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

Yeah, but your 3.1% could equate to a "holy shit" difference to someone else. Neurosis occurs when $$$ spent on a DAC upgrade doesn't equate to an appreciable difference, at first (USB) pass.

 

I always had this impression that the analog guys are more crazy/evangelistic with their gears and tweaks. Mascot would be Michael from Analog Planet.

 

Well, Mikey was once crazy. Now he's just a seer, cause he made it through the down times. @purrin , I was curious. When you say the ifi as a USB converter is decent, how does it rank among converters you've worked with? Just below a no frills Offramp, or much lower? Trying to decide if I should get a dedicated converter.

 

So a month after buying a Bifrost Multibit, I got the HE1000 and based on this thread and others sold it and bought a Gungnir Multibit. Listening for the first time now and it's incredible and absolutely worth it. My brain is sort of disbelieving that music could sound this clear.

 

Following up on this, I realized my laptop has an optical out and I'm using it now instead of USB.... it actually does seem to sound better. Huh. Especially lower frequencies.

 

I'd be really interested in comparisons of BNC and Toslink in one form or the other.

I am actually considering getting a gumpy, but my source is toslink from a computer sound card and there's very little talk of how the optical connection sounds compared to BNC or USB. With or without 'defuckifiers'.

 

FYI, rather odd setup but I have used bnc out on Mutec 1.2 to coax in on Havana via coax and sound was about the same as coax direct. But toslink out from the Mutec to toslink in on the Havana seemed ever so slightly more open in the treble and a bit cleaner in lower mids, upper bass.

Now what you have to remember here is that the Mutec has good master clocks and uses them for the usb to spdif conversion. I believe toslink from the motherboard would use the computers clock and embed that within the spdif signal to send on to the the Gungnir Multibit, since the async master clock setup usually pertains to the USB input.