Schiit Gungnir and Bifrost Multibit Comparison (And HQPlayer Closed-Form Filter Comparison)

Same here. Bifrost Multibit will be my stable game till I graduate; Gungnir Multibit costs nearly 2k after shipping in the local currency, and there's too much I can do with the extra thousand dollars.

 

Hi there. No one can help me?
someone is using Gungnir Multibit with Speakers?

thanks

 

Yes. As with any other DAC, you can use it with speakers. Purrin uses his Yggdrasil with speakers. I can't see why you'd think the Gungnir Multibit was for headphones only.

 

Two friends of mine do exactly that. Works excellently, also easier to point out the differences in my experience between DACs is on a speaker setup.

 

thanks guys, my question only because i only see experiences with headphones on all forums

 

@Hands - would be very interested to hear your impressions of using Gungnir Multibit with straight USB vs. the Transient MKII.

Have you yet tried a Wyrd/Regen with Gungnir Multibit?

 

Thanks for including the comparison with the closed-form filters in HQPlayer. In theory, you would think that there shouldn't be a difference if both implementations are truly closed-form/bitperfect/etc but it looks like there is more to it than that, which is of course part of the Schiit's secret sauce.

 

I really like the explanations given about the filter over time, including this (can't remember where I got it from exactly, a head-fi post I believe). I saved it to a text file on my laptop.

"It is a digital filter/sample rate converter designed to convert all audio to 352.8 or 384KHz sample rates so that it may drive our DACs. You get it uniquely from us; it is our filter. It took five people many years to design and perfect at the dawn of digital playback, way back in the early eighties. It keeps all original samples; those samples contain frequency and phase information which can be optimized not only in the time domain but in the frequency domain. We do precisely this; the mechanic is we add 7 new optimized samples between the original ones. All digital filters multiply the original audio signal by a series of coefficients which are calculated by a digital filter generator. Over the years, before Theta Digital was born (my original company), we developed this filter design/generator. The common digital filter method is a Parks-McClellan algorithm, which has been used in all of the older oversampling chipsets, and persists to this day as the input filter in most Delta-Sigma DACs. Why? I assume it is because it is royalty-free, and the algorithm is widely available as are digital filter software design packages to aid in a cookbook approach to the design. Now Parks McClellan an open form math solution, which means that the coefficient calculation is a series of approximations which always get halfway there. This of course, means it never completely solves. The worse news is that all original sample are lost, replaced by 8 new approximated ones. Further, the Parks McClellan optimization is based on the frequency domain only – flat frequency response, with the time (read spatial) domain ignored. Our filter is based upon closed form math – the coefficients are not approximations, the equations solve; the matrices invert and the math is done. The filter also optimizes the time domain."

 

Wait, it wasn't a gift? Dammit!

Just kidding. I've actually sat on it for the last 2 weeks to make sure I didn't do anything that can cause a malfunction. You're getting it back soon. (just count to infinity!)

 

Gungnir Multibit ordered. Cant' wait

 

$39.95 (year 1986) ebook:
On digital smoothing filters: A brief review of closed form solutions and two new filter approaches

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01600056

 

If you have to get Gungnir Multibit back by then, I can loan you my Gungnir Multibit then.

For now, it's still with @velvetx since he'd like to test Marv's Zana Deux with it.

 

Awesome, thank you, confirms the differences I heard between direct USB and coax SPDIF. I would imagine similar differences with Bifrost, considering they use the same USB gen 2 input.

 

I'm actually close to taking the plunge on a NOS DAC to be used in my speaker setup and kick out my fatiguing Auralic Vega, which is why I joined this forum. The Gungnir Multibit multibit and Yggdrasil are definitely on the list but I am also intrigued by the Audial Model S MKIII. Any quick thoughts on differences between them? My input preference is BNC.

Thanks!

 

Bill-p,

modding the Wyrd? That sounds, well...weird ! You care to fill us plebs later ?