Schiit (MultiBit) Bifrost

Though do bear in mind that a new Bifrost should come with Gen 5 USB, which saves you having to mess with an Eitr or similar, which narrows the price gap a bit. The legacy position used to be that the on-board USB was incredibly shitty (and really obviously so), but all of a sudden, that's a compelling reason to consider the Bifrost and maybe even using USB.

(Flipside, you can use the Eitr with your other DACs, if you have them- it's tradeoffs all the way down).

 

Just my own experience, as a Spotify user...

For me Yggdrasil makes a massive difference for the better as compared with my Bifrost Multibit, yea even when listening to Spotify, but that written -

If the Modi Multibit sounds as good as the Bifrost MB, and I've read that it sounds essentially the same, and if you are not comparing with Schiit's more expensive DACs, you will probably be happy with the sound of a Modi Multibit for what is a reasonable price. I still occasionally flip on the Bifrost MB, and I guess the best short description is reasonably smooth, good (not great but good) sense of space, and just all in all it does nothing terribly wrong or distracting. It is very listenable!

p.s. Keep in mind I'm one of those who doesn't dislike compressed music (yea double negative), though I also prefer uncompressed. I honestly cannot pick out the differences immediately, but I do find myself feeling less fatigued over many hours listening to uncompressed music. Still, a service like Spotify has very high value for me, so much music to discover and rediscover, that I'm good with putting up with the compression in exchange for enjoying a monstrous catalog of music, using whatever DAC.

 

Clearly 2 schools of thought here, but I'm with Kattefjaes on this one. Especially considering the investment he is about to make in the headphones themselves, having a good foundation to drive them regardless of source files will only improve the experience. There is the added benefit of being able to skip straight to a solid setup without having lost a bunch of $ on cheaper experimental stuff to get you there. I don't think this is a bad thing at all.

I run a bunch of lossless stuff I've ripped from CD to FLAC, but I also stream quite a bit through Google Play Music. GPM, spotify, and the ilk are a great way to discover and try new stuff before I sink $ into an album I may end up hating. Just because GPM is lossy doesn't mean I should only listen to it on Porta Pros and a Dragonfly Black and reserve my good gear for the lossless stuff.

 

I'd rather listen to a lossy stream of a well recorded & mastered record than a Redbook FLAC of a crappy one.
Also, with Yggdrasil I tend to prefer to downsample hi-res content to 48khz/44.1khz. It tends to sound better that way on my system, not sure why.

 

Go for it... And be prepared to pay $10 more for lossless streaming.
You will hear a difference and it'll be worth it, especially with gen5 USB.

 

Yeah, love lossless streaming via my Tidal account, but less enamoured with the constant spams for Jay-Z's album. Grumble...

 

So has gen 5 been noticeably better for you guys? I'm not trying to say it's a waste of money or anything like that! I'm just trying to make an informed purchase, because I can get a Modi Multibit with the Eitr for about $30 more than a Bifrost 4490 with gen 5 included, but I don't even know if it's necessary for me to get the Eitr or gen 5 yet.

 

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/schiit-eitr-preview-thread.4729/

 

Who cares? You are listening to Spotify whose desktop client still does not support WASAPI or ASIO output and thus the signal is routed through the Windows mixer (WDM) and then sent to the Eitr or the USB receiver in your DAC. It won't be bit perfect and you won't be hearing the potential of your DAC or the benefits of a USB solution regardless. Anyone who tells you it is still worthwhile doesn't really care about how you spend your money or about you wasting it.

If you are adamant about listening to Spotify exclusively, save your money.

 

Mixer or not, the improvements provided by the Gen5 USB are still worth it. Isolation DOES make a difference.

Case in point: Roon refuses to run in exclusive mode, for some reason, but the sound I get out of the Eitr is brilliant, better than any other S/PDIF sources I've used at work, which were bit-perfect (Singxer F1, Digi+pro or DAC502*).
Just make sure the device sample rate is set to 44.1 in the OS and you won't have nasty treble shit going on.

(*) with RPi isolator but haven't tried the UpTone LPS-1 with it, yet.

 

I figure the reason is probably due to the fact that the Yggdrasil can do a better job using it's own upsampling routines than many of the re-mastered tracks offered at those higher SR's.

JJ

 

Probably more like GIGO, Garbage In - Garbage Out. No system can save you if your material is a bad performance or badly mastered good performance.

 

I like to use Death Magnetic to test the fidelity of my setups, personally.

The worse it sounds, the better the setup generally is.

 

Wow... actually part of the wikipedia entry for "Death Magnetic". From the wiki page, "Despite its praise, there was much criticism aimed at the album's production, which featured an overly compressed dynamic range that caused some songs to feature poor sound quality."

 

Death magnetic clipped, on CD. There's quality mastering for you.

 

If you're feeling masochistic, look up a spectrograph of it.


https://cnet4.cbsistatic.com/img/CV..._death-magnetic_waveform-comparison_small.jpg

 

My black Bifrost Multibit is in transit. I expect to let it "warm up" for 72 hours or so before actually playing any music based on what I have read here.

I also expect to connect it with USB, Toslink and Coax so I can choose which playback I prefer.

Looking forward to this!




Mac Mini with Roon on SSB, library on external HDD, Bifrost Multibit to Cambridge avr.

 

@sphinxvc , the Bifrost Multibit you sold me is still going strong and rocking Gen V.

I also own Modi Multibit/Eitr, but have honestly been too lazy to really dig in and see if I can spot the differences between the two. One's at work and one's at home and I enjoy them both immensely.

Honestly, I think schiit's lower-level gear made their mid-tier stuff obsolete. Still really solid gear, but not quite the value proposition when the same company has nearly-as-good products at half the price. I'm hoping that changes this year with some revamping and upgrades.

 

I will say this about the Bifrost Multibit...It has sat in my workstation for the past two years (aside from the long vacations where I brought it home and would hook it up to various things). When I got the Yggdrasil, I realized I could probably get away with putting it in my cubicle (I could probably stack my small printer on it!), but I'm afraid to mess up the synergy I have in my system at work. There's something magical about the Bifrost Multibit/Lyr pairing that is probably just right for listening at work for 8 hours a day. I think Yggdrasil is probably too aggressive for that.

I do hope the Analog 2 upgrade trickles down to the Bifrost Multibit. With only one chip to replace, hopefully it is a tad cheaper as well!