Schiit Bifrost 2

Looking forward to more reviews on how it sounds. The measurements matter too, but accurate is no good if it sounds sterile and lifeless. I have no doubt the Engineers at Schiit listened to it first, but curious what others impressions are.

 

Right, my question/issue is how did it get to this point in the first place and why are we still going down that road? BNC to RCA cables exist. It just seems silly to me that we're willfully gimping SPDIF. But, I'm going to shut up about it now to not derail the thread.

 

@schiit Will the Yggdrasil also get some upgrade around the Unison rollout in January?

 

I don't own a single piece of equipment that has coaxial spdif output. I just bought a 19 dollar adapter on Amazon that turns one toslink or coaxial spidf feed into both a toslink and coaxial signal. I did this so I could route my tv sound to both my schiit equipment (which I use when home) and the always on soundbar (which my wife uses).

I feel like there are two Schiit camps. Those who have spent time in the audiophile world and like Schiit because it provides a tremendous cost/performance ratio compared to the gear they buy at dedicated audio shops. And people like me. Those who have never walked into a stereo store in their life, and buy Schiit because it's a stepup from whats sold at Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Crutchfield, etc.

Toslink has to stay for folks like me.

 

Haha!

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...fat-2-at-schiit-blog.3507/page-53#post-266185

Jason on that ΔΣ -->

Wait till you hear one of them...it's nuts. Same basic stuff we've been doing, but we learned a few new tricks.

Bet they drop a card for Bifrost 2 (awesome by the way) -- but not before Schiit Hel !

 

genU does plug into a mysterious 2nd unused header on the Yggdrasil CN3/4 - I took a pic on that thread, suspect reclock bypass and using the NDK's straight. Not gonna trace it live and blow up my DAC (yet).

Think lighting the, "buy better gear" LED... but the inverse... this gear now surpasses what's already there, and they planned for it. (my guess)

 

A connector is so short at SPDIF risetimes (rise time / delay time > 160 for 2cm long connector) it is acts as a lumped element, not as a distributed element or transmission line. Therefore there is a very small insertion loss, but reflection can be ignored. Effectively there is no measurable difference.

I can show all the math if you want, but don't want to pollute this thread.

 

I'd be really interested to know this too...

 

No plans to be revealed as of now, gotta exert some patience! The push to Unison will be a gradual one.

 

Implementation even on the Bifrost module is packed full. I didn't even thi k it would fit at first. It would be rather difficult to put this on something like Modi or the other DAC cards. Besides, it is a benefit of upgrading.

What I'd rather hope is a replacement of Etir with Unison if possible.

 

Sorry to report the bad news https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ntinuity-output-stage.8228/page-2#post-270046

 

Could you expand on this, specifically in terms of low level resolution?

I'm using SPDIF -> Modi Multibit -> Black Widow 1 -> 6XX/800S/Verum. Having used the Verum One almost exclusively over the past several months, I recently went back to the HD800S and realised what I'd been missing in terms of resolution. I'd like to chase this a bit more. The Gugnir has never been an option because of size reasons.

 

I seriously wonder how good the new Schiit transport is if it’s coming out at the same timeframe when they’re deploying Unison and Sol. It’s like a crazy race for value between three different kinds of sources that’s being driven by the same company.

 

I have the Bifrost 2 coming, but I hope the Unison is better than Eitr. My problems with the Eitr were it rounded some of the dynamics and introduced a tinge of haziness. I didn't get the same experience using Gen 5 directly in a Bifrost Mulitibit I had earlier this year. However, Eitr was a lot better than the SPDIF output from my CD player which smoothed the shit out of transients and too dark of a presentation. It's interesting how different source components can change the overall sound signature. Changed my views as a hardcore skeptic...

Will do some comparisons between Bifrost 2 and Modi 3. More curious how the bass extension of the B2 compares to Modi 3.

I want a more resolving DAC than my Modi 3, a bit darker with more clarity and better focus. Sounds like the B2 fits the bill and should enhance the strengths of the HE-6 while allaying its weaknesses.

 

I have a question about the design. In an old post from 2016 on HF, Jason said:

"Believe me, I'd do it (discrete Bifrost Multibit) if it was do-able. But multiplying DACs mean you need 2 gain stages per channel (and highly accurate/linear gain stages at that--which means complex), and the DACs used in Gungnir Multibit and Yggdrasil (which can have simple discrete output) need to be run balanced, and that would blow up the price. What we'd need to do a discrete output stage for a Bifrost Multibit would be a third multibit platform, based on a different DAC entirely...which, as far as I know, ain't gonna happen anytime soon"

Even though the move to the AD5781 chip would allow for discrete stages, an opamp stage was selected, which I'm going to assume is in order to facilitate Autonomy, a very reasonable decision. However, the chips are stated to require being run balanced, probably in order to cancel out digital noise and glitches that the chip designer from AD said on HF would make the chips unsuitable for audio and/or to isolate against analog noise that would interfere with the 19/21 bit output. How did Mike get around these in order to create Bifrost 2? Theres also the question of whether the 4 LSB INL spec instead of 0.5 matters that much as long as the DNL/ "no missing codes" spec is good.