Measurement and Review of Schiit BiFrost Multibit DAC

[Candlesticks]

I went down this road lol, posting limitations are next. Admins have to approve your posts, they can edit your posts before they approve them but you cannot edit your posts anymore.
Its pretty messed up if you ask me.

It's malicious or extreme laziness from moderators who think that any kind of discussion outside of dull praise is something that has to be shut down because some users might react badly to any evidence that their precious products could in any way be bad. Some don't actually care but many others say they don't care but it's pretty clear they're upset that it doesn't measure great.

What happens is that you get schiit flung at you but any kind of response from you gets a hard response from the moderators who'll then lock you out of the thread. The people throwing the Schiit are the same few people who were posting in the thread for the last 50 pages so more likely to be rabid fans because who else is going to post in a forum thread for a DAC that is hundreds of pages long. It's just become their chat room and in 10 pages your posts have been buried into the dump never to be seen again. Now that the lightbox has gone your posts won't even be discovered because there is no thread specific image gallery.

 

[amirm]

This dac has multiple dac chips iirc, might be interleaving to prevent glitches at output. There is this thread at the analog devices forum where someone explains his thought process in making a dac similar to these schiit multibit dacs.
https://ez.analog.com/thread/83825

When you say "this dac" you mean the Schiit Bifrost Multibit has interleaved DACs? If so I am surprised that there still glitches.

But yes, I do know about using dual DACs and switching between them. There is one implementation of this that worked well in the past. The person who designed that though has a lot more competence than what we see here though.

 

[Wayne]

And they still have that amazingly musical performance on the -90dB sine wave and the huge musical glitches on the -70dB.

@Cosmik: I'm not sure what your graphs show, and their interpretation. Could you comment? Thanks

 

[mindbomb]

When you say "this dac" you mean the Schiit Bifrost Multibit has interleaved DACs? If so I am surprised that there still glitches.

But yes, I do know about using dual DACs and switching between them. There is one implementation of this that worked well in the past. The person who designed that though has a lot more competence than what we see here though.

I know the schiit yggdrasil (the $2k model) says in the description it has 4 dacs. I don't know if they maintained that trait of multiple dacs down the line. The visible glitch might be from the switching between dacs rather than the switches in the dac.

 

[March Audio]

I think my take on this is that considering there are so many dacs out there that have great measurements and sound great, why would you even consder this dac? Doesnt make sense. Also if it is sounding "better" to some individuals shouldnt they stop to ask themselves why it sounds different to other dacs? Note my distinction between different and better. Shouldnt they wonder if it might have something to do with the poor technical performance, you know the poor linearity, the gross distortion and the high levels of spuria.

 

[amirm]

I know the schiit yggdrasil (the $2k model) says in the description it has 4 dacs. I don't know if they maintained that trait of multiple dacs down the line. The visible glitch might be from the switching between dacs rather than the switches in the dac.

Here is the picture of the multibit upgrade board from Schiit for BiFrost:

As I have highlighted in yellow, there is only a single AD5547 DAC in there. Since that is a dual-channel DAC, there is only one DAC per Left and Right channels. So no way there is any interleaving going on.

The output goes directly to those two op-amps and there is not much else. So maybe there is an RC filter but nothing else is visible that would keep the ladder DAC glitch from escaping.

Do you see anything else?

 

[Wombat]

That's correct censorship helps to find the truth.

Nothing like a bit of thread putzen(cleaning) to keep it flowing.

 

[Jimster480]

It's malicious or extreme laziness from moderators who think that any kind of discussion outside of dull praise is something that has to be shut down because some users might react badly to any evidence that their precious products could in any way be bad. Some don't actually care but many others say they don't care but it's pretty clear they're upset that it doesn't measure great.

What happens is that you get schiit flung at you but any kind of response from you gets a hard response from the moderators who'll then lock you out of the thread. The people throwing the Schiit are the same few people who were posting in the thread for the last 50 pages so more likely to be rabid fans because who else is going to post in a forum thread for a DAC that is hundreds of pages long. It's just become their chat room and in 10 pages your posts have been buried into the dump never to be seen again. Now that the lightbox has gone your posts won't even be discovered because there is no thread specific image gallery.

Yes but also they will delete your posts or edit them over time so people cannot search for them.
They encourage off topic nonsense posting so that any poor reviews are lost and that only posts of "this is just so awesome omg" are filling most of the the thread.

I know the schiit yggdrasil (the $2k model) says in the description it has 4 dacs. I don't know if they maintained that trait of multiple dacs down the line. The visible glitch might be from the switching between dacs rather than the switches in the dac.

That is one of the models that has more than one chip. The Gungnir also has more than 1 chip.
Modi and Bifrost are both single chip designs.
Then Gungnir and Yggdrasil are 4:
Gungnir
D/A Conversion IC: Analog Devices AD5781BRUZ x 4 (2 per channel, hardware balanced configuration)
Yggdrasil
D/A Conversion IC: Analog Devices AD5791BRUZ x 4 (2 per channel, hardware balanced configuration)

Bifrost:
D/A Conversion IC: Analog Devices AD5547CRUZ

D/A Conversion IC:
Modi Multibit: Analog Devices AD5547

^Taken right from their website

 

[amirm]

Here is the Yggdrasil DAC section:

As I have circled it uses two mono DACs (AD5791 20-bit) per channel (picture is fuzzy so kind of hard to read the part numbers). Even there, it seems like they are summing their output as opposed to using them in interleaved form to remove the glitch:

Was there any measurement confirmation that they did indeed fix the glitching problem with Yggdrasil?

 

[Jimster480]

I wonder if someone will send in a Yggdrasil for measurements. The last time one went to innerfidelity I think the measurements were less than exciting.

 

[mindbomb]

Here is the picture of the multibit upgrade board from Schiit for BiFrost:

As I have highlighted in yellow, there is only a single AD5547 DAC in there. Since that is a dual-channel DAC, there is only one DAC per Left and Right channels. So no way there is any interleaving going on.

The output goes directly to those two op-amps and there is not much else. So maybe there is an RC filter but nothing else is visible that would keep the ladder DAC glitch from escaping.

Do you see anything else?

Ok, I thought all the multibit dacs had multiple dac chips, but I was mistaken.

Here is the Yggdrasil DAC section:

Was there any measurement confirmation that they did indeed fix the glitching problem with Yggdrasil?

It's mentioned in this computer audiophile thread. Interestingly, schiit brings up atomicbob by name again. Seems a little odd for an audio company to be that familiar with a random forum reviewer.
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/37265-yggdrasil-glitch-fixed/

 

[Sylafari]

What an explosion of discussion. What have I done?

I wonder if someone will send in a Yggdrasil for measurements. The last time one went to innerfidelity I think the measurements were less than exciting.

I think amirm has one coming in for measurements so soon?

 

[amirm]

I wonder if someone will send in a Yggdrasil for measurements. The last time one went to innerfidelity I think the measurements were less than exciting.

I actually measured two versions of it last weekend: one with and one without the analog board upgrade. Will post those soon.

 

[amirm]

It's mentioned in this computer audiophile thread. Interestingly, schiit brings up atomicbob by name again. Seems a little odd for an audio company to be that familiar with a random forum reviewer.
https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/37265-yggdrasil-glitch-fixed/

Thanks. So no one ever verified what he said with measurements. And no measurements were posted by them either.

Interesting that when my results were posted to head-fi, they did not say the problem is fixed. It was other people who said that.

If they think the problem is fixed, they should loan me a unit to test. Otherwise, I say they need to demonstrate the fix.

 

[Jimster480]

I actually measured two versions of it last weekend: one with and one without the analog board upgrade. Will post those soon.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh Schiiiiiiiit

The world is about to be set on fire by Schiit fans. They better start praying to the Forum Gods that their praised Yggdrasil (Translates to the "world tree" or "tree of life") beats atleast the DX7......

 

[Jimster480]

Thanks. So no one ever verified what he said with measurements. And no measurements were posted by them either.

Interesting that when my results were posted to head-fi, they did not say the problem is fixed. It was other people who said that.

If they think the problem is fixed, they should loan me a unit to test. Otherwise, I say they need to demonstrate the fix.

Schiit will never loan a unit to test. If you notice none of the major review sites do measurement based reviews on any loaner units. Everyone who reviews Schiit products is someone who has no way to review it with measurements.
I went on the hunt some months ago for people who do measurements of Schiit products but there are really only a few measurements available on the whole net. Which is quite weird considering how big they are.

 

[Dismayed]

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh Schiiiiiiiit

The world is about to be set on fire by Schiit fans. They better start praying to the Forum Gods that their praised Yggdrasil (Translates to the "world tree" or "tree of life") beats atleast the DX7......

Naah. They don't care. They 'listen to music, not to test signals'.

I have one more piece of Schiit to sell. I think I'll list it on eBay, and not on this site!

 

[Jimster480]

Naah. They don't care. They 'listen to music, not to test signals'.

I have one more piece of Schiit to sell. I think I'll list it on eBay, and not on this site!

I've had people tell me that before, I wonder if we will get a Magni3 to test. I sold it a few days after buying it. It had weird peaks in the high range that I didn't experience with my A30 or my o2Amp.
I don't think anyone on this site wants to buy any Schiit. Sell it over at Schiit-fi before all this news goes public!

 

[RayDunzl]

Schiit will never loan a unit to test. If you notice none of the major review sites do measurement based reviews on any loaner units. Everyone who reviews Schiit products is someone who has no way to review it with measurements.

Maybe.

https://www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-yggdrasil-da-processor-measurements

https://www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-ragnarok-integrated-amplifiermeasurements

https://www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-bifrost-da-processor-measurements

Maybe not.

 

[mindbomb]

There is also a video review of the schiit jotunheim headphone amp from headfi on youtube.
Unlike all the other reviews, that one is actually positive. So I keep my mind open to the possibility there will be some good products in their lineup. Just gotta wait for measurements to confirm.