I've had a couple of days with the new-to-me Gungnir Multibit. I'm feeding it from my M1 Mac Mini via a DDC and a RCA-Coax cable. I'll do the Unison USB upgrade in 2-3 months.
I tried it out the day it arrived after being plugged in for 8-9 hours. Intellectually, I was aware of the necessary warm up time and all that it entails, but my expectations and emotions had the bridge that day. After 2 hours of listening, I was disappointed, a little bit deflated, and worried that I wasted a decent amount of cash. The music had a grey veil over it, and there was a harshness in the upper reaches that was fatiguing. The bass certainly dug deeper, the sound stage a touch wider than when listening via my inexpensive delta-sigma DAC that preceded the Gumby, but the overall sound wasn't pleasant. I'd be lying if I said I didn't lose some sleep thinking about it.
Fast-forward to noon the next day.
SWEET BUBBA JEEBUS!
The sound was
rich and deep and wide. On Neil Young's "Be the Rain" I could actually hear Billy Talbot's bass notes rather than the low and buried rumble that I expected. And they were DEEP. I had to dial back the Lokius's sub bass and bass knobs from where I'd normally have them. I was hearing fine detail in Neil's strumming - an obvious rapid circular pattern - that was not there previously in the swampy distorted grunge of his longtime beat-to-Hell Les Paul that he's named "Old Black". Cannonball Adderly and Miles Davis' "One for Daddy-O": The sound-stage in the Sundara was w-i-d-e. The instrument separation was amazing. The clarity in the notes of the standup bass was a revelation. High-hat taps and cymbal splashes sound real - very analog with no digital tinge to spoil the music. The Saxophone and trumpet were in the room with me. Thwacks to drum heads have a proper thump, echo, and fade that you hear at a live venue. Listening to other random songs, I could pick out and focus on individual instruments and backup singers where previously they were buried in the mix. Familiar songs presented details that I'd not noticed before. Listening for a few hours last evening, the sound had improved even more. Was I grinning widely? Oh yeah! My wife might not see much of me over the next few days!
For the headphone stack, this is an endgame DAC for me. Music sounds incredible, real, and brand new. I'll try the AKG 712's with their wider (but shallow) soundstage today, as well as the HD-650's. I am looking at some higher-end Hifiman and Dan Clark Audio cans too. Now that this stack is almost complete (looking at you, Mjolnir 3, or something else that Schiit has in the pipeline), I'll be able to turn my focus to the speaker system in the basement.