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Just to add, I'm also curious if this removes the clicking noise attributed to bifrost when connected via toslink. I beleive a user in the schiit users thread reported clicking when songs start, torrents are finished, etc.
I'm 99.99% sure that the Uber upgrade will have no effect on the clicking. The clicking is the mechanical sound of a relay that Schiit has chosen to use. The clicking occurs when an input on the Bifrost locks onto a signal (any input, not just Toslink), or when you change to a new sampling rate. You can find this explanation on Schiit's "About Bifrost" page on their website:
Hey, this Bifrost I got clicks! What’s up with that?
It’s just the muting relay, operating normally. We chose a relay rather than relying on the D/A chip’s soft mute, since it’s safer and less sonically invasive.
If you hook up your Bifrost and never change the input, then the clicking won't bother you. Such is the case with the Bifrost I use in my office setup, with USB output from my laptop. Because the USB output remains a steady "always on" signal, and because I don't change to a different input on the DAC, and because the sampling rate remains consistent, the Bifrost quietly does its job of making music. Same goes for another Bifrost that I use with a Sonos zone player -- the "always on" digital output of the Sonos into the Bifrost's coax S/PDIF input produces a single click when the Bifrost locks on to the signal, then no more clicking, just uninterrupted music.
But it's different if you use the digital output from a CD player into the Bifrost's S/PDIF input. If, like many CD players, your player mutes the digital output when not in "Play" mode, then each and every time you push "Play" to start a CD, the Bifrost will emit a brief series of clicks as it tries to lock onto the digital output from the CD player. The same clicking also occurs when you manually skip from one track to another -- the CD player mutes the digital output when it searches for the track you've selected, and then when it reaches the selected track and unmutes, the Bifrost relay clicks again (in my experience, usually a few times before locking onto the signal). I've tried three CD players (Rotel, Marantz, Classe), and all cause the clicking with the Bifrost.
I still have lots of music on CD, unripped to NAS (slowly getting there, but the paying job does get in the way...). I thought of trying Schiit's higher-priced Gungnir DAC with my CD player, but the Gungnir also uses the mechanical relay. I am hoping that the much-anticipated "Statement DAC" from Schiit avoids the noisy mechanical relay.
In the system in which I often use the CD player as my source, I don't use a Bifrost, because that clicking is just annoying enough to get in the way of the music. (I use a Rega DAC instead.) But in my office system and in the room with Sonos player, I greatly enjoy the performance of the Bifrost, which doesn't click as long as it is fed an uninterrupted digital signal.
Well, I just took the plunge and got one of my Bifrosts set up for the Uber upgrade. I quickly received authorization from Schiit to return it, so I'll be shipping it to them today. I hope I like the upgrade as much as
BLenarcik does.
