Schiit Bifrost 1 DAC Tear Down

In this post, I will going to disassembly the original Schiit Bifrost to see what components inside. The unit that I got here is a broken unit. I was told from the seller that the unit is broken during courier delivery which the power transformer is pulled out from the main board. So I bought it for cheap then I repair it while checking the components inside.

Previously I was disassembly the Schiit Bifrost 2 which are promoted as a multibit DAC. It use dual 18 bit AD5781 DAC from Analog Device which is so much different with the first original Bifrost here using 32 bit AKM AK4399EQ Delta Sigma DAC.

The similarity between the original Bifrost and the Bifrost 2 DAC is both utilized the modular design, separate between the main board and the daughter boards on top of it.

Let's get started.

Because this post is intentionally for the original Bifrost tear down, so I can express my feeling about those Bifrost sound quality in the first place.

Although 32 bit AK4399EQ DAC in the original Bifrost seems like more advanced in the DAC technology, but in fact for the sound quality if compare to the 18 bit multibit DAC in the Bifrost 2 is such a big gap between them.

I prefer the sound of Bifrost 2 which smooth, detail and musical. This is the characteristic of multibit DAC in general. By contrast, the rough and edgy sounding of Delta Sigma inside the original Bifrost cannot be avoided and it is expected to sound like that.

Later on in this post you will see the original Bifrost sound quality are probably improved from the analog stages circuitry using discrete components. The AK4399EQ and all Delta Sigma in general are not sound pleasing to my ears. The combination between Delta Sigma DAC with a better design on the analog stages will help to improve the sound quality to become more musical by large margin.

So here is the components inside of the original Bifrost.

I start from the main board which contain power supply, SPDIF & Toslink digital receiver and logic IC for input selector circuitry.

The power supply section are having the basic components inside.

Transformer MCI 4-02-6609 (broken) and will be replace with Signal transformer DST-5-36 (the same built quality).

317T & 337T and two fixed 5 volt regulated power supply covered with tiny clip-on heatsink. This might be a problem in the future due to overheated.

The SPDIF & Toslink receiver and logic control for input selector are all in the main board.

Cirrus Logic CS8418 digital receiver

74HCU04 Hex unbuffered inverter

Microchip Technology PIC24FV16KA302 programable micro controller

The first daughter board is the USB digital receiver.

Unlike the Bifrost 2 using Schiit Unison USB receiver as their proprietary USB receiver, in this original Bifrost, the USB receiver is handled by using the unpopular CM6631 receiver.

The memory IC beside it is required for the CM6631 receiver.

The secondary daughter board is the DAC and the discrete analog stages.

AKM AK4399EQ DAC.

Discrete 2SK170 JFET analog stages, which in my opinion is so much better than using op-amps like in the Bifrost 2. The components around the JFET are also using the high quality components such as Dale RN55 resistors, Epcos electrolytic capacitors and film capacitors.

I wonder if Schiit audio would planning to make the Bifrost 2 with the discrete method same as the original Bifrost like this. It would be great if it is happen.

So I guess that is all for the original Bifrost tear down. The components inside are expected to be far more simple than the Bifrost 2 since the price different between those two are also quite far enough.

For the broken unit here, I finished repair it and it works like charm.

Then I take a listen this DAC for a while and not more than an hour I stop it. I am not enjoying the music at all. So I took out the Bifrost original from my audio system and the Biforst 2 taking the place.

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