Tuneslover
Headphoneus Supremus
Ok guys, I tried another experiment tonight that I think you will all find fascinating. My conclusion of this experiment will go against the grain here, but all I can say is, this is what I did and what I heard. First a little about myself and why I bought these DACs in the first place.
I am a vinyl collector. I do most of my listening on turntables, and my hunt for a DAC stems from a desire to get my digital set up to sound as good as my vinyl. Due to the crappy way digital music is mastered these days I believe that if you really want the best sound you have to forget all this DAC stuff and get yourself a turntable; the best mastering jobs are found on vinyl. However, there are some great sounding CDs out there, mostly from the early days of CDs and from audiophile mastering companies like Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs. Plus all of the wonderful sounding vinyl rips that can be found on the net. I want these files on my computer to sound as enthralling as listening to a record and when I bought my Bifrost 4490 I felt like I had achieved that. But I also read about Schiit's R2R tech and was really curious about it, so I bought the Modi Multibit to see how it compares.
Since my goal here is to reproduce my well-mastered digital files in the same quality as my turntable, I tried something: I hooked my computer up to my turntable and ripped one of my records. Then I put the needle back to the start of the record, hooked up the turntable and 4490 Bifrost to my SYS and synched my vinyl rip with the actual record. What I heard was what sounded to me like the same thing. The 4490 Bifrost reproduces what was playing on my turntable accurately.
Then I removed the 4490 bifrost from the SYS and plugged the Mimby in. Again, synched the vinyl rip with the turntable. What I heard was not the same. Compared to the vinyl spinning on the turntable, the Mimby sounded sharper, more impactful, basically what I described before.
So, my conclusion is that the 4490 Bifrost is providing me an accurate representation of the recording, while the Mimby is coloring the sound, albeit in an exciting way. I think both of these DACs sound incredible and am happy to own them both!
Very interesting experiment and findings. I too am a vinyl enthusiast and I couldn't agree more that the 4490 has that more analog sound.