Hey everyone. After reading a lot of initial impressions and Defiant00's comparison thread, I'm planing on ordering a Magni for my first headphone amp later today.
However, I'm a bit torn on if I should order a Modi to go along with the Magni. Right now I have a Creative X-Fi Titanium HD sound card, and I'm debating using it as the DAC for the Magni, or to buy the Modi. I don't have any real complaints about the X-Fi, but I'm wondering if the Modi would be an upgrade over the X-Fi.
In Defiant00's thread he compared the Modi to the Bifrost, and he found that the Bifrost did sound better. However, he found that the Modi was about 90% as good as the Bifrost. I was wondering if anyone who has the Modi has compared it to other high quality DACs? I'm not expecting anyone to have both of these DAC's, but any input would be great.
Getting the Modi would make allow me to also use the Magni with my laptop which would be a plus, and I could use the X-Fi as a speaker DAC. Being able to use it with my laptop would mostly factor in when I upgrade from the Magni, so it's not an immediate concern. I also don't use speakers all that much anymore, but it would be a nice option.
An important thing to note is that I'm going to have to digitally attenuate the signal down to about 25% - 50%. This is due to the Magni having a gain of 5 and the low impedance headphone that I'll be using with it.
I know that I can order the Modi later on, but with shipping close to $14 on a device under $100 I'd really like to just place one order.
I guess another option would be to get the Asgard. However, if the Magni sounds almost as good I don't see any point in spending an extra $150. It's pretty hard to beat getting a complete stack with cables for less than the price of the Asgard, and the compact size is desk friendly.
Thank you for the help.