[aamer23]

  Just a guess but they've got Amps, DACS, and pre-amps well covered so what's left in the audio chain?
Audio sources.
Could be turntables or CD players I suppose but digital music server is more future proof IMO.

I would like to improve my source however, I need a company like Schiit to make my Schiit so it focuses on the Schiit that is needed not irrelevant Schiit, however, bimby has almost made me source agnostic, there was very little to choose between cocktail audio x10, mac mini + VOX or the winoze 10 + Jriver. CD player through bimby for me is still the best source 

 

[disastermouse]

  I would like to improve my source however, I need a company like Schiit to make my Schiit so it focuses on the Schiit that is needed not irrelevant Schiit, however, bimby has almost made me source agnostic, there was very little to choose between cocktail audio x10, mac mini + VOX or the winoze 10 + Jriver. CD player through bimby for me is still the best source 

My iMac still has a CD drive and weirdly, playing directly from the CD does sound marginally better than from my ALACs.

 

[landroni]

 

It's a gem of a DAC. Enjoy your music all over again.

I keep looking behind me because it sounds like some sounds are happening in the room. This isn't even remotely the same experience as I was having before. This is qualitatively different. Most concert PAs don't sound this good, so even live music, unless it's totally acoustic, doesn't sound this good.

 
Geez, I'd always thought the amp was the weak link in my chain and that my DAC was up to the challenge of the HE-500. So, for those of you who've lived with both, on a percentage scale, how close is this to Yggy? 50%? 75%?

 
I can't believe this only cost $600.

Since you asked...
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/785369/yggdrasil-gungnir-mb-bifrost-mb-a-terse-ribald-comparison
 

  Having all three of these Schiit multibit DACs is a considerable privilege. Comparing them to other DACs with printed words is challenging at best. These need to be heard, preferably in level matched A/B comparison to other DACs, to fully appreciate the advancements achieved by Mike Moffat and team at Schiit. I have spent many hours with these multibits, as I have with some of the best (and worst) of Delta-Sigma DACs. It is no secret that I am enchanted with the Schiit Multibit solutions to source components. I am not as adept with the flowery prose as many others on forum so this will be my concise comparison.

 
1. Best of D-S Dacs - an indistinct sound is barely audible in the recording that appears to not be musically related to the orchestral piece playing

 
2. Bifrost MB - someone in the Second Violin section has flatulated
3. Gungnir MB - the flatulent sound originates with the 2nd chair in the 2nd row of the 2nd violins
4. Yggdrasil - that 2nd chair, 2nd row, 2nd violinist has let loose with a Db when clearly the piece being played is in the key of G.

 
now for others that can describe attributes of the three Schiit multibit DACs better than I.

@atomicbob doesn't exactly put a percentage difference for each Schiit MB DAC, but this gets as close as it can.

 

[crazychile]

I used to think that I was  DAC-immune.
 
Back in the early 90s I worked in a Hi-Fi shop and brought home a very highly regarded sub $1K DAC to compare to the Luxman (multibit) CD player I owned at the time. I set it up so that I only had to switch inputs on my preamp to compare. No cable swapping, just clicking sources back and forth as a song played on. I couldn't hear much of a difference between the two, and figured at that price range, DACs made only a subtle improvement at best. (Now I realize that this is NOT the way to audition a DAC) A few years later I owned a California Audio Labs Alpha DAC that I really liked, but still regarded the sound as different, not necessarily a big leap forward.
 
Then a couple of years ago I bought a Schiit Vali and Modi as my first Schiitpile and liked it quite a bit. The Vali  later got replaced by a Lyr 2 and a month after that the Modi was replaced by a Bifrost Uber. I was shocked at how much of an improvement the new DAC made, the new amp, was a subtle improvement. I owned hard to drive AKG K702s at the time.
 
When the Bifrost Multibit upgrade came out I wasn't going to upgrade. I thought I'd just save to make the jump up to the Gumby, since I can use a balanced connection to my electrostatic amp. But curiosity got the best of me and I got the MB upgrade for the Bifrost anyway. Another very noticeable leap in resolution and musicality. I'm glad I did it.
 
So now I've pretty much said screw it, I'm not wasting my time with the Gumby. I'm saving for the Yggdrasil.
 
To my ears, once you have an "adequate" amp, the DAC becomes the area to put your money into.
 
I am no longer DAC-immune. I have firmly become a "source-first" kinda guy.

 

[ToTo Man]

  I set it up so that I only had to switch inputs on my preamp to compare. No cable swapping, just clicking sources back and forth as a song played on. I couldn't hear much of a difference between the two, and figured at that price range, DACs made only a subtle improvement at best. (Now I realize that this is NOT the way to audition a DAC).

Why not?  When I was planning on upgrading my Bifrost to Uber I acquired a loan unit and did the exact test you describe.  I even used an amp with seamless source switching so that there wouldn't be any delay/silence between switching.  I found this method extremely helpful in exposing the subtle improvements of the Uber over the standard model.  Without doing so I would have been hard pushed to distinguish between the two and would have probably suspected any perceived differences to be a figment of my imagination!  
 
PS - I can appreciate why this method would be problematic when auditioning headphones and loudspeakers, since these can sound so radically different from model to model that the brain needs much longer listening times to adjust...

 

[bgentry]

To my ears, once you have an "adequate" amp, the DAC becomes the area to put your money into.

I am no longer DAC-immune. I have firmly become a "source-first" kinda guy.

About 8 years ago I found a series of articles for sale online from a former high-end audio store owner, and audio journalist. They were kind of a "how to shop smart" for high end audio, written as a series of articles. They weren't expensive and his sample was interesting, so I bought and read them.

One of his core messages was this: Ignore the standard advice of "spend most of your money on speakers". Instead his advice was to spend most of your money on electronics. At the time I thought that was a strange message. But the logic of it is clear: You can't have a great presentation if your source isn't great to start with. Kind of a corollary to the old saying of "garbage in, garbage out".

I'm finding more and more that some of the "magic" I've heard from true high end systems is all the stuff before the speakers. This includes all of the electronics and in today's world, the digital source type: For me, it has to be lossless.

Brian.

 

[crazychile]

 

  I set it up so that I only had to switch inputs on my preamp to compare. No cable swapping, just clicking sources back and forth as a song played on. I couldn't hear much of a difference between the two, and figured at that price range, DACs made only a subtle improvement at best. (Now I realize that this is NOT the way to audition a DAC).

Why not?  When I was planning on upgrading my Bifrost to Uber I acquired a loan unit and did the exact test you describe.  I even used an amp with seamless source switching so that there wouldn't be any delay/silence between switching.  I found this method extremely helpful in exposing the subtle improvements of the Uber over the standard model.  Without doing so I would have been hard pushed to distinguish between the two and would have probably suspected any perceived differences to be a figment of my imagination!  
 
PS - I can appreciate why this method would be problematic when auditioning headphones and loudspeakers, since these can sound so radically different from model to model that the brain needs much longer listening times to adjust...

Let me expand a bit upon what I originally wrote...
 
Since I had owned a Modi for several months, with a lot of hours spent listening to it, the sound signature of the Modi was well burned into my brain. So when I first got the Bifrost Uber, it was immediately obvious - within the first few minutes.. that I was not listening to the Modi. The Bifrost was clearly a different DAC. After a few hours I was able to get a better understanding of how it was different.
 
In the old example of comparing a $500 Luxman CD player to the sub $1k DAC, (I believe it was an Adcom GDA-600) , I believe that the differences were actually subtle and rapidly switching between the two made it pretty hard to discern the differences. Later I spent a lot of time listening to the Adcom in other systems at the store that I worked and was able to get a better feel for what it did. But still, they were close and that contributed to my belief at the time that DACs probably didn't make a huge difference, at least until you compared products at  largely different price points.
 
So my opinion is that unless two DACs are vastly different in sound, rapidly switching between them is probably not the best way to compare. I think a better way would be to spend at least a few hours with one before comparing to the next, and even then probably going back to the first as final check.. Being really familiar with a DAC helps shortcut the process a little in that going immediately to the new DAC should make the differences pretty apparent after a few minutes assuming that they really are significantly different DACs.
 
Differences between speakers or headphones are usually much more significant. So in that case rapidly switching back and forth may help you narrow things down to a short list of items. Still not an ideal way to audition, but may help quickly weed out the stuff that clearly doesn't suit your tastes. Usually this is difficult anyway, like in the case of speakers it normally requires stopping the music, powering down, rewiring the new set of speakers, etc. unless a switchbox is used. But those tend to homogenize the sound to lesser quality....anyway, I digress, you get the idea.
 
We all hear things a bit differently. Whatever method one uses may not work for the other.

 

[crazychile]

 

To my ears, once you have an "adequate" amp, the DAC becomes the area to put your money into.

I am no longer DAC-immune. I have firmly become a "source-first" kinda guy.

About 8 years ago I found a series of articles for sale online from a former high-end audio store owner, and audio journalist. They were kind of a "how to shop smart" for high end audio, written as a series of articles. They weren't expensive and his sample was interesting, so I bought and read them.

One of his core messages was this: Ignore the standard advice of "spend most of your money on speakers". Instead his advice was to spend most of your money on electronics. At the time I thought that was a strange message. But the logic of it is clear: You can't have a great presentation if your source isn't great to start with. Kind of a corollary to the old saying of "garbage in, garbage out".

I'm finding more and more that some of the "magic" I've heard from true high end systems is all the stuff before the speakers. This includes all of the electronics and in today's world, the digital source type: For me, it has to be lossless.

Brian.

 Yes! This gets hard to do when someone is on a very tight budget. Back in the day of selling hi-fi, if someone came in and said they only had $1500 for CD, amp and speakers, I would normally sell them something where nearly  half the money went into the speakers. With a higher budget there was more flexibility to mix things up a bit. But the common wisdom in the industry at that time was to spend your big money on the speakers first.
 
Probably 10-15 years ago I started subscribing to a Canadian magazine (don't remember the name) that was very much into this notion of spending large amounts of money on the source and then building the rest of the system around it. That sounded a bit crazy to me but I started to warm up to the idea a little after I had the opportunity to bring about $15K worth of electronics home for the weekend. All connected to a $300 pair of B&W bookshelf speakers. It sounded pretty amazing. I'm not advocating that should be the common approach, but the experiment was very educational.

 

[landroni]

 

  I set it up so that I only had to switch inputs on my preamp to compare. No cable swapping, just clicking sources back and forth as a song played on. I couldn't hear much of a difference between the two, and figured at that price range, DACs made only a subtle improvement at best. (Now I realize that this is NOT the way to audition a DAC).

Why not?  When I was planning on upgrading my Bifrost to Uber I acquired a loan unit and did the exact test you describe.  I even used an amp with seamless source switching so that there wouldn't be any delay/silence between switching.  I found this method extremely helpful in exposing the subtle improvements of the Uber over the standard model.  Without doing so I would have been hard pushed to distinguish between the two and would have probably suspected any perceived differences to be a figment of my imagination!

 
PS - I can appreciate why this method would be problematic when auditioning headphones and loudspeakers, since these can sound so radically different from model to model that the brain needs much longer listening times to adjust...

Because the ear is an integral, not differential device. Only extended listening sessions (while blind or not) will be useful in detecting subtle differences. See Mike Moffat's experience on the matter:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up/7725#post_11921090

 

[Ableza]

 
Because the ear is an integral, not differential device. Only extended listening sessions (while blind or not) will be useful in detecting subtle differences. See Mike Moffat's experience on the matter:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up/7725#post_11921090

And in reality it's not the ear that matters (unless it's damaged) it's the BRAIN the ear is connected to.  ​

 

[kstuart]

 

 

It's a gem of a DAC. Enjoy your music all over again.

I keep looking behind me because it sounds like some sounds are happening in the room. This isn't even remotely the same experience as I was having before. This is qualitatively different. Most concert PAs don't sound this good, so even live music, unless it's totally acoustic, doesn't sound this good.

 
Geez, I'd always thought the amp was the weak link in my chain and that my DAC was up to the challenge of the HE-500. So, for those of you who've lived with both, on a percentage scale, how close is this to Yggy? 50%? 75%?

 
I can't believe this only cost $600.

Since you asked...
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/785369/yggdrasil-gungnir-mb-bifrost-mb-a-terse-ribald-comparison
 

  Having all three of these Schiit multibit DACs is a considerable privilege. Comparing them to other DACs with printed words is challenging at best. These need to be heard, preferably in level matched A/B comparison to other DACs, to fully appreciate the advancements achieved by Mike Moffat and team at Schiit. I have spent many hours with these multibits, as I have with some of the best (and worst) of Delta-Sigma DACs. It is no secret that I am enchanted with the Schiit Multibit solutions to source components. I am not as adept with the flowery prose as many others on forum so this will be my concise comparison.

 
1. Best of D-S Dacs - an indistinct sound is barely audible in the recording that appears to not be musically related to the orchestral piece playing

 
2. Bifrost MB - someone in the Second Violin section has flatulated
3. Gungnir MB - the flatulent sound originates with the 2nd chair in the 2nd row of the 2nd violins
4. Yggdrasil - that 2nd chair, 2nd row, 2nd violinist has let loose with a Db when clearly the piece being played is in the key of G.

 
now for others that can describe attributes of the three Schiit multibit DACs better than I.

@atomicbob doesn't exactly put a percentage difference for each Schiit MB DAC, but this gets as close as it can.

In a later thread (IIRC in DIY with someone named something like JohnJen), he commented that the above does apply to the overall capabilities of the DACs, but that in real world listening, they are actually much closer, because only a few recordings are good enough to let you hear that difference, and that the Bifrost is probably better with mediocre recordings (i.e. most of the recordings of great artists).

 

[kstuart]

 

@Disastermouse, what DAC were you using prior to your new Bimby? I'm trying to gauge how much of a jump you'very made.

It was an HRT MusicStreamer II+.

I didn't realize that it was that much lower-scale.

I went from the Music Streamer II+ to the Bifrost Uber (w/2nd Gen USB) and then from the Bifrost Uber to the Bifrost Multibit.
 
The Music Streamer II+ is older technology.  The DAC chips in the Uber are better than what was available to HRT at the time.  ALSO, the Music Streamer line is designed for portability, to be used, say, with a laptop in Starbucks or at the Student Union on campus.  The Bifrost is a significant bigger and thus has room for more advanced and complex discrete circuits - and just things like bigger capacitors.
 
I still use the II+ in my late night setup.  It's very good at sounding "analog" - i.e. without the hard cold digital sound.s
 
The Bfrost simply has more detail, both in instruments and in the sound space.

 

[landroni]

 
In a later thread (IIRC in DIY with someone named something like JohnJen), he commented that the above does apply to the overall capabilities of the DACs, but that in real world listening, they are actually much closer, because only a few recordings are good enough to let you hear that difference, and that the Bifrost is probably better with mediocre recordings (i.e. most of the recordings of great artists).

Also @atomicbob has insisted on several occasions that Bifrost MB is overall more euphonic, and perhaps better suited for appreciating music in day-to-day sessions. Yggdrasil may be more exact, but it might get in the way of casual listening.

 

[kstuart]

 

 
In a later thread (IIRC in DIY with someone named something like JohnJen), he commented that the above does apply to the overall capabilities of the DACs, but that in real world listening, they are actually much closer, because only a few recordings are good enough to let you hear that difference, and that the Bifrost is probably better with mediocre recordings (i.e. most of the recordings of great artists).

Also @atomicbob has insisted on several occasions that Bifrost MB is overall more euphonic, and perhaps better suited for appreciating music in day-to-day sessions. Yggdrasil may be more exact, but it might get in the way of casual listening.

Yes, that is pretty much what I was trying to say - I think you remembered his statement a little more precisely.

 

[ToTo Man]

 
Because the ear is an integral, not differential device. Only extended listening sessions (while blind or not) will be useful in detecting subtle differences. See Mike Moffat's experience on the matter:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/701900/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up/7725#post_11921090

Thanks, I hadn't seen that post by Mike.  I'm not convinced that, had I just gone ahead and sent my Bifrost away to be Ubered and got it back a week later, I could say with confidence whether the sound had changed or not.  My aural memory is much shorter than that.  Also, my hifi system can sound different one day to the next, depending on the condition of my auditory system (our hearing isn't 100% the same one day to the next).  However I do see the point Mike is making about extended back-to-back comparisons.