[RCBinTN]

You cannot void a warranty by doing such a thing. They might state that it voids the warranty, but under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty act such a thing is illegal.

Feel free to charge ahead, mate.
It's your device.

 

[auvgeek]

Does anybody have issues with resonance with their Gumby?

I received my new Gumby (directly purchased from Schiit) about two weeks ago -- sounded great after about 48 hrs of warm up, but then I started getting this weird resonance or microphonics. It does seem pretty repeatable, and happens with both instruments (like sometimes during the guitar on Dire Straits "Brother's in Arms" or the start of RHCP "Snow (Hey Oh)", just off the top of my head) or sometimes with vocals, both male and female.

I've tried two amps with two headphones and several music sources (including tidal HIFI). Haven't had this issue before with other DACs (Theta DSPro Prime IIIa), but none of them were as resolving as the Gumby A2. It's really frustrating and makes some music almost un-listenable, but I can't tell conclusively if it's the DAC or the recordings or something else. Sadly I don't have another DAC to compare to at the moment, and I hate to pay to send it back to Schiit just for them to say it's fine. I don't want to blame the recordings because it happens on what I thought were reasonably well recorded material but it's possible the DAC just isn't forgiving. Headphones used are modded HE-6 with Schiit Saga and vintage Pass speaker amp (Threshold Stasis 150 II) and DT-150 with Project Polaris. The issue does not occur with the DT-150 out of my laptop out, but obviously that's not particularly high quality.

I've tried with both the stock power cables and aftermarket power cables (Cerious Technologies graphene extreme). Interconnects are all no-name stuff that has always been fine before. Been thinking about upgrading to Anticables or something in the $50/cable range but haven't bothered yet.

Any thoughts?

 

[RCBinTN]

I don't have a problem like that ... sounds rough!
To me, it sounds like an issue up-stream of the DAC, but it could be the DAC itself. Not a downstream (amp) issue.

You should be inside the 15-day return window ... I recommend you e-mail Schiit for technical advice.
www.info@schiit.com

Good luck!
RCB

 

[auvgeek]

Sadly, not within the 15 day window -- it was a birthday gift so it was out of the 15 days before I even plugged it in, and then I was pretty sure it was my vintage amp so I figured I'd try a different amp/headphones (which took a week cuz I had to buy a headphone amp), and then I was out of town for a week. Not making excuses, just saying it's definitely not returnable. I'm sure I can work things out with Schiit directly, but I was curious if anyone had a similar issue (either caused by the DAC or upstream gear) before bothering them and potentially paying to send it in for testing. I'd guess the failure rates are absurdly low on their DACs, hence my original assumption that it was the amp or headphones.

What else could it be upstream of the DAC? Any ideas on super well recorded material I can test to see? I think I need a bigger selection of well-recorded music (ideally rock) to tell if it's just the fact that the DAC is more resolving than I'm used to and my music is poorly recorded or mastered. At least I've ruled out the amp and 'ducer.

Edit: Been getting PMs re location -- I'm in Baltimore if anyone wants to help me out with a comparison. Can come to you with my Polaris + DT-150, or I'm happy to offer a listen to my HE-6 + Saga + vintage Nelson Pass amp if anyone feels like comparing at my place (not lugging that amp around).

 

[luckybaer]

Does anybody have issues with resonance with their Gumby?

I received my new Gumby (directly purchased from Schiit) about two weeks ago -- sounded great after about 48 hrs of warm up, but then I started getting this weird resonance or microphonics. It does seem pretty repeatable, and happens with both instruments (like sometimes during the guitar on Dire Straits "Brother's in Arms" or the start of RHCP "Snow (Hey Oh)", just off the top of my head) or sometimes with vocals, both male and female.

I've tried two amps with two headphones and several music sources (including tidal HIFI). Haven't had this issue before with other DACs (Theta DSPro Prime IIIa), but none of them were as resolving as the Gumby A2. It's really frustrating and makes some music almost un-listenable, but I can't tell conclusively if it's the DAC or the recordings or something else. Sadly I don't have another DAC to compare to at the moment, and I hate to pay to send it back to Schiit just for them to say it's fine. I don't want to blame the recordings because it happens on what I thought were reasonably well recorded material but it's possible the DAC just isn't forgiving. Headphones used are modded HE-6 with Schiit Saga and vintage Pass speaker amp (Threshold Stasis 150 II) and DT-150 with Project Polaris. The issue does not occur with the DT-150 out of my laptop out, but obviously that's not particularly high quality.

I've tried with both the stock power cables and aftermarket power cables (Cerious Technologies graphene extreme). Interconnects are all no-name stuff that has always been fine before. Been thinking about upgrading to Anticables or something in the $50/cable range but haven't bothered yet.

Any thoughts?

Which input are you using to feed Gumby? USB? Coax? Optical?

Have you tried turning it off for a while? And, if feeding from your PC via USB, try turning off both the Gumby and the PC.

As a prior poster suggested, contact Schiit customer service. They are good about troubleshooting via email.

Hope you don’t need to return/exchange it.

 

[auvgeek]

Which input are you using to feed Gumby? USB? Coax? Optical?

Have you tried turning it off for a while? And, if feeding from your PC via USB, try turning off both the Gumby and the PC.

Good points. I was using USB from my 2017 Lenovo T470s (ubuntu 16.04). No bad clock light. Both the Gumby and laptop had power cycled a few times. I haven't tried bringing the Gumby up from a cold start again, which I'll probably do before sending it in.

I just decided to try my old USB converter and feed the Gumby via coax. I think it might have the issue might have gone away, at the cost of a little resolution (it's not as good of a converter as the Gen5 USB). I'll listen over the next few days and see if it helps continually. It's pretty hard to tell because the Gen 5 is more resolving/analytical and also noticeably louder (and I don't have a quick and easy way to volume match).

I'll ping Schiit custy service, but I genuinely believe the issue might be with my music and I was trying to resolve it without wasting their time.

 

[auvgeek]

Okay, so just a follow-up for anybody curious:

Annoyingly the problem appears to be with my computer. The Gen5 USB works with a different machine (also a lenovo running ubuntu 16.04), at least briefly. The Gen5 USB via my machine reproduces the problem (with any usb port). Weirdly, my old external XMOS USB converter (spdif to the Gumby via coax) works fine with my machine. Also weird is that I don't think the problem happens 100% of the time with Gen5 USB -- it certainly didn't happen the first week I had it.

Switching between the external converter and the native Gen5 is the approximately same sound quality (at least to my ears in a brief AB test). So I guess using the external converter is an alright solution in the short term, but I really am confused why it's happening and I didn't really want to keep hundreds of dollars worth of USB converter stuff around (nice cables + the converter itself). Tried apt-get dist-upgrade, apt-get update, reboot, etc, with no change. I don't think linux is the issue, since the other computer that worked was also running 16.04.

Guess I'll just wait until Schiit releases their new USB and by then I'll probably have graduated with my PhD and returned this computer to my lab anyway so I'll have a different computer regardless sometime in the next several months.

Anyway, I guess the point of this post is to always try with a different computer, even if you think it couldn't possibly fix the issue.

 

[RCBinTN]

Well, sounds like you made progress. At least have a listenable rig now.

FWIW ... when I got into this hobby, I bought an Uber Bifrost and was using a USB connection from my work computer/iTunes. It was a Windoze 7 machine.
Had all kinds of trouble getting the BiFrost drivers installed and working, then the USB was very noisy and basically an inferior connection. I think it was USB 2 back then.
Now that I've graduated to a Macbook Pro, I have no USB issues whatsoever.
The Macbook requires no drivers and gives rock-solid performance with the Gen 5. It's my best connection, beating the toslink.
One thing that did help the Macbook was disabling flash. It gets in the way of almost everything, including music playback.

Edit: corrected the need for "no" drivers whilst using the Mac - GMB! Oops, sorry.

 

[SilverEars]

@RCBinTN

Gumy and BHA-1 is the best combo out there. BHA-1 is the most transaparent (I heard) to very awsome Gumby DAC!

BHA-1 makes every headphone wide sound stage. Dunno why.

 

[auvgeek]

Well, sounds like you made progress. At least have a listenable rig now.

FWIW ... when I got into this hobby, I bought an Uber Bifrost and was using a USB connection from my work computer/iTunes. It was a Windoze 7 machine.
Had all kinds of trouble getting the BiFrost drivers installed and working, then the USB was very noisy and basically an inferior connection. I think it was USB 2 back then.
Now that I've graduated to a Macbook Pro, I have no USB issues whatsoever.
The Macbook requires drivers and gives rock-solid performance with the Gen 5. It's my best connection, beating the toslink.
One thing that did help the Macbook was disabling flash. It gets in the way of almost everything, including music playback.

Interestingly, my older Breeze converter (with upgraded clocks) sounds pretty terrific. I expected the galvanic isolation of the Gen5 USB to kick its butt, but I can't really tell a difference, especially after the Breeze has had 48 hrs of warmup. Schiit custy service said to try the Wyrd, but I'll prolly wait for their new USB implementation to come out before trying anything else.

I used to have a Macbook (2011 MBPr), which worked fine with my old DS Gungnir Gen 2 USB, and various USB to spdif converters I had to my Theta DSPro Basic IIIa. Optical out of the laptop directly to the DAC was terrible comparatively. But now I need Linux for work -- low level interfacing with hardware (robotics) is just terrible on anything else and some software (namely ROS) only works on Linux. I can't stand Windoze (my boss calls it a 40GB, mouse-enabling virus) and apple hardware doesn't play nice with Linux, so I went Lenovo with a clean Linux install, no windoze partition.

 

[RCBinTN]

Man, I'll tell ya --- you speak a language with which I am not familiar! But hey, I'm a geezer who's not chasing rabbit holes any longer. (See the next post).
I've heard rumors that the new Schiit USB will be literally the best thing since sliced cheese, so agree with you there - stay tuned

 

[RCBinTN]

@RCBinTN

Gumby and BHA-1 is the best combo out there. BHA-1 is the most transparent (I heard) to very awesome Gumby DAC!

BHA-1 makes every headphone wide sound stage. Dunno why.

I agree 100%, @SilverEars, well said!

I reached the GMB level first, and was looking for the right amp.
My goal was to drive both the HD800 (#1 goal) and LCD-series (#2 goal) planars. With one DAC/amp.

I went thru the Mjolnir1 and HDVA600. Nope.
Then, on luck, I stumbled upon the BHA-1. I liked the design and the company Bryston, so, I bought the BHA-1 unheard.
I know, it's unheard-of

Well, the result of my searches, as you wrote, the GMB + BHA-1 just works, and works great.
The BHA-1 just gets out of the way ... it lets the GMB do its magic!
I think the transparency of the amp is what creates the uber sound stage (that really comes from the DAC, if it's not constrained by the amp).

The SQ is also very neutral, meaning un-colored by the DAC nor amp, which was always my ultimate goal.
I will put my current rig up against the Yggy + WA5 (which I have heard) and at 1/4 of the price.

The BHA-1 is solid as a rock, with a 20-year warranty (!) and it sounds great.
Y'all on the fence for a SS amp - give it a try.

Cheers all,
RCB

ps. I'm not affiliated with Bryston in any way, just a satisfied customer!

 

[auvgeek]

Man, I'll tell ya --- you speak a language with which I am not familiar! But hey, I'm a geezer who's not chasing rabbit holes any longer. (See the next post).
I've heard rumors that the new Schiit USB will be literally the best thing since sliced cheese, so agree with you there - stay tuned

Yeah, sorry. Didn't meant to use too much jargon, but I was typing fast and that's the result, haha.

Anyway, dang this DAC sounds gooood! First time I've heard the HE-6 anywhere near its potential. Do I now want a 4-screw HE-6 and First Watt amp? Yeah. But I could live with this for a while.

 

[RCBinTN]

Hey ... no worries, mate! I just know nothing about Linux, you know.

You made the right choice, with the GMB.
Your next decisions depend on many other variables, such as the type of music you listen to.

For example, if you like metal or other bass-heavy music, that will affect your choice of headphones.
Or instead, classical, then you'll be going for the HD800 (trust me!).

The amplifier can certainly change the sound of the music, the shape of the curve.
I've heard warm (tube) amps that on first listen sound OK, but would soon become tiresome to me.

That's why I decided a long time ago to look for the most reference (flat curve) amp I could find.

It's a fun journey. Good luck with it!

 

[Blueshound24]

I agree 100%, @SilverEars, well said!

I reached the GMB level first, and was looking for the right amp.
My goal was to drive both the HD800 (#1 goal) and LCD-series (#2 goal) planars. With one DAC/amp.

I went thru the Mjolnir1 and HDVA600. Nope.
Then, on luck, I stumbled upon the BHA-1. I liked the design and the company Bryston, so, I bought the BHA-1 unheard.
I know, it's unheard-of

Well, the result of my searches, as you wrote, the GMB + BHA-1 just works, and works great.
The BHA-1 just gets out of the way ... it lets the GMB do its magic!
I think the transparency of the amp is what creates the uber sound stage (that really comes from the DAC, if it's not constrained by the amp).

The SQ is also very neutral, meaning un-colored by the DAC nor amp, which was always my ultimate goal.
I will put my current rig up against the Yggy + WA5 (which I have heard) and at 1/4 of the price.

The BHA-1 is solid as a rock, with a 20-year warranty (!) and it sounds great.
Y'all on the fence for a SS amp - give it a try.

Cheers all,
RCB

ps. I'm not affiliated with Bryston in any way, just a satisfied customer!

Just curious, are you using SE or balanced outs on the BHA-1? I've heard the SE isn't the best, and need to use the balanced to get the best out of it?