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In Reply to: RE: Another take on Schiit Bifrost posted by Rajesh on March 18, 2012 at 08:08:49
>>>However, I am also hearing a slightly more sizzling top end, especially with sopranos and violin.That would be the nature of the AKM chips coming through. I found this to be true with nearly every AKM Dac I have owned and listened too. I tried everything I could think of to calm it down but nothing works. Might be something you are going to have to get used too.
My initial impressions of the AKM were much the same as BiFrost owners. I loved the extension and clarity, but grew tired of the edge in long listening sessions.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
Edits: 03/18/12Follow Ups:
I tried to EQ the hell out of the high midrange and treble frequencies but cannot get rid of the sibilance and digital artifact in the high end. I've not encountered this before. It's almost as if the digital tizzyness is encoded in the DNA. Weird and interesting.
Isolating my CDP better eliminated the sibilance in my system.
90% of the time I have found tizz and glare to be jitter from the source or the source + a poorly executed SPDIF cable. I had the exact same issue with the Bifrost. Once I got a good 75 Ohm cable in the system - the harshness was gone.
If you get a HDTV video cable with 75 Ohm BNC's on either end, and do a 75 Ohm BNC to RCA adapters on it you will get a ton of bass - and detailed bass at that, and the sound warms up, hardness disappears. Shouldn't cost more than $90-150 all in all, and you can re-use that cable anywhere you need SPDIF. Oh, for additional help, make sure the cable is 1m-2m long. For some odd reason that is the "magic length" where internal reflections get ignored by the SPDIF receiver and RCA being a terrible interface, you will have some.
Of course, returning is always an option - just saying that you've got it there ... might be worth a shot in making it work that way.
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad"
Time to take advantage of the 15-day return, methinks.
n
Better to return it rather than spend countless hours and money trying to make it work in your system.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
I understand exactly what you mean. Nothing I did, including upsampling, power cords, IC's, etc. etc. etc. could get rid of it. The only way to get rid of it was to actually kill the sonics of the Dac itself.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
I evaluated the AKM chip as a candidate for my new DAC about 2 years ago. I modded the heck out of the demo board and even powered it from batteries. Still no good IMO. Lots of detail, but a digital hardness that would not go away.
I am not hearing the hardness - but horses for courses - it certainly isn't as warm as my record player setup, and My Rega DAC is close to it.
Which chip did you settle upon?
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad"
> > > Which chip did you settle upon?
I think he purposely avoided including that information in the literature, perhaps to avoid scrutiny.
One thing I find disturbing is the inclusion of a "Fan" in the Dac mounted on the top.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
We agree on this. I think its the switched-capacitor filters. This is unique to the AKM I think. Other chips that they produce are excellent, like their S/PDIF receiver.
It is always constructive to find out the potential down side of an otherwise highly-praised product........ Goes to show it is so difficult to get the top right in a DAC........ It will be interesting to listen to this product in an audition, if opportunity were to arise.By the way, on paper, I have little to fault with this product's design, and has been on my radar for computer based playback.
Edits: 03/18/12
No doubt, the designer[s] know what they are doing and have the experience to make a great product.
FYI, they are supposed to be coming out with a high-end Dac, don't know what chip it will use but its in the works.
And yes indeed it is hard to get the higher octaves of digital right.
Dynobots Audio
Music is the Bridge between Heaven and Earth - 音楽は天国と地球のかけ橋
"That would be the nature of the AKM chips coming through. I found this to be true with nearly every AKM Dac I have owned and listened too."
If it's just playing 44.1 kHz through the AKM DAC then it may be a filter effect. The cure would be to try upsampling with a smooth, somewhat rolled off filter, e.g. Sox, 92% offset, minimum phase.
If it happens with most higher sampling rate recordings it is likely that your system is on the bright side and might be more enjoyable if tamed somewhat. Some recordings are just too bright and if one voices the system for them then other recordings may be too dull.
I leave my equipment powered up 24/7 as that also smooths things out.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
very true about 16 bit recordings. The sampling rate is just not high enough. On 24/96 recordings the Bifrost is very neutral in my system. To get the highs right I needed 200 hours break-in and a good 75 Ohm coaxial cable.
Just think about the recording side with inferior ADCs, mixing boards, cheap cables, and dirty power it is a wonder any recording sounds worthwhile.
If clever noise shaping is used, 96/16 can sound almost as good as 96/24. I have done experiments with 96/12 which is only slightly worse and even 96/8 was acceptable, albeit like a noisy pre-recorded tape.
With a much higher sampling rate noise shaping works better. This is why DSD sounds good. DSD is nothing more than 2822/1 PCM, encoded using very clever noise shaping.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I think the Bifrost may have been voiced with the Schiit Lyr tube headphone amp. I had taken the Lyr out of the playback loop as it appeared to be slightly "rolling off" the high frequency response of my SACD playback on my Oppo 95 . The SACDs still sounded detailed but they were sounding more like the CD playback (also pretty exceptional)from the Oppo. DSD sounds a little different then PCM. PCM hi freq. is just a bit more etched. The decay of DSD notes while distinct fade more naturally into silence. Granted I've never heard state of the art PCM playback.
I placed the Lyr back in after the Bifrost & now my PCM music(being played from a hard drive into a Cambridge Audio Network Player into the Bifrost)is sounding closer to DSD. I think I like the sound of my CDs dBPa ripped to my Hard Drive better than them being played on a optical drive. They appear to be a little more immediate & smoother sounding.
The Oppo will remain on the preamp I had it on. I will continue to use two dedicated source specific playback paths as this seems to work for me at this time(or unless I find a magic wallet to fund my new system additions)
Just out of curiousity I took the Lyr back out of the loop. As it turns out the Bifrost must still have some burning in to do, as the HF response is'nt as aggressive it was even without the Lyr following it. For some reason I'm not actually that big a fan of the Lyr, I always seem to loose a slight bit of transparency when it's inserted.
On another note, what do you guys think of Neko D100 DAC ? It looks pretty interesting (& it's about at the upper limit of what I'd like spend at this time) Thanks
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