Several months ago, my trusty Emotiva Dac died a full death, and it was to old to repair, so I went looking for another DAC. After doing a lot of research, I settled on the Schitt Bifrost. Part of it was the success I had with the little Eitr device I reviews previously. The DAC received great reviews and was within the price I wanted to spend.
I have not been disappointed after having it in the system for about 6 months now. It has an extremely detailed and clean sound. Absolutely no coloration regardless of the bit depth or sample rate. It is a good bit cleaner with better sound stage that the older Emotiva DAC, however I believe that is just an improvement in the technology over several years. It does have a galvonicly isolated USB input, and it reclocks the signal just as the Eitr did.
My only complaint is the there is no indication of the sample rate or bit depth on the front panel. In normal use, that is not an issue, however when setting up parameters in Pulse Audio on Linux, it makes it difficult to know if the config file is correct. Consequently I have to us my portable headphone DAC to see those settings. Once the config files were squared away, the Bifrost was seamless and transparent. If it remains reliable it will be in the system for a long time.
I have posted a bit about our home theatre set up in a couple of posts about new equipment, but this is about the overall system. This is not a surround sound movie watching system. It is a very well developed two channel stereo music system, that happens to have a video monitor.
The speakers are two pairs of Dahlquist DQ-10’s that have been mirror imaged and stacked into frames I built about 35 years ago. The speakers have every available mod done to them, along with driver rebuilds over the years. Of all the components in the system, these are the constant, I have listened to a great many systems over the years, and have yet to come across speakers that have the extended frequency range, low distortion, ability to image and ungodly dynamics of these. There are other reproducers that may excel in a small degree, but none do it all like the DQ-10’s. Large scale orchestral, choir, chamber music, vocal, jazz, even rock are all reproduced as recorded. There is also an SVS subwoofer that handles the low bass from about 80hz down to 18hz. This does relieve the main panels from having to do a lot of low bass work, thereby lowering distortion.
The primary electronics are all Emotiva. The power amps are XPA-1’s which produce a kilowatt into the 4 ohm load of the stacked DQ’s. The speakers are famous for requiring a lot of power and high current. Having that much available power means that there is never an issue with reproducing what ever dynamics are called for, yet the first watt is about the cleanest I have ever heard with the exception of some dedicated low power class A tube amps.
The preamp is a two channel XSP-1, and the DAC is a XDA-2. One of the primary points for me was that all analog signal paths in the equipment are fully balanced. Even the power amps are balanced all the way to the speakers. This results in a noise floor that is inaudible at any level.
The two other posts detail the other equipment in the system, so I won’t go over it again. The display is the last of the Panasonic Plasma TV’s. Six years ago when I acquired it, it put any LCD set to shame. Deep blacks and shadow detail, along with beautiful and subtle color. Of course since then the OLED displays have overtaken this set in so many ways, yet until it breaks completely it will stay in the system.
It has been a work in process for over four decades, but it has now come to the point that I am very satisfied, and see no further upgrades unless something dies irreparably . About all that I will do now is acoustic tweaks to the room and listening environment.
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