Modi Multibit: Multibit for the masses.

There is really very little to be said for sd/ds adc/dac tech that has not already been said about venereal warts. It is an amazing pity that people want cheap.

 

I don't hate it, I just feel better when it is around printers rather than audio.

 

I've heard a very burned in version (well, as burned in as possible at this point) MultiBit Modi and it was much, much better. The punch and attack that was so unpleasant is gone. I listened to Radiohead - Burn the Witch and Paul Simon - Boy in the Bubble and both sounded much, much better. Mine has been sitting plugged in for days, but I'm not sure that's the right thing. I'm gonna play music through it and then give it a try again early next week.

 

I'm giving both of those tracks a spin now on mine. I wonder what mastering on "Boy In The Bubble" you used? I know the last two or three remasters of Graceland have been compressed. I have an older release with the dynamics intact and it sounds spectacular with the Momby.

"Burn The Witch" and all of A Moon Shaped Pool is very dynamically compressed, and given the piercing strings of the song, I could see why it could sound unpleasant through the Momby.

One album that was giving me significant issues when I first hooked it up was Cat Stevens's Tea For The Tillerman. There seem to be a lot of peaks on that album, some hot treble. I'm listening again now and while it still sounds a bit to my ears, I think that's just the recording (or mastering).

I think you're onto something with having it on playing music versus just being on. I let it run music overnight and it seemed to even out the sound when I came back the next day.

 

Agreed with all of the above. Brought my Modi Multibit to a mini meet with bazelio and drfindley. The Modi Multibit we heard that was problematic was adam's at his house, and might have not been burned in sufficiently... The Modi Multibit i received from @Huxleigh had been listened to by him for some unknown number of hours, and then by me for the past 2 weeks at work every day. The hot or strident treble and hardness we heard at adam's was gone on mine. Can only attribute it to the amount of time mine's been used while at work. This was the case on the Vali 2 - a rather warm and laid back amp - and also on the modded T3, which is highly dynamic and punchy. If Modi Multibit still had any issues at all with hot or strident treble and any hardness to the sound at all, the T3 woulda picked it up. But, sounded *really* nice! Gotta tip my hat to @baldr and co. for cramming so much musicality and magic into such a small and affordable dac!

 

I was using whatever is on Tidal, but I also have the original CD with the good dynamics ripped in my library.

Burn the Witch went from painful to pleasant. And yes, that whole album is sadly compressed. I'm hoping for the special magical deluxe edition to not be as compressed.

 

I did some adjustments to my CD player to remedy jitter, allowing more of the recording to come through, and my God the micro detail coming out of the Modi Multibit is insane. I'm even hearing extremely subtle, far off sounds on Radiohead's Hail to the Thief I've never heard before... This happened on virtually every other CD I played... a steady stream of "Damn, there's something else I've never heard before...". For the first time on jazz and classical I'm hearing the specific echo and acoustics of the room being used for recording. The spatial cues are much better for a closer to reality exerperience, and I don't have to strain to hear even the quietest sounds. My T90 just keeps scaling upward. And getting a dedicated digital coax cable from blue jeans (to replace the stock RCA I was using) helped tremendously with the notorious Beyer treble.

Regarding the "treble hardness" of the Modi Multibit, that seemed to go away with sufficient use/break in.

 

It's called the vinyl release.

 

And if that does not work there is always...

 

I remember using 25-pin printer cables... heck, I also had a super fancy switch so I could use 2 printers. Wow, that'd be a 25P2T switch?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_port

 

Moon shaped pool does sound good on vinyl! --> Phono pre-amp discussion

Looks like there are different download versions out there, unless that version is a vinyl rip (via the DR chart).

 

Worth noting: the DR meter is far from perfect and you can play an identical master on vinyl and certain aspects of the vinyl mastering/pressing process will automatically tack on a few points. Still good for pointing out major differences. But don't be fooled by slight differences.

Back to Modi.

 

Someone should set up a demo sending an excel spreadsheet (a big one, full of accounting data that needs to balance) -- encoded in the embedded usb SPDIF stream.

Then see how f'd the numbers will be, if the corrupted file even opens! Shows the effect of no error (well, suggested CRC) correction & no retries until the data is perfect.

 

Actually it's called a "proper digital master". That's what your precious vinyl is cut from too.

 

You know, excepting all those LPs I have that were pressed, never mind recorded, before digital had started to show up in studios ... let alone before it was a ubiquitous part of the recording/mixing/mastering chain. Even after the advent of CD, there are plenty of releases that were recorded in analog, mixed in analog and mastered as analog, and only hit digital at all for the CD release.

Even into 1990 analog transcription discs were not exactly uncommon, since CD was still too expensive for smaller-run/specialty releases.

Nothing against digital, but there's plenty of vinyl out there that has never been anywhere near digital processing.

 

I believe he was referring specifically to the most recent Radiohead album as was being discussed further up the page. That was almost assuredly a digital master. And many modern vinyl masters are either identical to the CD or close enough to be of negligible difference (the ugly reality of vinyl simply being a way for bigger profit margins for many labels).

To your point, I don't buy a lot of vinyl these days but what I do buy is usually unavailable in any digital format.

 

Ah, well, I clearly missed that then! I was thinking more broadly (it was a late night ... Utopias have been enthralling me since I first put them on and I haven't felt inclined to take them off except for comparisons ... a nice long nap is somewhat overdue).

These days I tend to only buy vinyl that I'm going to listen to as an entire album, and much of that is just because it's going to be a pain to get my existing collection shipped here from the UK.

 

Radiohead has a history of putting out more dynamic, less compressed mixes on vinyl. I don't give a f**k if it's from a digital source, if the vinyl is the only way to get a less compressed master, then that is the version I will prefer.

And I do own the vinyl, it sounds better to me than the digital. Again, I'm not a AAA purist. If the vinyl is getting a better master than the digital/CD release, I'm opting for the vinyl. If the digital release gets a better master than the vinyl for some reason, I'll get the digital.

Save the vinyl vs digital crap for the Steve Hoffman Forums.

 

So, if I'm sitting here with a Bifrost 4490 on my hands and decide to take the MB plunge, which way do I go?

I can have the Bifrost upgraded for $250 or sell the Bifrost and get the Modi MB for cheaper cost (net).

Completely unrelated, but it should be noted that I have a black Bifrost which looks lovely with my Project Ember II. I don't care what people say. Black Schiit sounds better.

 

Yes, the Radiohead vinyl has usually been much better. In Rainbows may be the shining example of this. A Moon Shaped Pool though was clearly cut from the compressed digital master, sadly. I'm holding out hope that the special edition was cut from a different (analog?) non-compressed master that explain why it's coming out in September or so instead of May.