Looking for my first DAC

Curiousjim,

I use a Schiit Bifrost Multibit with one of my office systems. I have been very happy with it. It sounds great, especially for the price. If you are concerned about MQA, DSD or other formats of questionable value and low adoption, then this DAC is not for you. If you just want a really good sounding DAC for a reasonable price, you would be hard presssed to find better.

If you happen to find yourself well funded, take a look at the Mytek Brooklyn DAC+. I use one in my main system. It runs about $2k. It slices, it dices, it chops and handles every format known to man. Assuming that is out of your range though, the Schiit Bifrost will give you years of service.

Mahler123,

Thanks for recommending the Liberty. I realized right after I hit send that the Liberty would be a good choice for him. You are right, it retails for $1k.

Soix,

i have not compared the Liberty directly to the Bifrost, but I have compared the Brooklyn to the Bifrost. The Brooklyn is essentially the Liberty’s prosumer big brother. The major differences can be understood in this review of the Liberty-

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/entry/mytek-liberty-digital-to-analog-converter

In my opinion, both DAC’s are phenomenal and have both been compared with DAC’s many times their price. I don’t find the SQ to be vastly different between the two. The major difference for me and the reason the Brooklyn takes front and center in my main system, is the plethora of connectivity options and features like HT passthrough and balanced outputs and balanced headphones with a nice OLED display and remote. The Bifrost is much more bare bones, but it does exactly what it promises, no more or less. The Bifrost is good enough to still have a home in my stack and if my Brooklyn kicked the bucket for some reason, I would not lose a lot of sleep over promoting the Bifrost back to front line duty.

@soix The rumors are unfortunately still true. There customer support through the entire value chain from pre-sales to RMA is sorely lacking, I mean non-existent. I could never get an update on the shipping date for my Brooklyn despite numerous emails and voicemails. Then it just showed up one day. The product quality is good enough to dull the sharp irritation of the customer experience, but that may not be true for everyone. By contrast, the customer service at Schiit is outstanding with very personal attention and an open invitation to visit their facilities in CA. Makes the Bifrost extra delicious if you don’t need the bells and whistles the Brooklyn brings to the table. It is a tough choice, which is why I ended up with both of them😂

for Jitter, even though I have not noticed any jitter issues, I inserted a Schiit Wyrd between the Roon Nucleus and Brooklyn DAC+.

For what it is worth, my stereo is on a dedicated circuit with separate ground with PS Audio Power Ports and PS Audio Noise Harvesters.

Mark