Schiit Audio Bifrost 2 DAC Review
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2024
- Schiit Audio Completely re-designed their lower-mid tier DAC with some radical changes. I go over the design and compare it to competing gear.
Buy the Bifrost directly from Schiit Audio via Amazon here:
amzn.to/2l3Cbfs
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Amos, As one of the few sites that consistently provide Schitt gear reviews just wanted to say thank you and they are greatly appreciated!
Cheers!
Great Review Currawong. Always nice to see you covering the topic so thoroughly.
Your soothing, calming voice with all of the techno-babble keeps me interested and puts my cats right to sleep. Thank you.
You’re welcome 😊
I've gotten the bifrost multibit 1 at a clearance sale, and I have to say it sounds glorious
Thanks for a very detailed comparative review! I'm looking for a DAC to upgrade my Oppo BDP-95 and to play vinyl rips straight from my laptop. The Bifrost 2 sounds like the one to get! Cheers!
Bifrost gonna be my next purchase! also picked up a 1955 sylvania chrome dome. sounds amazing in the lyr 3
Great review--and I enjoyed your passing dig at the ASR objectivist cultists. I glanced at their discussion thread on the Bifrost II. The searing hatred toward R-2R/multibit DACs, Schiit in general, and the Bifrost II in particular (in roughly that order) strikingly reminded me of my hatred for a certain septuagenarian who wears an orange bird's nest on his head. They seem to regard Schiit not as an audio company but a deliberate scam to entice people to buy intentionally bad audio gear.
"It doesn't matter if you like the sound better. Why would you buy a DAC that doesn't measure perfectly?" Ummm because I like what I'm hearing better.
Upgrading from a Modi 2 Uber, I find the Bifrost 2 to be a bit fascinating. It does sound quite smooth, with a lack of emphasis in the low bass or high treble..yet its response is still extended in both directions. There's also something strange in the bass. It's not emphasized at all, but there's more punchiness to it at certain frequencies.
TJ I am planning to get one of these shortly and have been researching UA-cam ,etc. for days and your review of the inputs is the best and most useful I have seen.
You are greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Thankyou for the review!
Those black capacitors on dac board are Nichicon KW series , they gone audio cap route now.
Excellent review! I love Schiit Dacs. Started with a DS Bifrost to a Mimby and spilled the beans and picked up a used Yggy2. One thing I miss with the Yggy is the midrange bump of the Mimby. Yggy can be a tiny bit too technical for me and slightly dry. But I do love it. Think the Bimby would be a better bet?
I would think tough call.
Possibly. The other thing is to find a slightly euphoric-sounding tube amp to use with the Yggy.
I was ready to pull the trigger on a rme adi-2 dac to pair with my NFB-1amp until they announced the Bifrost 2....upgrading from a modi multibit. I might have to wait for some more comparisons / measurements on bifrost 2
Schiit has measurements on their site, under the Specs tab.
Most reviewers don’t mention separates synergy and how stacking warm separates might produce too much of a good thing (as you have in this review). This is a subject I’m really curious about.
Wondering how ir compare with vmv ds1 se. Know that is Sigma dac but with sound colours and no thin. Thanks. Excelent. Review
Great review - it led me to buy the Bifrost 2, and I'm very happy using it with my tube amp. Is there any chance you could review the Jotunheim balanced amp together with the Bifrost 2? BTW I lived in Fukushima for 22 years and miss Japan a lot. I always enjoy looking out your window at your neighborhood. ;-)
I also have tube integrated how does the Bifrost 2 complement the sound? Is it warm and bloomy like they say? I don't want lean and hard sounding. Some reviews even say it's like rich chocolate! 😃
Idk what kind of computers people are mostly using but in my Ryzen (1700X) based computer whit descent motherboard with fairly good power supply i dont get any noise, at all. No noises ,no hisses, no nothing. My ears almost starts bleeding (+115 Db) and still no noises. What i ques is going on that some old houses have bad electricity components from beginning. I live in Finland and we got very high standards in electricity components what you can use in house building. Iw tested Jitter bugs and other USB purifiers but no changes at all, cos there is no noises :D All houses here have 3 stage 230/400V power-lines/transformers and outputs that can output regular grounded 220V. Maybe the magic is there?
I was considering the Bifrost for my personal machine, but honestly I take issue with their philosophy. On the lower end, cool, I get it. But once you get into $500 for Audio equipment it's nearly criminal to downplay higher resolution capabilities. Say what you want about 'MQA' and DSD (and there are merits on boths sides) the point is to deliver the music in proper form. Their philosophy pretty much downplays the actualities of the recording industry and workflow. Higher sampling rates and frequencies were literally used way back in the day, and now that everything is digital, actually has it's benefits from recording, to the final product. When done properly (and there are many houses that utilize it all properly) there really are benefits, especially with the busier and more progressive music.
Once you climb into this price range people are after that resolving capability. The ability to send the signal without down sampling shouldn't be optional.
From all the research I've done, when it comes to playback, there's no real benefit to beyond 20 bit 96 kHz when the DAC you own has a good digital filter implementation. DSD does not provide extra real resolution, and MQA is lower than CD quality. Quite a bit of equipment performes *worse* when used with higher resolutions or DSD, so I don't see the benefit when I observe people chasing DSD512 playback.
@@Currawong That's like saying WAV files are overkill. There's a reasone we keep everything native/uncompressed in the workflow 😉 MQA has indeed become a marketing trap, but that observation paints a bad picture based off of those egregious offenders alone (though I wont pretend. There are MANY). The industry has been trying to progress from CD spec for decades and it does become nearly moot when even the successor is handled just as poorly.
As for "consumer equipment" I am ~aware of the quality issues however I seriously feel those have to get overblown to a degree, especially now. I certainly don't get to play around with much "consumer grade" from where I'm locked away lol. From the little digging I did do on such I had tool feel like there was some huge aweful technology disconnect if a lot of whats out there really cant even reproduce CD spec properly. Then again, once I start looking at something like this, I would *hope* that apperant lack of care in engineering dissolves.
@@MaddJakd I was talking about for the consumer. For actual production, that's a whole different discussion. The problem with a lot of ADCs though is, most of what they output above 50 kHz is electrical noise. So, even if you're producing music in 192, 352 or 384, you're going to want to remove all that noise in the master, or just leave it there to prove that it was really produced in that resolution. For the consumer who is paying more for 192 or higher, they are essentially buying a lot of inaudible, high-frequency electrical noise attached to a bit of music.
@@Currawong Most digital music is 16/44.1. Schiit has chosen to concentrate on that. Happy GUMBY owner.
I hope one day they can provide a St fiber glass output option that you can get installed instead of the Toslink output.
Nice! Nice video.
Do you recommend Bitfrost 2 or Gumby A1 for someone who looks for analogue/vynil type of sound? Love the MM sound signature but it sounds a little bit entry level
I noticed that you have not commented about the low end performance of the Bifrost 2 that I believe a lot of us are curious about. Would you please provide some remarks on that? Thx.
Can anyone compare this to the Topping D90?
I did it to topping d30 and heard no difference.
FUCK YES dude I was waiting for this review
Currawong, I had hoped you would have commented more on USB performance, considering the Bifrost 2 is to be significant over the Gen 5 version.
That'd be difficult to do without an Eitr to compare. If it is any help, I have Gen 5 in my Yggy and I just hook that up directly to a computer now, without anything fancy in-between. However, if what I saw on the Unison USB board is correct, it has isolators on both sides of the PIC controller -- one on the input side, and one on the output side. That means both sources of noise -- the computer and the PIC controller itself -- are isolated. That's a step up from Gen 5 in that aspect alone.
Currawong, do you think the sound quality of the Bifrost 2 is comparable to simply upgrading a Jotunheim to a multibit dac? And do you thing the Bifrost 2 is comparable to the Topping DX7 Pro (ES9038PRO)? Thanks for the great review!
Thanks Victor. I've never tried any of the Topping DACs, so I can't answer that one. The Bifrost is a big step up from the multibit DAC cards available for the amps.
@@Currawong thanks for the information, I really appreciate it
@@Farazao the dac cards are garbage, they are still on usb gen 2, and won't compete at all, until they get on unison. Schiit's USB Gen 2 implementation is pretty crap.
I hear about the noise the PC generates - I hear about the power supply for the USB cable with the separate battery.
Has anyone ever thought that with a portable PC, you just need to disconnect the power supply plug and listen with the laptop battery?
You don't need the USB power lines connected for any DAC where the USB is powered internally, so you could just use a modified power cable. That doesn't prevent there being noise on the data line though. That's why USB solutions tend to signal regenerating hubs with good power supplies.
Bifrost 2 or denafrips ares II ?
Denafrips Ares II is Far Superior Than Schiit Audio Bifrost 2.
@@AnshGulati I'd love a little more specificity since I am deciding between precisely these two DACs in the coming months. (I'm retired on a fixed income, so it takes me a few months to save for a major purchase.) Once you figure in shipping and state tax (Schiit charges both, I believe Denafrips charges neither), the cost in the US is almost exactly the same. All things being equal, I am probably leaning to the Bifrost, which ships immediately; there is a lead time of a couple of months on all Denafrips DACs.
IMO the comp list should be BF2, Ares II, Rme adi-2 dac, Topping D90, SMSL M400, MHDT Orchid/Stockholm/Atlantis.
hello Amos, very, very good review. I have the Bifrost 4490 and Eitr and am considering the BF2. do you find the BF2's soundstage to come forward? I do like the BF4490 but could use a bit more detail but with no fatigue. thanks!
I've never had a 4490 here, so I can't say. I do find that short-filter DACs bring the soundstage forward, which is unnatural, but some people prefer it.
Amos are you going to review a Chord Hugo TT2? It seems like a great all in one solution. Plenty of power to drive pretty much any headphone. It drives the abyss pretty well.
I should try and organise it. I just didn't get around to it this year yet.
I watched one review where the jottenheim 2 was said to be too much of a good thing with Sundaras and other warm headphones, I was looking at getting the bifrost 2 paired to jot2, would this be a mistake for someone like myself with several warmer headphones. By the way I am all in favour of a fun, musical sound hence my headphone choices.
@currawong I'm looking at dacs at the moment and I am looking for options that would fit what you said about what tracks you're listening to.
Most of my tracks are ripped from CD's, and the artists I listen to don't have the fancy dsd, mqa, dxd tracks.
Will likely pair with lyr 3 or Feliks echo.
Nowadays, I'd say you don't need the fancy formats, especially as most get good results from CD quality music, so I'd pick something in your budget. That may be the Bifrost 2.
@@Currawong any suggestions within that same price range? I guess musicality would be important as I am a metal listener first and foremost.
What would be the improvement if I added the Schitt Bifrost in between Bluenode 2 and my amp?
Currently us a Oppo 105 as a DAC. ESS Sabre32 Reference Digital-to-Analog Converters (DAC). Is Bitfrost a considerable upgrade?
So now schiit uses ess sabre add in cards including unison usb. Apparently (at least on Reddit), they have a warmer sound than the old akm boards…
Would you be able to do an update to this video where Bifrost 2 is compared to latest Asgard/Lyr with the ess chips?
I'll probably do a review on the ESS add-on board itself at some point.
@@Currawong thanks! Sorry to be a pain
Hi, what is the name of good recording artist yon mentioned in this clip? Jessie ???? Thank you
Great review, thank you. Hoe would you compare the Audio-gd 1.38 with Singxer F1 input to the Biffost 2? I like a precise, clean character and think about upgrading my 1.38, but maybe I go wrong with the Biffost 2 in that case?
I don't have the 1.38, nor the latest updates to the R28 (which would be equivalent) but where I commented on the R28 vs. the Bifrost would be as close as I'm able to get.
I’m between the bifrost 2 , ares II, and Rme Dac-2... don’t use usb.
Did you have a chance to compare with the previous Bifrost MB? I wonder if it is worth the upgrade... I already upgraded to the USB Unison input which was effective in removing some digital “grain” both on my Bifrost MB and Yggdrasil .
I've never tried any of the old Bifrost models unfortunately.
hope it sound 10x better than the last one because it wasnt that great..
how does it fare against chord dacs? soekris and holo spring?
You're crazy! Old one sounds great to me. =)
Which version did you have?
@@maxb.simonsen2459 latest multibit with the gen 5 usb.
do you think this will pair good with the 789?
Right now I only have the ifi micro idsd BL. Would it be a good upgrade to get the bifrost 2 and use the micro idsd as an amp? Or do these two not pair so well and I should get a dedicated amp for the bifrost? Am a bit on a budget and don't want to spend too much. Thanks for your thoughts!
You will need a standalone AMP. There are many affordable AMP's out there including the Asgard 3.
And now we have the modius.
Hi! I'm using a Lyr 3 with an onboard multibit DAC, out to Amiron Homes and HD 600s. Do you believe the Bifrost would be enough of an improvement over the onboard card to be worth it? Thanks! -Drew
It's definitely a step up, though how much will depend on what headphones you use, and what music you like. I reckon if you plan to get other amps in the future, then that would make it more worth it, as it has both balanced and SE outputs.
would this be an upgrade to the NAD D1050? how?
I am thinking about upgrading my Node 2i with this external DAC. Do you think the sound quality will improve?
I’m thinking of adding this to my Node 2i to use the balanced input on my HA and enjoy both schools of thought on DAC...oh and keep MQA.
So, keen for an answer too!
I recently got the bifrost 2 and run my old bluesound as a steamer to the bifrost via spdif. It’s a good upgrade imo. Not “revelatory” or anything, but noticeable. More flesh and texture to the sound and instruments sound more like instruments than a digitized copy. You won’t miss MQA for a second.
can i plug this between my pc and active speakers like edifiers and be sorted? or should i use the asgard 3?
If your active speakers have a volume control, yes. The Bifrost 2 DAC doesn't have a volume control. If you need a volume control, then you'd need to use the Asgard 3 in between.
2 questions
1. I never got a good look at your t-shirt but is that logo the international firefighters symbol. If so I did 33 years in Calgary and for about ten years we were allowed to do a job exchange with Australian firefighters. ( trade houses, cars and jobs for a year) 2019 would have been a hellish year to trade.
2. I have a very old but quality stereo system - I don’t even have a headphone jack in my pre-amp. I mainly have vinyl and CD but do have a very large collection of digital music in Flac format. I do have a Sonos which I use as a DAC but hate it. I want nothing to do with streaming, wireless or bluetooth and wifi. Ideally I would like to plug a flash drive into my Mac, build a playlist of Flac’s and then move the usb flash and plug it into a DAC connected to my pre amp. Does such a DAC exist or maybe you could suggest a different solution?
Thanks
Gene
The t-shirt is from CanJam. Respect to you for being a firefighter.
As for using a flash drive, some streamers have USB inputs where you can plug a drive and play the music that way. What do you hate about the Sonos? I use wired network streaming with Roon and I find it to be the most convenient. I avoid using wireless where possible.
@@Currawong Sorry about the bad guess on the t-shirt so I hope I got the Australian part right. I am after 20 years migrating from Apple product's but will admit that their software interfaces are superb. Sonos software is clunky and undependable. I used to use my iPhone and iPad to play waves crashing on the beach all night to help me sleep. It was common to wake up in the morning and find the Sonos not working. Now they have pretty much abandoned support for Apple - my iPad and iPhone are no longer supported. When playing music on the stereo it was quite common for music to stop for a minute or two and then restart. The final complaint is there no comparison in quality between CD, vinyl and the Sonos DAC. I spent a small fortune getting my 45 year old Quads' updated with new caps, modern resistors and op maps. Pointless unless input is high quality.
Thanks for your quick response.
Have added your channel because I like what I have seen so far.
Gene
WHY there a only one optical and one coax input? I never will understand this holy crap. Just a no go of many D/As
Are you going to do a review on the new Asgard?
Yes.
@@Currawong Asgard or Thx789, wich one you enjoyed most? thanks
Currawong Nice!
@@janeiroyoshi asgard for sure
How do you deal with absolute polarity of recordings?
In software. Audirvana, at least, has the ability to invert polarity.
@@Currawong Good to know. It is hard to deal with this problem, with headphones. Speakers you can jump up and swap the connection - this why I like double banana plugs.
Love the comment re hyper analytical DAC'S "then there is nothing I can do for you" 😂😂😂
Hi I’m in the UK and the price difference between this dac and the chord Qutest is around £300 - which would you recommend if I was to use it one of them in a system with Schiit Freya s preamp with balanced connections and 2 Schiit vidar power amps - listen mostly to rock and ambient music with fairly deep bass?
Thanks
Qutest without a second thought.
Thanks I was leaning in that direction - have you done a comparison - I wouldn’t be using headphones just speakers so I’m not sure how they would both sound in this way ?
I have a Hugo 2 here, which is, for the most part, the same as the Qutest, and it is comparable to the Yggdrasil, if that's any help.
Thanks consensus is Qutest then 👍
The Bifrost II must cost a lot more (price and/or taxes, duties, shipping) in the UK than in the US. The Qutest looks great--but in the US it is more than double the price of the Bifrost II (roughly $700 to $1700 USD).
this or the chord mojo? (as a dedicated dac)
If you don't need portability, a desktop amp makes more sense.
Currawong thanks. But how about for sound quality? Bifrost is better?
@@mykeldg If you dont want to be able to hear details like reverb tails and such go for Bifrost. If you like the power constantly charging through the battery, and it getting hot go for the chord mojo. If you like to leave your system on thats now a fire hazard sice its like constantly charging a mobile phone just waiting for the battery to go bad.
@@gtk_NO The Bifrost 2 cannot reproduce reverb tails?
@@phetmoz I dunno about bifrost 2, but the bifrost 1 multibit is quite horrible. It simply removed high frequency info we could hear with a number of other dacs. Im over generalizing to bifrost 2 since im bitter over spending that amount of money over what turned out to be a boat anchor. Test track was Motorcycle - as the rush comes. Maybe a dac for someone, not for me, it was hypetrained at the time all over the internet. When compared vs rega, RME, wadia dacs etc it stood out in a bad way, did nearly not sound like the same track was being played.
First can’t wait to get my hands on this :)
your not accurate about the volume level mr carrawong. please do your job good. greatings from holland
He used PIC to save cost. Thats it. And he called the regular USB PHY noisy because he doesn't know about high speed transcievers, the clock data recovery and the stringence of clock phase noise etc. So don't fall for the trap that regular USB's are noisy. If you look at how accurate the clocks are and stringent the specifications on the transceivers are you'll realize that it's BS to call it noisy. And moreover if you're transmitting same data, where do you escape the noise caused by the data? Not possible. I just wanted to tell you that jitter of clocks in the USB are of the order of 200 pico seconds. YES 200 pico seconds. Even if that becomes 1n second, 100Khz signal doesn't get affected in anyway. And how will a digital signal even get affected by this? That' is completely illogical. Neither you have the clock from the USB as it's recovered from the data by the receiver clock-data recovery circuit again which is a herculean task at high speeds. You're generating your own clock for the DAC. I think the only thing you need to understand is, HE USED PIC TO SAVE MONEY!!! that's all. It probably already has a USB PHY if he is using USB 2.0 meaning, he is using a USB PHY in one chip and calling another PHY in another chip noisy. If you want to pass USB compliance, it costs money which means that he wouldn't be able to even do some own USB thing and connect it to the USB in the market. Ridiculous.
You should probably discuss the reasons for his choices with Mike himself. You can ask him, publicly, on Head-Fi. Some of the details as I recall are mentioned in the "Schiit Happened" book, the chapters of which are also on Head-Fi. I'm thinking of seeing if I can interview him, so if you have some serious questions, or suggestions for them, then I'll ask him.
As long as it's not worse.
Shit audio products haha. It looks like an Xbox. Waste of money when most adults ears can’t hear the difference due to being old.
There's a whole story behind the name too. www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up.701900/