[acguitar84]

   Audiophile 2496 - acceptably flat but congested
 

M audiophile 2496 soundcard? I agree completely, the Mimby is a few or more stairs up looking back down at the 2496 that's for sure. Gosh, I remember when I considered (the 2496) it to be an "endgame" solution. Enjoy your Mimby!

 

[pkcpga]

No one said R2R was perfect, but there are clear advantages of the R2R technology over D/S.  There's a reason many serious audiophiles don't go back to D/S after hearing R2R.

As far as modern mastering, those kinds of albums are going to be mixed electronically anyway with lots of filters, etc, and hence already contain a kind of artificiality that D/S may be better for.  

R2R seems very well suited for live instrumentation recordings and vocals...anything that necessitates the playback of real instruments and voices.  But I find it works just as well for modern mastered recordings, a more pleasing, smoother sound, with way less harshness and sibilance.  Also, just because modern mixing technicians mix with D/S tech, does not mean D/S is best for that kind of playback... they also brickwall the vast majority of recordings with ridiculous dynamic range compression and sibilance galore because they are targeting the mass public with inferior playback equipment, it is the very reason to use D/S in the first place, R2R tech would be wasted on your average fan of Beats headphones and mp3/iPods... I find that R2R goes a long way toward remedying those brickwalled recordings, for my ears at least.

I was never suggesting anyone should change what sounds best to their ears.  If D/S sounds better to you, then by all means, go for it.

Definitely agree everyone has a sound quality they mesh with better, I wondering if something like the Yggdrasil sounds smoother because it has only about 18,000 taps verse even a less expensive chord mojo have 26,000 taps. I wonder if the extra info is over analyzing for some people's ears or if the extra taps require higher res music to sound transparent. I'm hoping to give a Yggdrasil or multi bit another listen soon but leaving it running for a half day first.

 

[madwolfa]

  M audiophile 2496 soundcard? I agree completely, the Mimby is a few or more stairs up looking back down at the 2496 that's for sure. Gosh, I remember when I considered (the 2496) it to be an "endgame" solution. Enjoy your Mimby!

 
2496 has a great coaxial digital output, though. I had this card years ago and loved it.

 

[Defiant00]

Definitely agree everyone has a sound quality they mesh with better, I wondering if something like the Yggdrasil sounds smoother because it has only about 18,000 taps verse even a less expensive chord mojo have 26,000 taps. I wonder if the extra info is over analyzing for some people's ears or if the extra taps require higher res music to sound transparent. I'm hoping to give a Yggdrasil or multi bit another listen soon but leaving it running for a half day first.

 
From my understanding taps is like lines of code in a traditional program; number of taps basically means nothing, except in the express instance where the designer has indicated that a larger number allows greater accuracy (eg, Chord).
 
So, unless Yggdrasil and Chord were running the exact same algorithm (obviously not the case), the number of taps is a meaningless comparison.

 

[Vigrith]

  Hi all,
 
New to head-fi but I've been lurking on this thread for a while. 

 
Hi, I hope you have a good time here! Thank you for your impressions, I'm really fond of the way you described the sound per your speaker turning into a guitar/drum, that's an excellent way to put it in my opinion and having only spent a little bit of time with the Mimby so far, I definitely agree.

 

[theveterans]

 I admit I hate arguing on the internet because the one thing I am sure of, is that we are not going to convince each other of our opinions. But ColtMrFire, I'm going to have to disagree with you. R2R is not perfect technology and has problems that DS solved, such as linearity of the resistors. But DS introduces its own set of problems. So neither one is strictly better than the other, they have their own strengths and weaknesses. And I don't believe that R2R is more expensive because it is better. An R2R DAC is more expensive because the technology is more expensive to properly implement.

All else I can say is, I did my experiment and believe what I heard. It certainly wasn't a scientific approach (heck I did in in my bedroom in a bathrobe, not in a labcoat 

) so if this invalidates my finding to you then I understand. Personally, I believe the 4490 Bifrost is giving me a more accurate reproduction of the signal when compared to the Mimby, however I do find the sound of the Mimby very pleasing and love both DACs to pieces. They each play a role in my home and I feel privileged to own great examples of both decoding technologies.

 
Agree. All Schiit multibit DACs require oversampling digital filtering, hence the comburrito filter, for them to sound euphonic (whether that's more accurate is a subjective matter). If you need to know how ladder DAC inside Schiit sounds without the magic burrito filter, just bypass Schiit's filter using HQ Player or equivalent so that you're using NOS mode.
 
IMO, the most expensive form of the R2R DAC technology is a NOS DAC. You need ultra precise resistors and components in order to "accurately" convert the signals to analog. Obviously, the higher the bits, the less precise you get, but less bits means you don't get the full information in the digital signals hence less accurate sound.

 

[rmoody]

Definitely agree everyone has a sound quality they mesh with better, I wondering if something like the Yggdrasil sounds smoother because it has only about 18,000 taps verse even a less expensive chord mojo have 26,000 taps. I wonder if the extra info is over analyzing for some people's ears or if the extra taps require higher res music to sound transparent. I'm hoping to give a Yggdrasil or multi bit another listen soon but leaving it running for a half day first.

The Mojo uses a FPGA, not a DAC chip. Much different topology.

 

[theveterans]

 The Mojo uses a FPGA, not a DAC chip. Much different topology.

 
It uses a custom Pulse Array DAC chip that is field programmable. You still need a chip to convert digital to analog, but the implementation is different

 

[SilverTrumpet999]

Regarding the comparison between a self-ripped vinyl recording vs. actual analog vinyl posted a couple pages back:
 
This may seem standardized but it's important to note that analog -> digital (ADC) is at least as hard to do well as digital -> analog (DAC). It wasn't stated exactly how the ADC was done, but the ADC could easily account for the actual discrepancies noted.

 

[SAllison87]

I hooked up the turntable system to my laptop's on board sound card and did the recording with Audacity using WASAPI drivers in 16/44 resolution. That's true that ADC conversion could cause a degredation in sound silver trumpet, but it was the same file that played back through both the Bifrost and Mimby. So if something was lost in the conversion, that degredation was reproduced by both DACs.

 

[Baldr]

   
Agree. All Schiit multibit DACs require oversampling digital filtering, hence the comburrito filter, for them to sound euphonic (whether that's more accurate is a subjective matter). If you need to know how ladder DAC inside Schiit sounds without the magic burrito filter, just bypass Schiit's filter using HQ Player or equivalent so that you're using NOS mode.
 
IMO, the most expensive form of the R2R DAC technology is a NOS DAC. You need ultra precise resistors and components in order to "accurately" convert the signals to analog. Obviously, the higher the bits, the less precise you get, but less bits means you don't get the full information in the digital signals hence less accurate sound.

Euphonic?  I never thought I was producing euphonies.  As I have written in my own thread, a true audio pioneer, Mr Peter Walker told me 40 some years ago at the beginning of this road for me that it was my duty to reproduce music, not to alter it.  I still have a set of his original Quad Loudspeakers today.  Your statement about bypassing the filter puzzles me - if you have a mb Schiit DAC, the filter is always there, yup, no way to get rid of it.  
 
I am also puzzled by your NOS DAC statement.  "New-old-stock"?  "Non-oversampling"?  Precise resistors?  Like the automobile priced DACs who construct their own DAC chip equivalents whose fragile linearity varies with farts in the room?
 

   
Yeah, I couldn't either. But all this talk about 'preserving original samples' is also pretty silly.
 

 
Now I take great umbrage at this statement.  It is very easy to set up a test station to clearly demonstrate that Bimby - Mimby will output all original samples unchanged up to 192KHz sr, and Gumby-Yggy will do the same up to 396KHz sr.  You may dispute the sonic value of that capability, but the fact remains that the original samples are preserved.  The only family of DACs which also are guaranteed to output the original samples are non-oversampling DACs.  The problem with those is they raise real problems when playing back 44.1 or 48KHz sr material.  They require an analog reconstruction which is guaranteed to ring like a doorbell.  The less than prudent sometimes remove them which can have real explosive consequences with some amps.  Kinda like having a pet badger or cobra.  Maybe OK much of the time, but when it blows, it blows.
 
Now I personally believe in the value of preserved samples as being best by far for performance.   They are the only DACs that really scratch my itch.  This works for me - you may disagree.   Thirty years ago, the only DACs available were mb.  Then ds DACs were foisted upon us, and they sounded so much like ass, I made home theater decoders for a while (they got better, but still don't get it over the top for me).  Now all of these years later, I am doing my best to make available mb DACs to almost anyone.
 
Everybody has a right to what they like, and everyone's preference will not line up with mine.  The fact remains that all who buy any products, mine or someone else's, used or new, keeps this hobby going.  It is waaaaaaaay too much fun to let go.
 
Abbreviation glossary
mb - multibit
ds - delta-sigma
sr - sample rate

 

[SAllison87]

So had my girlfriend over tonight & we listened to the two DACs blind. My GF listened to three songs, and preferred the 4490 bifrost two out of the three. We then switched and I preferred the bifrost all three times.
 
Edit: Interestingly, the first song I played for my GF had vocals, and she prefered the 4490 Bifrost because she said the vocals sounded fuller. So the next song I played was an instrumental jazz track, and this time she preferred the Mimby. Next I played a vocal reggae track and her preference went back to the 4490 Bifrost.
 
For myself, two of the tracks my reaction was like "oh yeah this is easy I clearly like this one over that one" with 'this one' revealed as the 4490 bifrost. Those two songs were vinyl rips with big dynamic range, no brickwalled mastering. One track I was like "Hmm, switch back? Ok now switch back again? Uhhh, its really really close but I think I like this one over that one just a touch. But really they're kinda the same." That time the recording was a pretty hotly mastered Dubstep track sourced from a CD (Aeriel by 2562, some damn fine dubstep

)

 

[Argo Duck]

^ levels were matched?

 

[SAllison87]

Not 100% sure since I don't have an SPL meter, but schiit specs the output of both models as the same.

 

[Stormfriend]

The fact remains that all who buy any products, mine or someone else's, used or new, keeps this hobby going.  It is waaaaaaaay too much fun to let go.

 
I've been buying a lot of vintage kit recently, mostly gear I couldn't afford when it came out 20+ years ago but is now someone's hand-me-down. 

  I've therefore ended up with a Theta DS Pro Progeny and a Chroma 396 (non-HDCD), amongst others.  Apart from age and the output level on the Progeny, what differences could I expect between those and the Mimby?