instrumentally focused music like orchestral, quartets, less tamely recorded jazz, and metal. I don't listen to pop music really at all or care how to spice up pop recordings.

I never said the Asgard 2 was my favorite amp. I just own it as I like it better than my previous head amp (Magni 2U), it was cheap, less v-shaped, and had full-size pot and I needed to buy something with a full-size pot that allowed for finer volume control as mini-pots suck and the Jot wasn't out yet and the Magni 2U pot was pissing me off. Asgard 2 is boring and inoffensive to most people though thus I don't really recommend it with the HD 650. now as my HD 650 pads are more aged, other things about the HD 650 are starting to piss me off even when I hear newer pairs on different or better setups so idk what I will upgrade to now but I have some ideas.

If dislike and rage at my impressions, evaluations, and opinions of gear causes discomfort, then all the better. People should think about what things actually sound like instead of attending what are essentially Tony Robbins seminars, prosperity gospel megachurches, new age hippie retreats, or Burning Mans for audio designed to make them feel better about their past choices rather than think about what can be improved in the future.

 

"mosfet haze"
"I feel the TI current-feedback chip amp in the Grace M9XX is better than the ZDS"

As an armchair electrical engineer, how do you go about basing your subjective opinions on components you don't actually have a comprehensive understanding of? How can you actually isolate a specific timbre or other attribute of an amplifier or DAC to being that specific component, especially if you haven't actually owned a lot of the gear you comment on.

 

Did I ever claim to be an armchair EE or am I just describing the sound of things I've heard using specific terminology thrown about in audio speak?

I like the Grace M9XX's amp better and feel it's a higher-fidelity headphone amplifier in all ways but one. Deal with it. If you can't deal with another person's opinion on the internet and it causes you physical discomfort and pain then perhaps you should see a doctor.

If you want to buy me gear I don't particularly like that much, go ahead. I might keep it but I'll probably sell it, buy something I like, and you'll just look stupid. I don't blind buy audio gear anymore as too many things have been disappointments. You shouldn't go marry and live with a woman you don't like that much in the first place. Why should I buy expensive gear I don't like that much in the first place when I'd be happier with a higher number in my bank account or even a case of Budweiser?

 

You say that in a thread where you've written walls of text because you're upset that somebody disagrees with the opinions you preach as if they're the word of god.