So I've got this rusty Gungnir sitting around with an old USB board v1.20. This is the Gungnir which was part of the first DAC Comparison a while back.



A few moons ago, Jason sent me this new USB board. Jason knew I had some syncing issues with the v1.20 USB board on some older PCs and laptops, and he mentioned this new board fixes those syncing issues. But nooooo..... in typical Jason fashion, he neglects to tell me there are sonic improvements or that what I have is essentially the brand new fancy pants "USB Gen 2 Upgrade" listed on their website. Noooo.... he just doesn't say a thing. (This is what I love about Jason - he keeps so quiet - and then sneaks around like the Detective Columbo to see how people react.)

So anyways, I install it, play around with it, casually notice it doesn't sound much different from coax, and sit on it for a few months.

Wait... it doesn't sound much different from coax - wait - WTF. USB is supposed to suck. So tonight I finally A/B'd the two boards on the Gungnir - > Vali -> Abyss. On a related note, the coax connection I am currently using is via the mobo from by main gaming PC.  I actually prefer this coax connection to the PWD2's USB (which by the way is actually a good USB implementation in that the AP1 USB->SPDIF gizmo actually sounded worse than the PS Audio USB implementation.) I just wanted to establish that this source / coax is decent to pretty good as some other mobo coax implementations I've heard have not been so good.

So what's the verdict? At the risk of sounding like a Schiit shill, since I've already shilled the Schiit out of the Vali... Well, "shiver me timbers", "may God strike me down", "ah, fuck me", the new Schiit USB Gen 2 Board is not BS, and gets a 5-star Changstar rating. I mean for $150, you get a major improvement (in DAC terms) from the old USB.




This new USB Gen 2 board not only fixes the sync/locking issues of the old board, it also sounds much better. It’s a pretty darn significant improvement (in terms of DACs) from the older USB board. To make things short: the DAC with the old board sounds hazier, less lively, less clear, and closed-in in comparison.

I know three people who have felt that the Gungnir is too aggressive dynamically. Does this new USB Gen2 board fix this? Well sort of. The way I translated this observation of "overly aggressive dynamically" is that the Gungir had a tendency to be loud. That is being very able to play the loudest sounds while either dropping or compressing upward the softest sounds. What the USB Gen2 does is bring back some of that lost low level information. Microdynamics and microdetail goes up a notch.

Still the Gungir is a pretty rocking DAC. Think rock concert. I love dynamics and don't think there can ever be enough of it. (It's my understanding that Mike Moffat thinks the same way, hence why the Gungnir sounds the way it does. Also I noticed that Schiit's playlists on their demos are not too different from mine.) So while the explosiveness is still there, the Gungnir sounds much less constantly loud / banging as its now much better able to render soft and gentle sounds.

I am really really enjoying this DAC now. I mean I liked it before, but not enough to displace it as a #2 for regular listening DAC. To be honest, the Gungnir sat around (mind you I have two other great DACs lying around) because I wasn't goin g to go out and buy another $1500 OR5 USB/SPDIF converter. Now I don't need to.

BTW, the AKM chipses in the Gungir have such a sweet sweet sweet sweet sound. Love the vocals. As a DAC for vocals, the Gungir / USB Gen2 is easily #2 just behind the AGD M7 among all of the DACs I've heard so far. Quite frankly I'm getting sick and tired of this Sabre shit. I've been going through all my The Voice downloads tonight.