SBAF DAC Talk II

Also Dan Lavry was the guy behind ultraanalog.

 

Fair point!

 

Well, it looks like I'm going to take a flier on the Bifrost 2. It's spoken of so glowingly here and elsewhere (Torq's write-up at headphones.com), and even if it's too dark, I can probably pair with my Saga in my second system.

There's really no substitute for just hearing the darn thing in your own house, so hopefully it works out. Thanks for the feedback here.

 

They did, but Paul McGowan didn't. UA was acquired after he had sold PSAudio, and then when he bought the company back, he immediately sold UltraAnalog to Wadia.

More precisely, it was the DAC he designed for Analog Solutions (discrete R2R ladder for the upper bits and a sigma-delta IC for the lower) that Dick Powers acquired or licensed for UltraAnalog. As far as I know, Lavry was never employed or contracted with by UltraAnalog.

UltraAnalog's ADC, too, was licensed from another company -- dbx -- but in that case I think its designer did join the company as an employee.

Apologies in advance for inaccuracies that may be pointed out -- the above is based on memories from 20+ years ago, plus a glance at Lavry's online bio.

 

A Comparison of Five DACs


Schiit Bifrost 2, Matrix X-Sabre Pro MQA, RME ADI-DAC2, Cambridge Azur 851N, Schiit Gungnir MB

The goal: Find a successor/complement to my Schiit Gungnir MB (A2, Gen 5) in my headphone set-up and a replacement for the built-in DAC in the Bluesound Node2i in my 2ch set-up.

Where I'm coming from: I've lived with the Gungnir (Gungnir Multibit) for about two years and enjoyed it. More and more, however, I've begun to feel that the SE outs just aren't doing my amps--DNA Starlett, AES/Cary 2ch pre, both of which only have SE inputs--full justice. I like the tonality of the Gungnir Multibit, but I've wondered about the resolution of those SE outs.

I've never really loved the DAC in the Bluesound Node 2i. I do really like the Blue OS streaming interface, but the built-in DAC sounds hard and flat and un-involving.

Solution: get a bunch of well-reviewed, high-value DACs on loaner to compare. Choose the two best, one for headphones, one for 2ch.

My listening/testing habits: I like auditioning and comparing new equipment... up to a point. AB'ing is interesting at first, then gets pretty wearying for me. Mostly, I just want to listen and relax and feel I'm getting the best out of the tracks and the stuff I play them through. Generally, I like vinyl for 2ch and digital for headphones. 2ch is for relaxing and letting the music be a presence in the apt. Headphone listening is for getting deep inside the tracks and hearing all of the little nuances and studio craftsmanship.

Previously, I've not really paid much attention to DACs. Compared to turntables, DACs aren't really a object of desire for me. Also, I've struggled at times to tell the difference between them. Turns out there are differences I can hear, sometimes obvious, sometimes so subtle as to feel subliminal. For the most part, with DACs, I'm content to read reviews and let other ears guide me. I haven't heard too many great DACs other than these, so please take all of this with a grain of salt and IMHOs and YMMVs and, generally, WTF do I know anyway? All in good fun, enjoy the music, the end times are nigh, etc...


All DACs used in both my 2ch and headphone set-ups.

2ch: Bluesound Node 2i steamer / Cambridge Azur streamer --> DAC --> AES (Cary) AE3 DJH preamp --> Quicksilver SET Mono power amps --> Klipsch Forte III speakers

Headphone: Bluesound Node 2i --> DAC --> DNA Starlett amp or Liquid Platinum amp --> Focal Utopia or HD800S


test tracks:

Mostly I listened to what I felt like and lived with each DAC for several days in a row, sometimes switching between them when two were hooked up to my 2ch pre at the same time. The most listened to test tracks were:

1) Miles Davis, "Some Day My Prince Will Come" (Quobuz 24/96, mono) (jazz quintet)
2) My Brightest Diamond, "Dragonfly" and "Disappear" (Quobuz 16/44) (singer-songwriter, rock instrumentation plus strings and assorted percussion)
3) Lescop, "La Nuit American" (Quobuz 16/44) (electro, bass-driven)

These are basically just what I felt like listening to a couple weeks ago, but they proved useful for comparing DACs. I like Steely Dan as much as the next major dude, but ain't no way I'm listening to "Peg" on repeat for multiple hours straight.


RME DAC2

Pros: technically capable and detailed, highly linear (neutral) through all frequencies but without being hard up top, good bass, comprehensive and useful feature set, switchable output level perfect for headphone amps with high gain but slight balance issues at lower volumes (e.g. Liquid Platinum), small size and portability if needed

Cons: neutral is neutral, some might find a little bland or boring, a fairly flat soundstage, interface takes a little time to grasp (but is fairly intuitive once learned)

Subjective/overall impressions: This is as impressive a unit as reviews (forum and "professional" both) suggest. Not only does the DAC sound good, but you get so many additional (and often very useful) features in the bargain.

My temperament is mostly toward set it and forget it, but I found the switchable output level and balance controls very useful for getting more usable range on amp volume pots and re-centering headphones that seem to have a mild driver mismatch (or, just as likely, the hearing in my left ear is better than my right). I also thought the crossfeed sounded quite good, though I only played with it on a couple of occasions. I couldn't hear any marked differences between the filter types, but I did not spend a ton of time comparing.

The RME is legit. A good DAC, a strong set of features, small enough to be used in all sorts of scenarios. It's neutral without being harsh. For better worse, not "sweet" or "musical" or "romantic."


Cambridge Audio Azur 851N (DAC/Streamer/pre)

Pros: fine grain musical information feels very present in the mix, airy top end without being harsh, more musical than the RME, impressive and authoritative bass (perhaps the best of the four DACs) with a nice sense of grunt and detail down low, good sense of rhythm and timing, complex phrases that sounded a little muddled on the Gungnir (SE outs) were resolved very nicely on the 851N, okay soundstage (not as flat as the RME), plenty of bells and whistles (including, of course, the built in streamer), big volume knob (though a little loose feeling), LCD screen shows artist/album info and album art, tons of digital ins and outs.

Cons: it's massive! (takes up a whole rack shelf), not the best for soundstage depth/layering, not as good tonally as the Gungnir Multibit, slightly lacking in "solidity," the Wifi dongle is a bummer, the streaming app (StreamMagic) needs work, no analog in's=limited as a preamp.

Subjective/overall impressions: A pretty good DAC! At times it was my favorite of the five. It's also a pretty good value proposition, as there are deals out there on these. It's cool to have the LCD screen showing album art. My guess is that the large-ish torroid inside contributes to the feeling of authority and great bass, but why the heck is this thing so big otherwise? There's no way this could fit into my more compact headphone set-up. Not only is it full rack width, but it's deep and heavy, too. In the zombie apocalypse, this would be my absolute go-to DAC... as a blunt force weapon.

As a preamp, it sounds... Well, I couldn't really tell, b/c in "pre" mode, it distorts. Culprit: the wifi dongle. When the dongle is receiving, it pipes a hash of digital garbage through the speakers. Not loud, granted, but ever-present and annoying. Don't know if this is every dongle, or just the one I got. Would likely be solved by using the ethernet in.

As a streamer, it's... okay. I think there are likely benefits to having the streaming module hardwired to the DAC. There's a Bill Evans sixteenth note phrase in "Someday My Prince Will Come" that sounds perfectly timed through the 851N but comes across as weirdly clumsy on the other DACs. The 851N has PRaT (whatever that is), and it seems to make certain vocal nuances and instrumental really shine through.

But the app is merely okay. I won't go into full detail, but the Cambridge StreamMagic app:

--lacks native support for Amazon HD
--won't remember your recent searches
--resets every time you go to another app
--has a queueing system I'm still not quite sure I understand
--is graphically underwhelming

Let's just say that Blue OS (and, I assume, Roon) are UX superior in pretty much every way.


Bifrost 2

Pros: good detail but never analytical, authoritative bass, a touch of tube-like warmth and romance, strong layering and soundstage depth, best tonality and solidity of the bunch, vivid and full of tonal color, no sense of grayness, that multi-bit sound, corrects the mushiness of the Gungnir Multibit SE outs, compact form factor, highly listenable, fatigue free, strong value proposition

Cons: a little dark, perhaps not as much absolute detail as the delta-sigma DACs

Subjective/overall impressions: Not much to say here! At least not that hasn't been said much better and by more experienced ears right here on this forum. Far fewer bells and whistles than the other DACs. I hear the Bifrost 2 as slightly dark and warm and romantic. It has the best tonality of the bunch. It feels solid and present and more analog-like than the others. My only reservation is that it might be a little too dark, especially for my DNA Starlett. But it still sounds great, both with the headphone and 2ch set-ups. It's a burnished sound. Bronze rather than golden, but bronze polished to high luster.


Matrix X-Sabre Pro MQA

Pros: digs out microdetail that the others miss including the tiniest of spatial cues, no sense of glare or harshness, good bass, surprisingly good depth and layering (competes with and maybe even beats the Schiit MB DACs in this regard), the most vivid and colorful of all, the blackest blackground (whatever that means), a sort of golden quality to its tonality without (somehow) sounding warm, sweet sounding but not laidback, pretty capable as a preamp, very solid casework, compact form factor

Cons: the Cambridge 851N bass beats it, finicky interface, I've got a limited need for MQA

Subjective/overall impressions: This is the new hotness right now on a few different forums, and I fully acknowledge the possibility/likelihood that I'm swayed by this. I think this is, overall, the best sounding of the five DACs. As I say above, it has a golden quality. It's highly musical and tonally vivid and colorful. It's like turning up the saturation on a monitor or something. This combined with the strong sense of depth and layering gives just a touch of tube/THC magic but without the darkness of the Bifrost 2. I found the X-Sabre Pro pleasant listening and detailed listening all at once. Sometimes the 851N felt more emotionally involving or rhythmically accurate, but it also showed a touch of grayness or graininess or tonal hollowness now and then. The X-Sabre Pro has none of that.

However, it's slightly beaten by the Schiit MB DACs in overall tonality and fullness. The Schiit DACs sound earthier and more analog and more centered/mid-range focussed, in a good way. The Matrix has more sparkle, more of an ethereal quality, in a good way.

Finally, the Matrix sounded pretty credible in my brief audition of it as a preamp. I ran it direct into a single Schiit Aegir, and it maintained its pleasing golden quality while sounding a touch more laidback than a Schiit Saga. Interesting.


Schiit Gungnir Multibit

I'm not going to repeat what's been said a million times about this DAC. It's a great DAC, but its SE outs, to my ears, are noticeably behind the balanced outs. SE out it sounds a little mushy and less authoritative. It shines, however, in overall tonality.


Conclusion:

I was looking for two new DACs. For now, the winners are the Schitt Bifrost 2 (headphone rig) and the Matrix X-Sabre Pro (2ch rig). Things might change--hopefully not for a while--but I'm pretty darn happy with both choices.

I'll probably move the Gungnir Multibit on at some point, but for now it will also stay. It sounds good enough that I can find a role for it.

You can't go wrong with any of these DACs. Most people know about the other four, but the Cambridge 851N is a bit of a dark horse. I'm going to agree with a couple of other recent forum posts and say that I think it's a pretty solid DAC. If you view the streamer and pre functionally as intriguing extras rather than core features, it's a strong value proposition. But a few rough edges--the app, the wifi dongle, and the sheer size of the thing--diminish its overall appeal, and, sonically, it's a couple notches behind the Bifrost 2 and 3-4 notches behind the Matrix. But I still liked it as a DAC quite a bit.

Thanks for reading, and hope some find this useful. Thoughts and feedback welcome. Not an expert by any means. Just a guy who temporarily had too many DACs in his house.

 

Wow, that's a great review. FWIW, I auditioned a different set of DACs a few weeks ago and ended up making approximately the same choice: Bifrost 2 through a tube amp to my HD800 SDR, and an ESS SABRE DAC (although based on the 9028PRO vs your Matrix's 9038PRO) in my two-channel setup.

I'm sure the synergy's been mentioned before, but Bifrost 2 + Night Blues Mini (or ZDT Jr., I guess, or maybe any other tube amp) really changes the HD800's character and makes it much more engaging. With my previous very analytic, old-school solid-state chain, the HD800 listening experience felt less like enjoying the music and more like using a stethoscope to diagnose it.

 

Thanks! Figured it was time I contributed a little content around here, after much lurking and a few probably tedious questions to various members.

What else did you audition besides the Bifrost 2 and Benchmark DAC3? I've read that the DAC3 is less clinical/a little warmer than the DAC2. Does that chime with your experience @fastfwd ?

 

Don't bother with Dac3 (overhyped!), the matrix is better in all areas.

 

Good to know! Congenitally curious. I'm pretty happy with the Matrix thus far.

 

Haven't heard the DAC2, but in my system the DAC3 definitely doesn't have the thin, etched sound that's often attributed to Sabre DACs.

I auditioned the DAC3 HGC, Bifrost 2, and Chord Qutest, comparing them to each other and to my old AD1862-based DAC (a prototype for a never-produced commercial device), modified Audio Alchemy DDE3.0 (PMD100 + AD1862), Headroom Maxed-Out Desktop (AD1896), original Dragonfly (Sabre ES9023) with Wyrd, Squeezebox Touch (AK4420), and Squeezebox Transporter (AK4396).

I wanted to spend under $2500 for two DACs and a preamp, and I didn't care whether the components were new or used. But once I knew that I was going to keep the Bifrost 2 for my headphone setup, I had to eliminate some of the higher-priced DACs that I'd considered auditioning. A Yggdrasil, for example -- even used -- was out of the question, although I do wish that I'd been able to find a used Mytek Brooklyn DAC+ that was cheap enough to listen to.

The Matrix's feature list certainly checks every single box, and if I were buying new I'd definitely want to compare it to the Benchmark and Mytek DAC/preamps. But I'm very happy with the sound of the DAC3, and with its feature set, build quality, customer support, etc.

 

The Dac3 is very accurate and sounds nice but my preference does leans towards the Matrix. Dac3 measures extremely well but so does the topping dacs that sound similar (clinical). It is a personal preference so don't fret if someone says they don't like the Dac u spent over 2k for. Brooklyn + is clinicalish similar to Dac3 so you might have liked that. I'm riding the NOS bandwagon with the Sonnet Morpheus. A lot of folks hate the NOS sound but that is my preference now and that is all that really matters and that's what should matter to you.

 

Haha, thanks. But no need to worry; I'm comfortable trusting my own ears to make those decisions.

And I got lucky on the price -- the DAC was used and needed a tiny repair, so I paid WAY less than $2K.

 

I've heard nothing but really good things about Topping D90/Topping D90 MQA though. I hope some day someone reliable on SBAF will give impressions on it one some day could be non-shite, who knows.

 

I am currently running their D70 and it is excellent sounding. I do think their higher end units with built-in power supplies are vastly superior to the entry level stuff. I had RFI issues with their D50s as well as with the Schiit Modi 3. I live in an area with strong radar interference, so it is always a hit and miss with audio equipment. I also tried a D30 which was thick sounding and fairly boring, plus the optical input was noisy.

I know that it is not a popular opinion to praise Topping stuff, but I trust my ears, and the D70 is a very good DAC. At the end of the day, the AK4497 (D70) and AK4499 (D90) chips are great D/S converters, so I was not surprised that the D70 sounded good. Basically, Topping did a proper implementation of a great sounding chip (2 of them in the D70).

Comparing it to the Bifrost 2 is much more difficult as the Bifrost 2 has its own sound signature that is slightly warmer possibly due to the Unison implementation so it really depends on your preference. I did not detect any major difference in soundstage or how natural various instruments sounded between the two. My issue with the Bifrost 2 was that it ran pretty hot and I did not feel comfortable stacking it with my Asgard 3 which gets pretty hot on the bottom of the case.

 

That was not the reason why I returned the Bifrost 2. I had some other issues - mainly the fact that it was not properly grounded and it had some low-level noise in the right channel only. Was probably just my sample. It still sounded fantastic.

 

How are you guys with AKM DACs liking the super-slow(sometimes called NOS) filter on your DACs? I recently bought a SMSL M300 because I wanted to try out an AKM chip with this filter hoping it'd be a close enough emulation of NOS for the times I want that sound. So far I'm finding the differences between the filters & 'sound mode' settings subtle enough where I know something has changed but can't quite identify what, I'm not hearing anything especially NOS-like beyond what might be some bloom or treble roll-off.

 

I have a couple of AKM chip based devices. I was told by a friend that Slow and Super Slow filters are the least digital sounding filters. And between these 2, I find the Super Slow to be the more organic sounding one. But I am not certain if I could tell the 2 apart in a blind test. I haven’t really spent time to check other filters out.

 

I compared the 5 filters in the ADI 2 dac (on Audio Analogue Maestro Anniversary amp + Martin Logan ESL 9 Classic speakers) in september last year. My preference was toward the 4th filter called "slow", while I've found, perhaps surprisingly, the 5th filter called "NOS" to be the worst to my ears. I'd like to be able to tell more exactly why, but all I remember is that it simply sounded somehow wrong, unnatural...FWIW

 

I'm finding I dislike the sharp filters with acoustic instruments due to a subtle bloat effect, it's easier to tell than with metal music. Super-soft 'might' have a touch of fuzz to it vs the other soft filters, I also could be imagining it.

What's strange about the filters is that they don't react differently using high frequency testing:
https://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_frequencycheckhigh.php
https://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_mosquito.php
I've owned NOS R2R DACs and they both had noticeable aliasing on this kind of testing past/around 20khz. With the M300 DAC I started hearing the high pitched wine at the exact same time using all 6 filter options(low 19khz range with Schiit Heresy.) The mosquito test was just as annoying on all filters & none of them showed any irregularities. Truthfully I don't understand how the super-slow filter works(Didn't think you could have a NOS D/S DAC) but can confirm that it doesn't act like any NOS R2R I know. No aliasing, no fleshiness, no sweetness. As far as I can hear the impulse is clean but I wish I had a NOS DAC on hand to compare the all-day fatigue factor.