ThurstonX
Headphoneus Supremus
My bimby is home and back where she belongs. I've just finished replacing the damnable AT&T modem, it's off to listen now with an adult beverage.
Wait, your
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My bimby is home and back where she belongs. I've just finished replacing the damnable AT&T modem, it's off to listen now with an adult beverage.
Here's a good sign I really like this DAC. I had to look back behind the RCA cables and check to see if it was plugged in cause it sounds like the Theta. Never did that happen when I listened to the Bifrost Uber.
i been on the fence whether to buy gruniger multibit or bifrost multibit so i went with bifrost multibit and save some money
hope i made the right decision.
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i been on the fence whether to buy gruniger multibit or bifrost multibit so i went with bifrost multibit and save some money
hope i made the right decision.
Just as all of the old Theta stuff was upgradable, so continues the Bifrost which will be 5 years old next year and far from obsolete. Bimby warmup for a new unit seems to be 4 hours for 99%. The sound is the megacombo burrito filter and the best 16 bit DACs ever adapted to audio. Enjoy!
I’ve had my Bifrost 4490 now for about three weeks (see here for how that came to be) and wanted to post a few thoughts about it vs. the original Bifrost (non-Uber).
The first, and most immediate, impression I got when first starting to listen was that everything was more open with all elements of the mix being better delineated. That’s been consistent, be it with heavily edited multi-track Prince productions, Cowboy Junkies “Trinity Sessions” (bigger sense of space and “hearing the air” than ever), four-piece chamber music or complex orchestral scores.
Listening more critically … shimmer on cymbals and discordance on powerful brass (yes, brass not bass) notes is cleaner. Decay, in general, seems elongated and more realistic. The modulation from subtle vibrato in various instruments/sounds is easier to hear. Tunes played in the lowest bass registers are also easier to follow and physically FEEL (bear in mind I’m using LCD-2.2c here).
Playing Saint-Saens “Introduction et Rondo Capriccioso - Op. 28 for Violin and Orchestra (B Minor)”, the breathing of the solo violinist, while previously audible with the basic Bifrost feeding a Lyr, is no longer something you have to pay attention to hear.
Overall it’s a little more detailed, a little more refined, and quite a bit more “open” and musical. How much of that is down to the new analog stage vs. the new 4490 DAC chip, I don’t know (I’ve never heard the original “Uber”).
What I do know is that my headphone listening sessions have gotten longer, that I’m stopping listening because I have other things to do not because I’m fatigued, and this is easily the best $70 I’ve spent on audio.
I never felt the original Bifrost was lacking much, especially at the price, but it’s a different beast now and, while I wouldn’t call it “night and day”, the difference is obvious and worthwhile.
Other details:
Source material is a combination of CD-rips, high-resolution FLACs from HD-Tracks and Linn Records and streaming from TIDAL, all played via Roon. Replay chain is as follows:
Roon/nMP > Optical > Bifrost 4490 > AQ Colorado > Ragnarok > LCD 2.2c (balanced)
(Very interested to hear the Bifrost MB now; though ironically that'll come after I get my Yggdrasil).