[judmarc]

 
Quote:

if nothing else, I'm super intrigued by the mysterious technology that Jason has been promising in the statement DAC. Anyone want to hazard a guess? A novel R-2R / multibit implementation? Who knows...

Ah, I love the smell of speculation in the morning!  :-D
 
Yeah, I've been thiinking about this as well.  Here's my utter, rank guess, with nothing more than the developers' past history to go on:
 
An ST-Optical interface (at least as an option) with provision for an optical connection to make the DAC's clock the master and slaving the transport computer's clock to it.  This would provide (1) jitter performance along the lines of async USB; (2) complete electrical isolation on power, signal, and ground; (3) better bandwidth than Toslink for high-res material.
 

 

[sinae]

What would be important is wordclock output to sync computer to schitt dac clock and a very low ppm clock.

Afterwards who cares about usb on the dac, soundcards with adat out have better drivers, cheaper, more i/o but the only problem come from the fact that when you use optical out.... then jitter induced from the soundcard poor quality clock will go all the way to the dac that will need to use some async work to reclock the signal to fix jitter but still..

I believe that in the moment more and more of the home studio market will look into the pro audio market to find better quality dacs, amps, headphones..

The home studio market is enormous so I don't see why pro audio companies are not targeting this market.

ST-Optical is intriging... is it currently supported in soundcards?

 

[sinae]

Jason has stated a number of times that Bifrost is galvanically isolated. The real 'kicker' with USB, is the HUGE variance of USB implementation, electrical noise, number of other USB devices on a bus (you can be plugged directly into a single USB port and the motherboard can be sharing that USB bus with other devices). One user can plug in and have a clean, quiet experience. Another can plug in and get all sorts of noise. Add to that, the effect on your USB bus timing/noise when various other applications are ran.

In my experience, it's a very difficult thing for a USB device to eliminate all possible USB related issues. To date, I've yet to see a USB audio device that always worked, never dropped out, zero noise, etc. YMV, but that's been my reality with USB and the audio software that uses it.

 

So then you give a tested PCI card with USB with the dac.... for like 20-30$ (cost of production or something)

I'm tired of those excuse for lack of proper noise handling in gears that cost so much...

You find the problem and you fix it.. that's it.. Other companies have done it...

if it's impossible then why are we using this crappy USB in the first place... Or Why not an internal usb to optical implementation inside the dac itself to isolate noise...

Also with those usb implementation any company toughts about having very low asio latency with asio4all?

Low latency is a must for home studio... this is the reason most of us have an RME/Lynx soundcard... just for the drivers.... mostly

 

[Defiant00]

Personally I haven't had any problem with noise from using USB. I can hear a slight bit of noise with nothing playing and my amp turned all the way up, but even that is faint. And do keep in mind that if I started music playing at that level I would promptly blow either my headphones or my ears.
 
I did get a bit more noise right when I got the Bifrost, but that turned out to be a bad power outlet in my apartment and went away as soon as I plugged it into another (and even then it wasn't audible at anywhere near my normal listening level).
 
In my opinion their USB implementation is excellent.

 

[Misterrogers]

It is. The only issue I had specifically with the Bifrost implementation was it not supporting 176 sample rate, which I use.
 
Quote:

So then you give a tested PCI card with USB with the dac.... for like 20-30$ (cost of production or something)
I'm tired of those excuse for lack of proper noise handling in gears that cost so much...
You find the problem and you fix it.. that's it.. Other companies have done it...
if it's impossible then why are we using this crappy USB in the first place... Or Why not an internal usb to optical implementation inside the dac itself to isolate noise...
Also with those usb implementation any company toughts about having very low asio latency with asio4all?
Low latency is a must for home studio... this is the reason most of us have an RME/Lynx soundcard... just for the drivers.... mostly

 


Quote:

Personally I haven't had any problem with noise from using USB. I can hear a slight bit of noise with nothing playing and my amp turned all the way up, but even that is faint. And do keep in mind that if I started music playing at that level I would promptly blow either my headphones or my ears.
 
I did get a bit more noise right when I got the Bifrost, but that turned out to be a bad power outlet in my apartment and went away as soon as I plugged it into another (and even then it wasn't audible at anywhere near my normal listening level).
 
In my opinion their USB implementation is excellent.

 

 

[sinae]

Thanx i guess i'll cross my fingers since one of the reason i buy the bifrost is because of power noise coming from my rme soundcard

 

[olor1n]

Just wanted to thank Jason for his patience and willingness to resolve the issues I outlined a few weeks back. I received the replacement Bifrost yesterday and am relieved to report that it has all worked out in the end. All good.

 

[Maxvla]

Grats on resolving the whole ordeal. I'm sure both parties are relieved.

 

[TubeDriver]

Can anybody with a Bifrost without USB, take a look on the back?  Is there a plug for the hole where the USB jack would be?
 
I have a Bifrost with USB although I have been using Toslink.  I removed the USB module and thought it sounded better through Toslink but I don't like the large hole in the rear panel.  I could just put a piece of tape over the hole but thought Schiit might have some type of plug?
 
 
 

 

[mmayer167]

^ no plug, just a thick sticker that says reserved for usb module or something like that. 
 
-M

 

[judmarc]

 
Quote:

What would be important is wordclock output to sync computer to schitt dac clock and a very low ppm clock.
Afterwards who cares about usb on the dac, soundcards with adat out have better drivers, cheaper, more i/o but the only problem come from the fact that when you use optical out.... then jitter induced from the soundcard poor quality clock will go all the way to the dac that will need to use some async work to reclock the signal to fix jitter but still..
I believe that in the moment more and more of the home studio market will look into the pro audio market to find better quality dacs, amps, headphones..
The home studio market is enormous so I don't see why pro audio companies are not targeting this market.
ST-Optical is intriging... is it currently supported in soundcards?

Wanted to be clear that what I described was the DAC clock as master and the computer clock as slave.  In S/PDIF-AES the computer/transport clock is master by default; to overcome that you need to make the computer/transport clock the slave and the DAC clock the master.  That will create the same type of low-jitter regime as async USB, which achieves low jitter because the DAC clock is the master.
 

 

[Kremer930]

Olor1n - Glad to hear that all worked out well with the Bifrost.  Kudos to Jason and the team also.  
 
Does anyone notice that Jason seems to be less active on these forums over the past couple of months?  I am guessing that he is flat out sorting out the next product releases whilst still dealing with higher than anticipated demand.
 
As for the statement dac.... it is pretty hard to work out what it planned.  From memory, we know the intermediate will use the sabre 9018 chip but the statement will pick up the game significantly from there....

 

[wkhanna]

Quote:

As for the statement dac.... it is pretty hard to work out what it planned.  From memory, we know the intermediate will use the sabre 9018 chip but the statement will pick up the game significantly from there....

 
 
Since we are speculating........how about two chips in a dual differential configuration?

 

[wkhanna]

As shown on the Schiit web site 15 Feb 2012:
Bifrost STATUS: Finishing backorders this week. Orders placed now will ship next week

 

[isberg]

I canceled my Schiit direct order on Sunday night, and placed an order with Audio Advisors via Amazon. Just showed up on my doorstep 30 minutes ago and shipping was free.
 
I just checked now and Audio Advisor is out of stock, but Kraft Street Audio has some at a $30 markup (free shipping though - so it may even out).
 
Potential drawback: Amazon does not appear to have the non-USB version at all.
 
Quote:

As shown on the Schiit web site 15 Feb 2012:
Bifrost STATUS: Finishing backorders this week. Orders placed now will ship next week