[Solude]

Soloist but Mjolnir has quite a bit more swing. Depth or attack, pick your poison.

 

[tremolo]

Has anybody gone from a LD DAC_I to the Gungnir? Would it be an upgrade?
 
Thx

 

[harrinj]

I'm thinking about selling my UDH-100 and getting a Gungnir. I'm so sick of the problems with this CRAP nuforce DAC and driver issues and it's started popping every 3-10 seconds now on music (adjusting the buffers does not help or different USB cords/ports). I wish I could get a refund...

I've been wondering since the Gungnir has four RCA out's if it could be set up in ASIO to output discreet 4-Channel FLAC files to a Quad Receiver. I have several Quad Marantz Receivers 4400/4240/4270 and have always wanted to hear them in Quad. 

 

[zackzack]

  Hi guys, i'm looking to unshackle myself from my desktop computer's sound card (Asus Xonar d2x) and upgrade my amp/cans. My eventual goal is a Gungnir/Mjolnir with a set of Beyerdynamic T1/Audeze LCD-2/Sennheiser HD800 depending on which I end up liking the most.
 
I read in the Yggdrasil/Ragnarok thread (which are regrettably out of my price range ) some comments that suggested Schiit 'voice' their gear using Audeze cans. I presume this means they do their testing/tuning etc. with Audeze equipment. Will this make a difference to my headphone selection? It doesn't seem like it would but as I haven't managed to Google up any info I thought I would ask.
 
Thanks

 
I have listened to Audeze LCD 3 before and my feeling is that Schiit Audio loves orthodynamic cans. 
They are powerful enough to drive high Ohm Senns & Beyers but they pair better
with Audeze 

 

[Sonic Defender]

The Gungnir is a sick DAC, plus it can be upgraded which in my view is a very important consideration. A stack of Schiit would look uber sexy dude.

 

[sceleratus]

This is a little off topic, however, it has to do with digital files going into a gungnir, but more about speakers than HP's
 
Has anyone tried "Dirac Live Room Correction Software" ?  Using a mic the software records and make an acoustic profile for the room.  The second software component applies the profile to the music going into the DAC, correcting it for the room.
 
I downloaded the 14 day trial but discovered I had to have a preamp for my mic going into my Mac Mini music server.  I ordered "iMic" from Griffin and I should have it in a couple days.  My mic is a Røde Stereo mic pro.   I played the measurement sounds.  The my speakers slammed and the floor vibrated like I have never experienced.  
 
I not real keen on torquing with a source file, flac or otherwise, but I thought this might be an nice alternative to acoustic wall panels.

 

[Oklahoma]

Something like that program cannot replace accoustic panels as they actually cut out the reflections. What the program is doing is listening to what frequencies are reverberating and then eqing them out so you don't hear them they still exist you just won't hear them as they are output lower. Works similar to when sound techs eq a room so they don't get feedback with mics. If your intent is to cut bleed to other rooms this will do nothing but if you are looking for the audio to not sound reverberating in uour room this will work somewhat.

Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk 4

 

[olor1n]

I upgraded from the Gungnir to the M51. It's an improvement in every aspect. Better connectivity, a remote, and a great preamp with volume control that alleviates bit truncation. Set and forget. You won't worry about it being the bottleneck in your chain. It also looks great with the MJ.
 

 

 

 

[dailydoseofdaly]

I'd recommend the M51 if you're going with orthos. M51 made the HD800 boring, while the Gungnir was a bit too exciting.

And I wouldn't pay the M51's asking price, no way no how, it's not worth it.

I think gung pairs well with orthos, or a least the lcd3 with the mojo worked well with the 3's layed back nature. Gung also seems to be pairing well with 007 I'm using now which is also layed back.
Now if there was only a circlotron stat amp to pair with it.....

 

[paradoxper]

I think gung pairs well with orthos, or a least the lcd3 with the mojo worked well with the 3's layed back nature. Gung also seems to be pairing well with 007 I'm using now which is also layed back.
Now if there was only a circlotron stat amp to pair with it.....

I should have said only get the M51 if you're not using HD800. Both M51 and Gun pair well with ortho's. The LCD-2 was very good though less resolving than the LCD-3,
 
If I were to do it again, I'd pass on the M51 as the Gun/Mojo is just the better value.
 
Yessss, I think there are many that would love some venerable electro-schiit.

 

[olor1n]

The M51 strikes a good balance with the HD800 IMO and I know others that share the view. Don't quite get how it could be construed as "boring", but that's your take.

Also, there are markets outside of the US where the Gungnir is a $1000+ dac and the M51 can be had for a little more. A no brainer when you factor in the sonic improvements and additional features.

 

[paradoxper]

The M51 strikes a good balance with the HD800 IMO and I know others that share the view. Don't quite get how it could be construed as "boring", but that's your take.

Also, there are markets outside of the US where the Gungnir is a $1000+ dac and the M51 can be had for a little more. A no brainer when you factor in the sonic improvements and additional features.

Right, IYO it's a good balance, IMO it's too warm and boring. 
 
It's also clear I'm in the U.S. hence the price of the M51 being overpriced, IMO. I've long sold the M51, but it's a good DAC, poor value. 

 

[Sonic Defender]

While there are likely measureable differences between the M51 and the Gungnir I would be willing to bet in a blind testing situation over enough trials to account for chance, it would be very difficult to reliably pick the two DACs apart. We all think our “audio-memory” is that good, but that isn’t really how the brain works. We can store certain gross concepts of a sound in memory, but we are unable to actually “warehouse” any sound which ultimately means that once you stop listening to a piece of equipment, whatever detailed sound characteristics you noticed before will have to be re-detected by your brain each time. So when we sell our gear and have a period of time until the new gear arrives suddenly we hear the new gear as being so much better, but how accurate do you really think your auditory memory of your past equipment really was? Is it possible that you don’t actually have an accurate mental representation of that equipment left in memory?
I know when I sold my Audiolab 8200 to fund the Gungnir purchase I had a period of time with no DAC. Sure I believed the Gungnir to sound better, but how confident should I be in my musical memory? There is a huge difference between remembering general sonic characteristics as opposed to the granular level of detail retrieval and musicality we evaluate with gear like a DAC. Does our brain really store a super detailed sonic memory of sound? Why would it do that? Sure we remember voices, but the differences between voices are often striking, and sometimes we hear somebody’s voice and say man did that guy ever sound like Bill. The brain stores general chunks of information, some of the chunks are more detailed than others, but the final, and main auditory picture is put together by the brain while you are listening, it isn’t based on pure retrieval from memory. This implies that we do not have flawlessly detailed sonic maps in our memory from which to draw. I also will acknowledge the factor of individual difference, so there may be some people with more specialized memory circuits who indeed might remember more detail than the average, but these people should statistically be in the significant minority, and it would require properly designed blind testing procedures to confirm.
I know we do sometimes hear detail that we didn’t hear before, and while I think that may be true in some instances, it can just as easily be explained by our attentiveness to our new equipment. You’re primed to detect differences as you have created an expectation in your mind of a difference or you wouldn’t have bothered buying the new gear would you? It doesn’t matter if you have been in this hobby for 40 years and have tons of experience, and feel you don’t have expectations anymore, we all do, our brains are essentially the same and we can’t just turn off evolutionary factors. I believe auditory differences between a budget DAC with a less than stellar analogue section as compared to a very good DAC would be reasonable to say are detectable; however, the differences between two quality DACs would be quite another story unless they were engineered in such a way as to have very different sonic characteristics, which I have to admit is possible, but I don’t know if that is the case frequently. I would have to think that the sonic characteristics people respond to are essentially fairly similar so I can’t imagine engineers taking huge risks and making their gear really, really different sounding.
My point in saying all this is that if you believe you will hear a big difference for those extra hundreds of dollars, then you probably will. But, in my mind the well-designed DACs will probably sound quite a bit the same over much of the sound spectrum. I would love for head-fi to finally set-up some well-designed blind listening tests at a meet.  While I am a skeptic of the uber “golden-ear” that can detect minute differences, I am not so full of myself as to think I know the answers, and I could end up looking like an opinionated fool. It actually would be very easy to design a testing protocol and environment and I wonder why this isn’t done at big meets and industry shows?

 

[olor1n]

I lived with the Gungnir for some weeks under the scrutiny of the HD800. It was still in the stable when the M51 arrived and I was able to compare both for a few weeks. I don't entirely discount the unreliability of auditory memory when you have to mine the depths to recall an experience. Conclusions arrived at after prolonged exposure trumps that doubt for me though. The difference was pronounced and reflected in the heightened enjoyment I experienced listening to music over that period of time. There was no struggle to perceive minute improvements. The M51 sounded right in my system. The Gungnir presented issues that distracted. It was a clear and easy choice.
 
The Gungnir is a good dac that presents exceptional value in some markets. It's not at the pinnacle, nor is it of a quality to bring into question a preference to another. This applies to the M51 as well.

 

[dleblanc343]

  While there are likely measureable differences between the M51 and the Gungnir I would be willing to bet in a blind testing situation over enough trials to account for chance, it would be very difficult to reliably pick the two DACs apart. We all think our “audio-memory” is that good, but that isn’t really how the brain works. We can store certain gross concepts of a sound in memory, but we are unable to actually “warehouse” any sound which ultimately means that once you stop listening to a piece of equipment, whatever detailed sound characteristics you noticed before will have to be re-detected by your brain each time. So when we sell our gear and have a period of time until the new gear arrives suddenly we hear the new gear as being so much better, but how accurate do you really think your auditory memory of your past equipment really was? Is it possible that you don’t actually have an accurate mental representation of that equipment left in memory?

Hey there, it's definitely not worlds of a difference, but it is indeed noticeable. I tried both DAC's on my headphone system and a speaker system.
 
I had both dacs outputting into the same stereo amp and could A/B at the turn of a knob. What surprised me the most was that going from one to another was like running different crossfeed settings. With the M51, voices became more centered and sense of space hightened a bit, while the overall sound mellowed down a bit.
 
As an HD800 and HE6 user, that pleased my ears a bit more, but again, it wasn't day and night.