Schiit Fire and Save Matches! Bifrost Multibit is Here.

[madwolfa]

  So you've hear the Hugo then I take it?

 
No, I'm just negatively biased. 

 

[elnero]

   
No, I'm just negatively biased. 

 
That's useful information.

 

[BeatsWork]

 

 Die, jitter, die

Sorry, I don't speak German.

 

[murrays]

  Sorry, I don't speak German.

... but probably a Simpsons fan

 

[ThurstonX]

  Sorry, I don't speak German.

 
I know a little German...
 
 
 
 
MultiFrost forever!!!

 

[boulos]

   
Just to validate what I said - I don't mean one live show, a few beers with friends, home and bed for the night.  I mean one day a week, in a recording room for almost 5 years.  Setting up mics, operating the desk and direct multichannel recordings to DAT tape.  Pipe that into Pro-Tools, mix and then mastering.  Countless songs, two independently produced records.
 
However - year in, year out.  You don't really need to have an audible memory.  This just becomes second nature; you really do know when something is off - or put another way, you know if one piece of HiFi gear is up to snuff or just not quite able to cut the mustard.  Besides - it always helps when you have 4 other musicians sat next to you - drummers hear their drums, bassists hear their bass and their tone - their sound is their signature and livelihood.  Believe you me they KNOW when it ain't right, just like I did.

 
Speaking of musicians knowing... My wife plays the violin and I asked her to listen to the Bifrost MB today playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto In D by Toshiyo Eto. This is a Japan import JVC RCA CD saved in lossless format and played over USB.  The amp is O2 and headphones are HD600.  The first words were the bass is "very impressive".  After listening for a while, she said it sounds "very good" but the only thing is that the violin lacks overtones at the higher registers where they should exist.  Nonetheless it was very enjoyable.  BTW, these are very high compliments to the Bifrost MB

 

[monkuboy]

I certainly respect the ability of musicians to discern accuracy of timbre and other characteristics for instruments in recordings.  What I find interesting is so many don't seem to be big audiophiles, though. Or at least not to the point of OCD like so many audiophiles are. I think that is probably because they love the music more than obsessing about every little nanodetail of the equipment.

 

[jfoxvol]

Let me be absolutely clear about my impressions.  I've seen some widely varying reports.  I have had mine for about two weeks now.  I rock this in my living room.  It's my evening chill kinda system.  Holy toledo.  I've got a yggy/rag in the other room.  This with a vali and an HD600 is just the bee's knees.  I'm spinning some Knopfler/Atkins tonight and this DAC/amp just omg sounds so good.  This record I know well but the clarity and warm character of the DAC with the system brings a warm smile to my face.  Yeah, this one's a keeper.  

 

[d1sturb3d]

Really want to get me feet wet on r2r since last year,price admission is what keeping me to jump in,but this,this I can save up. Really looking forward to owning one.

 

[earnmyturns]

  I certainly respect the ability of musicians to discern accuracy of timbre and other characteristics for instruments in recordings.  What I find interesting is so many don't seem to be big audiophiles, though. Or at least not to the point of OCD like so many audiophiles are. I think that is probably because they love the music more than obsessing about every little nanodetail of the equipment.

Many years ago, a musician friend told me that he preferred low-fi because no fi could sound like the real thing, so why bother -- especially on a musician's income. I could have saved a lot since then if I had followed his advice, but then I can't play anything to save my life 

 

[musicman2006]

  Many years ago, a musician friend told me that he preferred low-fi because no fi could sound like the real thing, so why bother -- especially on a musician's income. I could have saved a lot since then if I had followed his advice, but then I can't play anything to save my life 

Quote:

  I certainly respect the ability of musicians to discern accuracy of timbre and other characteristics for instruments in recordings.  What I find interesting is so many don't seem to be big audiophiles, though. Or at least not to the point of OCD like so many audiophiles are. I think that is probably because they love the music more than obsessing about every little nanodetail of the equipment.

 
 
This is so true. I've been a musician on several instruments in various orchestras and bands since I was ten years old, the following is my 2 cents:
The fact of the matter is that musicians literally live in the kind of acoustic world that audiophiles try endlessly to recreate. No technology today would really be able to FULLY recreate either the experience of the musician in the middle of an orchestra (that would almost certainly be considered a thrill ride by many, especially near the percussion pit) or the experience of someone sitting in the audience. Musicians tend to regard recordings as "reminders" of what took place on stage when that recording was made or as a "window" to what happened if they were not there.  
Can the playback of that "reminder" be of high quality and very enjoyable/exciting on a decent hifi system? Absolutely !! but it is not the real thing and it never will be.  
 
Thank goodness though that there are now numerous affordable dacs, amps, speakers, and headphones that can do justice to the of music we all love. 

 

[Tuco1965]

My impressions of the Multifrost have not changed. I'm still loving it's ability to draw me into the music and forget about everything else. This is a pure win in my book for me. Absolutely no regrets and I thank Schiit for making something that I can upgrade. The only problem, if you want to call it one, is trying to break away from the music to get anything else done at home. I just want to keep listening to all my music again for the first time.

 

[ThePianoMan]

^ some good points here, but I think there's an over generalization about musicians not being audiophiles because they have magically better ears or something.
Consider first what kind of musician a person is. Blues? Jazz? Singer-songwriter? Classically trained orchestral player? Art Somg/Opera singer? Musical theatre? Traditional Mbira player? Folk Musician?
I attend a classical conservatory and the diverse array of different ears just on musicians is astounding. The recording students have even different training and details they pay attention to, etc.
in general though, even among the Jazz and classical (and world music) students who go through ear training, we're trained to recognize pitch, rhythm, and other musical traits. We're not trained to discern the fine differences in frequency response of gear. It's just something you're expected to notice at a certain level. The studio recording classes focus on it some, but lots of studios monitoring rooms are very over damped and not live at all. Taking all this into consideration, most music students and even trained musicians I know haven't heard good two channel setups in good rooms with well made records. Most haven't heard good headphone setups either. They recognize good sound when it's there, but the home audiophile market is not one we have much contact with (I grew up with an audiophile father for example, so I have some background in audio)
Many musicians playing at very high levels have the same revelatory experience the first time they hear a great music system, just the same as non musicians.
It's true in some cultures (a well-known Mbira player from Zimbabwe told me this about his village) treat recordings like photographic snapshots of one performance, to be revisited for the magic of the moment, not for a new musical experience. I remember Bob Dylan (I think?) commenting to sound on sound magazine that he felt recordings were snapshots of singular performances, so he never plays anything the same way twice.
In the U.S. We sell more records and sound files than music. What I mean by that, is that we place more monetary value on recordings than on the artist or the music as they make it live. Most pop music isn't possible in acoustic settings. Even many classical and folk records have some cuts in them. We pay more for the videos and recordings of artists and get more out of the musical enjoyment of their records than live shows, which are mostly atmospheric and visual spectacles. I'm not criticizing this, and certainly I enjoy pop music and have attended very fun pop shows myself. But an orchestra concert, opera, or jazz/folk/blues show is a different experience. And different than recorded music. I think recorded music, like movies, allows us a hyper-realized experience. Vocals float in their own spaces, whispers soar above huge ensembles, or quiet guitar lines can fill a room. Nothing "realistic" about it in the sense that it couldn't be done with technological assistance and amplification. But it sure can be sublime.
So, what's the context of all these kind of nitpicky points in making?
Well, I'm a musician, a student of multiple instruments in different disciplines at a fairly high level (French horn, jazz piano, classical voice) a student of record engineering and music production (a secondary concentration of mine) and of course an audiophile (I'm here on head-fi!) and here's how I listen.
Mind you, this only applies to me. It's a philosophy I've developed, but I think there's a good reason for it, and it's something I've thought quite a lot about.
When I listen, I put on tracks that in familiar with, but not tracks that are too tried. Essentially I have a large variety of test tracks. I usually start with the same tune or three, but have a large library to branch to depending on what I want to hear more of from a system.
I begin by simply relaxing and listening. Deep breath, dispel any expectations of what I'll hear, and simply let the system play. Do I like what I hear? If no, I'll generally walk away. If yes, I start to peel away the first layers of sound. What do I like? Why do I like what I'm hearing? What specifically is working for me? As I dig deeper into tonal balance, transparency, etc. I might start asking the question "what could be better?" And after I've unpacked some of the elements of the system, I'll sit back and listen again (sometimes this means rocking out or chilling depending on the system) does the system still work the same magic? Am I still drawn in, or has breaking it down revealed the system as overly bright and fatiguing? Or maybe warm and dark, but dull on further listening. Subjective listening like this takes the emphasis away from the tiny details of "what annoys me" and puts it on the question: "what is working, and is it working well enough to make me happy?" Thus might seem a shallow approach at first. But Ive found myself enjoying both Grados and also Audeze's in the past. KEFs and Thiels. A system can be bright, dark, whatever. If I like it, I don't mind the frequency response as long as it makes good music. I happen to listen to a large variety of music that often pushes the frequency extremes of gear, so even-handed and neutral work best for me, but if you listen to lots of treble-happy hip-hop, some very dark cans/speakers might be good for you. Nothing wrong with that. It's very often that on headfi discussions are more about gear than playing music. That's cool too, I'm a gear head and amateur electrical engineer myself. But gear talk and music, while interrelated, are still two different beasties. For example, I also love gear talk with other brasswind players. But you can drop $9000 on a beautiful horn and it won't make your playing better. Likewise, transducers worth goo goo dollars won't give you golden ears, or the absolute best musical experience. But it doesn't have to be "the best" because there is no best. There is what makes you happy. And with that, I'll refer to Jason's chapter on when to say when.

Sorry for the long rant. Happy listening ^_^

 

[madwolfa]

More on the analog output stage choices made in Yggy/Gumby vs Bimby from Jason (quote taken from another forum):
 

 To expand on the comment about discrete stages:

1. The discrete stage in the Yggdrasil and GMB are both just buffers. The DACs used there have voltage output. So, they are very simple stages, just four active devices per channel. However, as measurements clearly show, this simplicity does not compromise distortion performance (this is usually the penalty paid...simple discrete amps typically have high THD.) That's why when you see some "2-PPM wonder amp" it usually has about 80 active devices per channel. We can argue till the cows come home which sounds better.

2. The discrete stage in the standard Bifrost and Gungnir is actually a small amp stage—not exactly a discrete op-amp, due to its very specific gain structure and open-loop bandwidth beyond the audio band--but it also takes a voltage output of the DAC, amplifies it a bit, and passes it on. No I/V necessary.

3. Bifrost Multibit is totally different. Its DAC has current output, so it doesn't just need a buffer--it needs an actual I/V stage, or current-to-voltage converter stage. There are many ways to do this, from op-amps to discrete. If you're going discrete, it's best not to use a typical voltage-in amp topology, but to design specifically for current input (into, say, the emitters, with overall feedback to bring the input impedance down--you want very LOW input impedance in an I/V stage, unlike a voltage amp.) However, Bifrost Multibit doesn't have a lot of real estate on the analog board, so we had to choose: discrete I/V OR burrito filter. Both wouldn't fit. I believe Mike and Dave made the best choice, which was to retain the burrito and lose the discrete I/V.

Consider this: the discrete I/V I did for Theta's Gen V had 250-ish through-hole parts...on a 4 x 6" teflon board...per balanced channel. The complete Bifrost analog output stage--which includes digital filter, DAC, glue logic, local power supplies, voltage references, and the I/V stage is 4 x 5". Surface mount gets us only so far.

Aaaannd...there will be a chapter on this.

 

[sling5s]

Yup, smooth, detailed, immersive, and musical. The only way to get better is to go Gumby or Yggy.

My impressions of the Multifrost have not changed. I'm still loving it's ability to draw me into the music and forget about everything else. This is a pure win in my book for me. Absolutely no regrets and I thank Schiit for making something that I can upgrade. The only problem, if you want to call it one, is trying to break away from the music to get anything else done at home. I just want to keep listening to all my music again for the first time.