Modi Multibit: Multibit for the masses.

Oh shoot, you're right. I misread the figures and thought that energy usage was given per month. Still, if you're at the point where you're pinching pennies over roughly a cup of coffee a month...

 

I'm not pinching pennies and I'm not complaining. I was just pointing out that thankfully, it uses very little electricity over the course of a month since the recommendation is to leave it on 24/7, and then pointed out an error in your calculation.

 

Too much pedantic noise here.. please move on from the irrelevant cost-of-electricity-in-Hawaii discussion.

 

Newsflash: magazine measurements are far from infallible. Even ones from "leading" magazines.

Why are they fallible? Because the people running the gear are usually very far from being engineers.

There's also the constantly-appended editorial subtext that can laud an amp that blew up during 1/3 power testing as "superbly engineered" yet cast aspersions on affordable alternatives.

Why the press can't simply do their job and report in an impartial manner (and ask difficult questions, especially when confronted with new "final boss" formats that are supposed to make your music more shiny and happy) is a constant question I mull. But I'm not the press. So there you go,

 

I suspect it may have something to do with the way they are interpreting the -60dB results, but I'm not 100% sure.

Comments about press measurements still apply. I'd trust AtomicBob over all of them. Sorry, any members of the press.

 

On the other hand, there are lots of people who ask how to get the most second-harmonic distortion they can, thinking it's "tubelike." So maybe their interpretation will sell more DACs.

No big deal either way. Same way when Marv mentions at a meet that one of our cheap products sounds better than a more expensive one. I tell him, "Yeah, I know, go ahead and tell everyone, they won't believe it anyway."

 

I think quite a few people here have got the memo on some of your cheaper products.

 

Here's my take on it.

1) People place too much faith in "the press" as an institution. The press is nothing more than a collection of individuals with varying backgrounds, skill and insight. There are rarely any meetings where people sit down an say "what did we really think of this product, was it really better than x?". The writers are there to come up with funny and interesting stuff that sell magazines, and to a large extent they can write and cover whatever they feel like. The writers are going to be biased one way or another whether they know it or not, everyone is. The editors are there to help find new products, plan future issues and proof read. But that an editor criticizes a writer, or asks him to change something, is extremely uncommon. It doesn't matter if you're talking to one of the biggest magazines in the world, because at that moment you're talking to their reporter and he is probably going to end up writing whatever he wants. No one cares about, or has time for, peer review. Sometimes it works in your favor if the reporter likes your product, or thinks it makes a good story. Other times not so much.

2) Don't bite the hand that feeds. If a manufacturer places huge ads in your magazine every month you're going to be biased, there's no way around it. You're going to give them a pass on something, you're going to give them one more chance, you're going to get in contact with their customer service and ask why something didn't work they way it was supposed to. You're going to accept their explanation, you're going to write it off as a fluke, you're going to commend them for their excellent support. At the end of the day if you have to write something bad about them you will, but you're going to take every conceivable step on the way to make sure it doesn't come to that. No one wants to be the jackass that pissed off a major advertiser. You're not only putting your own paycheck in danger, you're putting your colleagues paychecks in danger too.

3) Very little is gained by going against the grain. If an established and respected reporter writes that a respected and expensive product is good it serves the status-quo and everyone is happy. If the same reporter writes that an unknown product can't compete with the best well-known brands it serves the status-quo and mostly everyone is happy. But if an established and respected reporter writes that an unknown start-up company has made something spectacular, which make other products look like overpriced rip-offs, he's putting his professional reputation on the line. And he's probably making a lot of readers angry and insecure who might have bought those expensive products on his recommendation.

4) 75-90% of readers don't want carefully thought out advice and comparisons. They want "gadget porn" with witty easy to read commentary, and buyer confirmation that make them feel good about themselves. As an example 99% of car nuts will read an article about a Ferrari, but only the ones interested in actually buying a Fiat Panda will read a test between a Fiat Panda and Skoda Fabia. High-end audio, car and boat magazines are more about escapism than professional unbiased journalism.

 

I did not think very positively of the Hi-Fi World review nor of their two page article on multibit technology.

In the review they considered the Modi Multibit to be brighter and more clinical sounding than an Audiolab MDAC+. I don't have experience of the MDAC+, but I do own an original MDAC. And never in a million years is the Modi Multibit brighter than the MDAC. Maybe the MDAC+ sounds vastly different to the MDAC, but I doubt it. They are both Sabre DACs and I have it on good authority that the MDAC+ is based on a similar design to the MDAC. The review does not give me confidence in the Hi-Fi World magazine. In a couple of places in the magazine they even mispelled Schiit, by omitting the 'c' !

I do not really understand what are good and bad distortion figures, but I know what I hear. And I prefer the sound of the Modi Multibit to my MDAC, it is much more musical and easier to listen to. The MDAC has a flatter sound stage and is more aggressive.

On page 6 of the magazine they state that they used a Rohde & Schwarz UPV spectrum analyser to measure the Modi Multibit. Quote: "Distortion is measured at -60dB with both CD and hi-res digital test signals generated by the UPV - here fed optically using a glass QED Reference optical quartz TOSLINK cable."

The Hi-Fi Choice review (which I read in the newsagent) is written much more positively and the Modi Multibit got full marks

 

Do you know how quiet -60dB is from a digital source? Try playing a -60dB test tone and you will have to strain really hard to hear it, without cranking up the volume knob (yes, I just double checked to be sure). For -60dB to be above your household noise floor, then 0dB would probably be deafening - over 100dB sound level.

 

I don't know much about measurements other than frequency but I do know the Modi Multibit sounds really nice to me. I've only had it for a few days but I can hear a deference compared to using my X5II headphone and line out. I'm waiting for my USB cable to be delivered so I can use it with my computer.