[slex]

First post here but I have been a lurker for a couple years.  I received my Modi Multibit yesterday and thought I would share some initial impressions.  My current gear I have been using is Modi 2 Uber, Lyr 2, into a pair of HD600 and also a pair of Beyerdynamic T1.2 that I dislike and will be returning (that is another story though).  I listen with Foobar2000 in WASAPI mode with lossless only files.  I listen to primarily jazz, rock, and metal music.

Installing the Mimby USB drivers was a pain in the butt on my Windows 10 machine.  Windows would not load drivers for it and the neither would the Schiit driver installer.  It would tell me that I did not have a device connected and cancel the installation.  In device manager it would just sit there and with the dreaded exclamation mark no matter what I tried.  I had to go in and manually install the driver that was already installed for the Modi 2 Uber.  I wish that Schiit would simply provide the drivers for their DACs rather than requiring a exe to install them.  Maybe I am just old fashioned that way.

Now that the DAC was working it was time to do some comparisons with my Modi 2 Uber.  I was expecting some very obvious differences between the DACs but am so far really not hearing it.  They both sound great but incredibly similar.  The Mimby is louder but once volume matching is done to the Uber much of the perceived difference are eliminated.  After extensive AB comparisons for the next couple hours I can say I never preferred the Uber to the Mimby which may be meaningful or complete bias.  At times the Mimby seemed to offer a little more resolution to individual notes in piano pieces and maybe a little more air around the instruments in certain jazz albums.  Many times I would switch and notice no differences at all.  The differences I felt I heard at times between the Schiits could easily be attributed to confirmation bias...time will tell.

A lot of the glowing reviews that I see for the Mimby in this thread are people coming from on board DACs and I have no doubt that the difference that they are experiencing is significant though if volume matching was done I also suspect would diminish some.  I am just not hearing very significant changes coming from a quality budget DAC.

I look forward and will continue to do some critical listening over the weekend and see if I notice any changes.

Give it more time and it will sing ! Im liking Modi compared to m9xx which is using same dac chip as Uber.

 

[227qed]

  First post here but I have been a lurker for a couple years.  I received my Modi Multibit yesterday and thought I would share some initial impressions.  My current gear I have been using is Modi 2 Uber, Lyr 2, into a pair of HD600 and also a pair of Beyerdynamic T1.2 that I dislike and will be returning (that is another story though).  I listen with Foobar2000 in WASAPI mode with lossless only files.  I listen to primarily jazz, rock, and metal music.
 
Installing the Mimby USB drivers was a pain in the butt on my Windows 10 machine.  Windows would not load drivers for it and the neither would the Schiit driver installer.  It would tell me that I did not have a device connected and cancel the installation.  In device manager it would just sit there and with the dreaded exclamation mark no matter what I tried.  I had to go in and manually install the driver that was already installed for the Modi 2 Uber.  I wish that Schiit would simply provide the drivers for their DACs rather than requiring a exe to install them.  Maybe I am just old fashioned that way.
 
Now that the DAC was working it was time to do some comparisons with my Modi 2 Uber.  I was expecting some very obvious differences between the DACs but am so far really not hearing it.  They both sound great but incredibly similar.  The Mimby is louder but once volume matching is done to the Uber much of the perceived difference are eliminated.  After extensive AB comparisons for the next couple hours I can say I never preferred the Uber to the Mimby which may be meaningful or complete bias.  At times the Mimby seemed to offer a little more resolution to individual notes in piano pieces and maybe a little more air around the instruments in certain jazz albums.  Many times I would switch and notice no differences at all.  The differences I felt I heard at times between the Schiits could easily be attributed to confirmation bias...time will tell.
 
A lot of the glowing reviews that I see for the Mimby in this thread are people coming from on board DACs and I have no doubt that the difference that they are experiencing is significant though if volume matching was done I also suspect would diminish some.  I am just not hearing very significant changes coming from a quality budget DAC.
 
I look forward and will continue to do some critical listening over the weekend and see if I notice any changes.

Yeah I experienced the same thing as you.  My mimby isn't a necessarily a massive improvement over the modi 2 uber, but it definitely is over on board PC dacs or budget ones like the Fiio D03K.  It's definitely a scale thing to me though too.  I'm pretty confident that as I get better and better headphones and amps (more resolving, bigger stage, etc.) the merits of the mimby will become more apparent.  My mimby will be the last thing that I upgrade when I get into the next level.  And at that point, I'll probably go for a gumby as my DAC endgame. 

 

[Letmebefrank]

  First post here but I have been a lurker for a couple years.  I received my Modi Multibit yesterday and thought I would share some initial impressions.  My current gear I have been using is Modi 2 Uber, Lyr 2, into a pair of HD600 and also a pair of Beyerdynamic T1.2 that I dislike and will be returning (that is another story though).  I listen with Foobar2000 in WASAPI mode with lossless only files.  I listen to primarily jazz, rock, and metal music.
 
Installing the Mimby USB drivers was a pain in the butt on my Windows 10 machine.  Windows would not load drivers for it and the neither would the Schiit driver installer.  It would tell me that I did not have a device connected and cancel the installation.  In device manager it would just sit there and with the dreaded exclamation mark no matter what I tried.  I had to go in and manually install the driver that was already installed for the Modi 2 Uber.  I wish that Schiit would simply provide the drivers for their DACs rather than requiring a exe to install them.  Maybe I am just old fashioned that way.
 
Now that the DAC was working it was time to do some comparisons with my Modi 2 Uber.  I was expecting some very obvious differences between the DACs but am so far really not hearing it.  They both sound great but incredibly similar.  The Mimby is louder but once volume matching is done to the Uber much of the perceived difference are eliminated.  After extensive AB comparisons for the next couple hours I can say I never preferred the Uber to the Mimby which may be meaningful or complete bias.  At times the Mimby seemed to offer a little more resolution to individual notes in piano pieces and maybe a little more air around the instruments in certain jazz albums.  Many times I would switch and notice no differences at all.  The differences I felt I heard at times between the Schiits could easily be attributed to confirmation bias...time will tell.
 
A lot of the glowing reviews that I see for the Mimby in this thread are people coming from on board DACs and I have no doubt that the difference that they are experiencing is significant though if volume matching was done I also suspect would diminish some.  I am just not hearing very significant changes coming from a quality budget DAC.
 
I look forward and will continue to do some critical listening over the weekend and see if I notice any changes.

 
 
I personally found there to be a very noticeable difference between the Mimby and Modi 2 Uber. My modi 2 Uber was pre-ak4490, so take that into consideration as well. It is most noticeable in the cymbals. I am very sensitive to digital treble, not that it causes me pain, but I can very easily tell low-res vs high-res songs based purely on cymbals. Growing up I've had many friends who were drummers and I know exactly what cymbals should sound like. Bluetooth in my car is completely unlistenable for this reason. The cymbals sound like trash. 
 
Cymbals with the Mimby sound as lifelike as I have ever heard, I would even say it sounds more natural than a vinyl LP. With the Modi 2 Uber, the cymbals weren't bad, but I could tell it was slightly off, even a bit digital sounding on some recordings. Rush is great for comparing cymbals as Neil Peart makes great use of them. Also the glass smashing on YYZ has a quality to it on the Mimby that just blows my mind every time I hear it.

 

[lenroot77]

For me it's very noticeable with drums and cymbals as well... maybe the difference is less noticeable depending on the music genre? Say something like EDM would not benefit as much?

 

[winders]

For me it's very noticeable with drums and cymbals as well... maybe the difference is less noticeable depending on the music genre? Say something like EDM would not benefit as much?

The Mimby seems to excel at timbre clarity. I hear it with cymbals, drums, and especially woodwind instruments with reeds. I can hear the reed vibrate clearly.

 

[winders]

I want to make sure my Mimby is getting a good clean signal. Should I use USB out from my MacBook Pro and use something like the UpTone Audio REGEN or would I be better off using something like the DXIO PRO3Z and use the coax SPDIF input on my DAC. Or is optical SPDIF from a Thunderbolt 3 dock a better idea? Any of these options allow the same 24/196 max rate.
 
Thanks.

 

[gvl2016]

Got my mmb yesterday, I don't have other modis to compare it with but the initial impression it's quite an achievement at its price point. The amount of detail and precision is the best I've heard, and it manages to render all of it without being harsh or annoying like some other DAC's I've been through. However it didn't score very high in the soundstage department when I ran it against my Arcam rDac through amp/speakers. With the rDac and eyes closed the speakers sort of disappear and the sound stage is wider than the speaker placement, not as much with the mimby which remains pretty focused to speakers, a bit disappointing. Need to do more listening, but so far it seems using it with closed back cans is where it really shines.
 
PS: and yeah, installing drivers was a PITA as the newest couldn't detect the device, the only driver that worked was the earlier 1.03 version. Couldn't get the ASIO driver to install too.

 

[slex]

I want to make sure my Mimby is getting a good clean signal. Should I use USB out from my MacBook Pro and use something like the UpTone Audio REGEN or would I be better off using something like the DXIO PRO3Z and use the coax SPDIF input on my DAC. Or is optical SPDIF from a Thunderbolt 3 dock a better idea? Any of these options allow the same 24/196 max rate.

Thanks.

I have F1 DDC and ifi USB nano both are comparable with pro3z and regen. The pro3z will give a significant boost. But using both in chain is dwfinitely better.

 

[rydoggsc2]

Originally Posted by gvl2016 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
PS: and yeah, installing drivers was a PITA as the newest couldn't detect the device, the only driver that worked was the earlier 1.03 version. Couldn't get the ASIO driver to install too.

That is very interesting.  Did you contact Schiit about your problem?  I did and so far in our back and forth no solutions have worked or been given that I had not already tried.

 

[gvl2016]

  That is very interesting.  Did you contact Schiit about your problem?  I did and so far in our back and forth no solutions have worked or been given that I had not already tried.

 
No, I got it working with the earlier version, so I'm ok for now. Native ASIO would be nice, but ASIO4ALL works too...

 

[Letmebefrank]

Windows 10 automatically installed the driver for my Modi Multibit. Native ASIO works fine. Not sure why it isn't working for you guys.

 

[gvl2016]

  Windows 10 automatically installed the driver for my Modi Multibit. Native ASIO works fine. Not sure why it isn't working for you guys.

 
I'm still on W7 and, well, XP. I was happy the driver worked at all on XP so no complaints here

 

[rydoggsc2]

I just brought a laptop home from work to test the install on a different Win 10 machine.  It installed with no issue at all with no extra drivers needed. Maybe there is some weird issue with the MSI Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard that I use in my two computers and the Mimby.  Whatever...at least I know it is working

 

[227qed]

The Mimby seems to excel at timbre clarity. I hear it with cymbals, drums, and especially woodwind instruments with reeds. I can hear the reed vibrate clearly.

This. I agree 100%, good description. Out of the digital and into real life the mimby bring you.

 

[227qed]

Windows 10 automatically installed the driver for my Modi Multibit. Native ASIO works fine. Not sure why it isn't working for you guys.

Mine too for the record. Plug n play made me very happy.