oletuv
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The Modi2U is connected to a MacBook Air (2012) through USB. Btw, I´m waiting for a Wyrd, ordered from Schiit Europe (authorized European distributor), it will probably arrive tomorrow.
*Official Schiit Magni/Modi 2 ( Uber ) Thread*
- Thread starter SpienerVince
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The Modi2U is connected to a MacBook Air (2012) through USB. Btw, I´m waiting for a Wyrd, ordered from Schiit Europe (authorized European distributor), it will probably arrive tomorrow.
GEK
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Please let us know if the Wyrd fixes the noise problems. If it does I would pick one up.
StanD
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Sounds like nothing is grounded as everything is using AC Adapters/Power Bricks. You should try grounding the chassis of your Magni. Your AC outlet should have a ground, usually a screw on the plate, usually the one that holds the plate to the wall. You would have to run a wire between this and the Magni chassis/ground.
oletuv
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I´m not an electrician and I would certainly not attempt to run any wire between my AC outlet and the Magni, I´d rather just put my hand on top of the box and that will take care of the hum. When you say that there´s a possible ground loop or missing grounding, do you mean that something is wrong with my AC installation or is it something wrong with the Magni? After all, Nick @ Schiit Audio has confirmed that the hum is normal for the Magni. I´ve plugged several other audio equipment to the AC outlet in my apartment and I have never heard electrical noise.
oletuv
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StanD
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It appears that there is no direct connection to ground, not a loop, thus hum and noise. As an experiment you can plug an RCA cable into the Magni 2 Uber output and hold the ground of the ther end of the cable to the AC outlet ground. It's easy to do. This will probably make the hum go away. If that works, you can then work out a permanent solution. I don't know where you live so I can't suggest anything.
Your other equipment probably had a normal power cord that connected to the chassis ground.
SmilinKev
New Head-Fier
My Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber were delivered four days ago and I’ve already spent spent almost 25 hours listening to them. I’m blown away by their ability to produce honest, involving and endlessly listenable music!
I don’t have “golden ears” and I’m not qualified to discuss the technical aspects of my new Stack O’ Schiit, but my main hobby for a little over 55 years has been listening to recorded music. I’ve had neither the money nor the motivation to invest in what are apparently regarded as “high-end” audio components. I’ve auditioned lots of them, but my ability to hear a meaningful difference is reached once I’m at the level of sonic reproduction achieved by most reliable “budget audiophile” stuff. So, here’s what I was using to listen to music via headphones at home - until Modi and Magni arrived to rock my world:
- An NAD C 516BEE compact disc player.
[Yeah, I’m realize I’m a dinosaur! At least the 516 has a nice internal DAC in the signal path when you’re linking directly to an external amp.]
- A HeadRoom Micro solid state (SS) amp.
- A Linear Designs Fournier HTA-2 tube amp.
- A Rolls Mini-Route 3 passive stereo switch (to select either SS or tube amp).
- All interconnections via AudioQuest “Evergreen” cables.
- Headphones: [All easy to drive, so my Magni’s gain is always on “Low.]
- In-ear: Etymotic HF5 and ER4PT.
- On-ear: Sennheiser Urbanite (occasionally, for the bass boost).
- Over-ear Open: Sennheiser HD 518 and HD 598.
- Over-ear Closed: NAD HP50 and Shure SRH1540.
- All cables stock, except the HD 598’s Moon Audio “Blue Dragon.”
Now that I have the Modi 2 Uber, I’ll be able to expand to listening to streaming audio (via my MacBook laptop and a Schiit PYST USB cable). However, I’ve been so involved in listening to CDs with the new Schiit that I haven’t had time to mess with newfangled stuff! [Once again: I’m a dinosaur!]
When the M2U-M2U stack arrived, I had an AudioQuest “Forest” TOSLINK optical interconnect waiting to link it to the NAD 516. That way, I could leave the HeadRoom and Fournier amps connected to the 516. This let me do I simple “head-to-head” comparisons by just plugging and unplugging my headphones. Here’s the music I used for my non-scientific testing (track titles in quotation marks; album titles in italics):
- Van Morrison, “Goin’ Down to Monte Carlo,” Born to Sing: No Plan B.
- Allman Brothers Band, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Back Where It All Begins,” 2nd Set: An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band.
- Knife Party, “404,” Abandon Ship.
- Infected Mushroom, “Kazabubu,” Friends on Mushrooms.
- Rick Sowash (composer) and the Mirecourt Trio, “Daweswood Suite,” Chamber Music with Clarinet.
- Maria Joao Pires, “No. 5 in F sharp major,” Frederic Chopin: The Nocturnes.
- Maria Joao Pires, Franz Schubert (Composer), “Impromptus 1-4, D 899 (1827),” Le Voyage Magnifique.
- Joshua Bell, J.S. Bach (Composer) “Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor” and “Chaconne,” Bach.
So, my new Schiit Stack went up against the Headroom Micro and the Fournier HTA-2 to show me what it could do (using each of the seven headphones listed above) with everything from virtuoso solo piano and violin performances to totally synthesized (yet still virtuoso!) electronic mayhem . . . with good ol’ rock-and-roll, jazzy vocals, and contemporary chamber music sandwiched in between.
I had a blast doing this comparison – and the outcome was unequivocal: to my ears, the Schiit Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber teamed up to produce a clearly superior musical experience, regardless of the type of music and headphone under consideration. I am VERY glad I bought them!
[If you don’t want any details, then just skip to the last two paragraphs. If you wish there were more details, then PM me with your questions, concerns, etc. I’ll be glad to “chat.”]
I will NOT bore you with an insufferably long, point-by-point look at everything my notes captured. Instead, here are a few representative discoveries. First, consider the Andante second movement of J.S. Bach’s “Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV1041,” as executed superbly by Joshua Bell (soloist and Music Director/Conductor) and the string players of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. There is a brief passage (from 4:57 to 5:12) where an enormous, thundering wave from the double bass swells from the far left of the orchestra. It serves to remind us that it’s the instrument that grounds the concerto, however much the Stradivarius in Bell’s hands may enchant us. Until I heard this passage through my new Schiit, I did not realize that John Constable’s harpsichord rides lightly under the swelling bass’s leading edge, like a pro surfer nonchalantly “shooting the curl,” and confidently restates the violin’s theme to provide continuity. I simply couldn’t hear this without the Schiit! It came through most crisply and cleanly with the Shure 1540 and the Sennheiser HD598, but it was still present even with the Sennheiser Urbanite (which really kicked up the double bass’s already significant voice!).
Second, among the tracks of club-wrecking, genre-shredding electronic mayhem that is produced by Infected Mushroom (Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani), there is a strenuous test of musicality in the bass you hear through headphones: the track titled “Kazabubu.” Hearing it through my new Schiit produced two previously unheard effects: (1) each of the various low-end notes, chords and electronic effects maintained its individual contours and identity, regardless of how many other sonic entities were combined, layered, overlapped and Ninja-blendered with it; (2) the lowest frequencies carried enough power to create, for me, a sort of phantom sensation of that thumping kind of chest compression that is induced by wall-destroying surges of bass in a live show or club setting. [Effect #2, I should confess, may be just a remnant/flashback of the days when I did things like stand an arm-length from the huge amp stacks thundering during Cream’s concert tour stop in Denver. Ahhhh . . . those were the days, right?]
Third, Maria Joao Pires is widely revered [no, no just by dinosaurs!] for her ability to control and exploit the subtle shades of tone color that can be teased from any particular note, chord, or composition on the piano. [She has spoken of her first encounters with a piano as a child: she would sit for hours, playing just a single note and listening in deep fascination to variations – depending on how hard she struck it – in the way it sounded, developed and decayed. You can still hear that “child” listening to the music that she plays now, at over 70 years of age.] With the Schiit stack, I could hear unmistakably what Pires is striving for in her performance style. The Schiit components were able to isolate and honor the unfurling resonances and reverberations of key passages without disconnecting them from the living sonic tissue of the entire piece of music. If this sounds “mystical,” so be it. Use your Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber to listen to Pires play one of Frederic Chopin’s nocturnes. If you do NOT rapidly find yourself floating inside the music, then I think you might need to return one or both of the components to Schiit for testing! ;^)
To sum up: The Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber proved to have a bigger, better defined, more true-to-life soundstage, definition, accuracy, range and – most of all – MUSICALITY than was provided by either my solid state (Headroom Micro) or tube (Fournier HTA-2) amp alone (in combination with the NAD 516’s DAC). The Schiit shines with in-ear, on-ear and over-ear headphones alike. And, like all the rest of you lucky folks who have them, I got my Schiit stuff for an MSRP that’s unbelievably low. I can’t imagine that I will ever want to upgrade my components; if I do decide to “go for broke,” however, I won’t look anywhere but Schiit Audio. Hmmm . . . I wonder what comes AFTER “the end of the world?” =8^O
Of course this is all “in my humble experience” as someone who listens to music, not equipment. If your experience and goals are different, I’ll enjoy hearing about it! Seems to me that’s what Head-Fi is all about . . .
Keep listenin’ and keep smilin’,
Kev
I don’t have “golden ears” and I’m not qualified to discuss the technical aspects of my new Stack O’ Schiit, but my main hobby for a little over 55 years has been listening to recorded music. I’ve had neither the money nor the motivation to invest in what are apparently regarded as “high-end” audio components. I’ve auditioned lots of them, but my ability to hear a meaningful difference is reached once I’m at the level of sonic reproduction achieved by most reliable “budget audiophile” stuff. So, here’s what I was using to listen to music via headphones at home - until Modi and Magni arrived to rock my world:
- An NAD C 516BEE compact disc player.
[Yeah, I’m realize I’m a dinosaur! At least the 516 has a nice internal DAC in the signal path when you’re linking directly to an external amp.]
- A HeadRoom Micro solid state (SS) amp.
- A Linear Designs Fournier HTA-2 tube amp.
- A Rolls Mini-Route 3 passive stereo switch (to select either SS or tube amp).
- All interconnections via AudioQuest “Evergreen” cables.
- Headphones: [All easy to drive, so my Magni’s gain is always on “Low.]
- In-ear: Etymotic HF5 and ER4PT.
- On-ear: Sennheiser Urbanite (occasionally, for the bass boost).
- Over-ear Open: Sennheiser HD 518 and HD 598.
- Over-ear Closed: NAD HP50 and Shure SRH1540.
- All cables stock, except the HD 598’s Moon Audio “Blue Dragon.”
Now that I have the Modi 2 Uber, I’ll be able to expand to listening to streaming audio (via my MacBook laptop and a Schiit PYST USB cable). However, I’ve been so involved in listening to CDs with the new Schiit that I haven’t had time to mess with newfangled stuff! [Once again: I’m a dinosaur!]
When the M2U-M2U stack arrived, I had an AudioQuest “Forest” TOSLINK optical interconnect waiting to link it to the NAD 516. That way, I could leave the HeadRoom and Fournier amps connected to the 516. This let me do I simple “head-to-head” comparisons by just plugging and unplugging my headphones. Here’s the music I used for my non-scientific testing (track titles in quotation marks; album titles in italics):
- Van Morrison, “Goin’ Down to Monte Carlo,” Born to Sing: No Plan B.
- Allman Brothers Band, “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” and “Back Where It All Begins,” 2nd Set: An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band.
- Knife Party, “404,” Abandon Ship.
- Infected Mushroom, “Kazabubu,” Friends on Mushrooms.
- Rick Sowash (composer) and the Mirecourt Trio, “Daweswood Suite,” Chamber Music with Clarinet.
- Maria Joao Pires, “No. 5 in F sharp major,” Frederic Chopin: The Nocturnes.
- Maria Joao Pires, Franz Schubert (Composer), “Impromptus 1-4, D 899 (1827),” Le Voyage Magnifique.
- Joshua Bell, J.S. Bach (Composer) “Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor” and “Chaconne,” Bach.
So, my new Schiit Stack went up against the Headroom Micro and the Fournier HTA-2 to show me what it could do (using each of the seven headphones listed above) with everything from virtuoso solo piano and violin performances to totally synthesized (yet still virtuoso!) electronic mayhem . . . with good ol’ rock-and-roll, jazzy vocals, and contemporary chamber music sandwiched in between.
I had a blast doing this comparison – and the outcome was unequivocal: to my ears, the Schiit Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber teamed up to produce a clearly superior musical experience, regardless of the type of music and headphone under consideration. I am VERY glad I bought them!
[If you don’t want any details, then just skip to the last two paragraphs. If you wish there were more details, then PM me with your questions, concerns, etc. I’ll be glad to “chat.”]
I will NOT bore you with an insufferably long, point-by-point look at everything my notes captured. Instead, here are a few representative discoveries. First, consider the Andante second movement of J.S. Bach’s “Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, BWV1041,” as executed superbly by Joshua Bell (soloist and Music Director/Conductor) and the string players of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. There is a brief passage (from 4:57 to 5:12) where an enormous, thundering wave from the double bass swells from the far left of the orchestra. It serves to remind us that it’s the instrument that grounds the concerto, however much the Stradivarius in Bell’s hands may enchant us. Until I heard this passage through my new Schiit, I did not realize that John Constable’s harpsichord rides lightly under the swelling bass’s leading edge, like a pro surfer nonchalantly “shooting the curl,” and confidently restates the violin’s theme to provide continuity. I simply couldn’t hear this without the Schiit! It came through most crisply and cleanly with the Shure 1540 and the Sennheiser HD598, but it was still present even with the Sennheiser Urbanite (which really kicked up the double bass’s already significant voice!).
Second, among the tracks of club-wrecking, genre-shredding electronic mayhem that is produced by Infected Mushroom (Erez Eisen and Amit Duvdevani), there is a strenuous test of musicality in the bass you hear through headphones: the track titled “Kazabubu.” Hearing it through my new Schiit produced two previously unheard effects: (1) each of the various low-end notes, chords and electronic effects maintained its individual contours and identity, regardless of how many other sonic entities were combined, layered, overlapped and Ninja-blendered with it; (2) the lowest frequencies carried enough power to create, for me, a sort of phantom sensation of that thumping kind of chest compression that is induced by wall-destroying surges of bass in a live show or club setting. [Effect #2, I should confess, may be just a remnant/flashback of the days when I did things like stand an arm-length from the huge amp stacks thundering during Cream’s concert tour stop in Denver. Ahhhh . . . those were the days, right?]
Third, Maria Joao Pires is widely revered [no, no just by dinosaurs!] for her ability to control and exploit the subtle shades of tone color that can be teased from any particular note, chord, or composition on the piano. [She has spoken of her first encounters with a piano as a child: she would sit for hours, playing just a single note and listening in deep fascination to variations – depending on how hard she struck it – in the way it sounded, developed and decayed. You can still hear that “child” listening to the music that she plays now, at over 70 years of age.] With the Schiit stack, I could hear unmistakably what Pires is striving for in her performance style. The Schiit components were able to isolate and honor the unfurling resonances and reverberations of key passages without disconnecting them from the living sonic tissue of the entire piece of music. If this sounds “mystical,” so be it. Use your Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber to listen to Pires play one of Frederic Chopin’s nocturnes. If you do NOT rapidly find yourself floating inside the music, then I think you might need to return one or both of the components to Schiit for testing! ;^)
To sum up: The Modi 2 Uber and Magni 2 Uber proved to have a bigger, better defined, more true-to-life soundstage, definition, accuracy, range and – most of all – MUSICALITY than was provided by either my solid state (Headroom Micro) or tube (Fournier HTA-2) amp alone (in combination with the NAD 516’s DAC). The Schiit shines with in-ear, on-ear and over-ear headphones alike. And, like all the rest of you lucky folks who have them, I got my Schiit stuff for an MSRP that’s unbelievably low. I can’t imagine that I will ever want to upgrade my components; if I do decide to “go for broke,” however, I won’t look anywhere but Schiit Audio. Hmmm . . . I wonder what comes AFTER “the end of the world?” =8^O
Of course this is all “in my humble experience” as someone who listens to music, not equipment. If your experience and goals are different, I’ll enjoy hearing about it! Seems to me that’s what Head-Fi is all about . . .
Keep listenin’ and keep smilin’,
Kev
DSchwartz88
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I'm a bit confused here, and I actually know electronics (more on the digital side) a bit. Looking at the wall-wart for the Magni 2 Uber, it doesn't seem like it can be grounded, theres no ground pin. If that's the case, where is the ground for the Magni 2 Uber coming from? For instance, I have an ODAC going into my computer via USB cable, theres no ground on that either, am I going to experience this hum as well?
oletuv
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Yes, I understand and this is the actual problem, the Magni2U chassis is not grounded and that is what is causing the hum issue (like Schiit Audio has confirmed), nothing wrong with my AC installation. Well, I leave it here, the Magni is what it is and not to my liking. If my research prior to ordering the unit had revealed this issue, I would not have ordered it. Thanks a lot for your input and suggestions though, it is really appreciated.
StanD
Headphoneus Supremus
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Exactly, wallwarts usually skip the ground, so you might experience noise and or hum. Did you understand my instructions for testing a trial ground using an RCA cable?
Are you using a desktop or laptop? How are you connecting to the ODAC? I believe the ODAC is USB, in which case you are probably ground connected to your computer. If your computer is grounded then you are probably good to go.
Jason Stoddard
Sponsor: Schiit Audio
Guys,
The hum thing is really getting blown out of proportion. To be clear, this is minor, low-level hum at some volume positions only when touching the volume pot on the Magni 2 Uber. This happens in some systems due to conduction of ambient noise through the (very small) Alps potentiometer. The solution? Don't hang on to the volume knob all the time.
All the best,
Jason
The hum thing is really getting blown out of proportion. To be clear, this is minor, low-level hum at some volume positions only when touching the volume pot on the Magni 2 Uber. This happens in some systems due to conduction of ambient noise through the (very small) Alps potentiometer. The solution? Don't hang on to the volume knob all the time.
All the best,
Jason
oletuv
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Jason, while I do appreciate your contribution to the discussion concerning quality problems with Schiit products, I really have to say that I´m not very impressed with your solution: "Don´t hang on the volume knob all the time". This is exactly the same answer as Nick gave me when I sent him an email about the issue. I know that I don´t have to hang on the volume knob all the time, but to me it is a quality issue, I know it is there and therefore tend to touch the noisy knob. Minor issue or not, it looks like a design flaw and as I´ve said previously, if I had known about it I would not have bought the Magni, not the Modi either because of the flimsy selector knob.
StanD
Headphoneus Supremus
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The Modi selector button is a floating metal disc, I'll bet that the switch behind it is solid.
You should really try the grounding experiment that I outlined. It is simple and quick to do.
DSchwartz88
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Hey Jason,
Appreciate you coming in here and clearing up what's happening. From a tactical perspective, does the hum only occur when the unit is ungrounded (because none of the devices in the chain are grounded), or will it occur all the time? Regardless, I agree, this feels like a very small issue, just want to be ready to fix it, if all it takes is grounding one of the items in my audio chain (e.g. Magni 2 Uber is hooked up to an ODAC, which is in turn hooked up to a desktop that is grounded).
erics75
Headphoneus Supremus
the e12 is a warmer sounding amp than the magni. I own both so I know exactly what you're talking about. I tend to think of the e12 as the bridge between the magni and vali, from a sound signature. the magni is very analytical and dry, the vali very lush and warm. the e12 seems to sit right in the middle of those two sound signatures. at least to these abused ears.
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