Schiit Yggdrasil wins Absolute Sound Golden Ear Award for 2017

[Soundmig]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

With all due respect to the folks at RMAF 2016, they might have been referring to differences using balanced vs. single-ended headphones as my guess they were presenting at Can-Jam (?).

I haven't directly compared them, but from the extensive reading I've done on other forums, the consensus is Gumby is notably superior-sounding to Bifrost Multibit (aka Bimby).

Some reasons are that Gumby uses a better Analog Devices DAC chip (19 bit) than Bimby and the closed-form filter it uses is identical to Yggdrasil's.

From Schiit:
"In actuality, it's a lot like Yggdrasil, using the same proprietary closed-form digital filter and precision multibit DACs. In this case, the DACs are AD5781BRUZ rather than Yggy's AD5791BRUZ, but there's still 4 of them for true hardware balancing, and they're followed by discrete JFET buffers for simplicity and excellent performance."

Bimny uses a lower-spec Analog Devices AD5547CRUZ chip, and the filter is not as sophisticated.

From one poster, who is a headphone user:
"Gumby is much more neutral to my ears. Bimby is on the warmer/darker/smoother/more gooey side. Even with Wyrd, Bimby is still like that compared to Gumby. The difference is enough that I'd be able to listen to a stock HD800 on a solid state amp connected to Bimby. That's how warm it is. It is a very euphonic DAC in that sense.

On that note, though, I'd still prefer Gumby even with my HD800, because Gumby gives much higher resolution, much better imaging, and much better soundstaging. The difference really is not subtle. Bimby tends to sound bit congested/compressed in the lower regions, and sometimes uncontrolled as well, whereas Gumby is always tight, articulated, textured, and detailed in those regions. Drums sound like a blur on Bimby, whereas they sound closer to the snappy, impactful, very slight but controlled rumble real life representation with Gumby. Or at least IMO, Gumby sounds closer to the truth with regards to instruments"

Hope this helps...

Puma Cat ... that's very helpful - thanks. I figured as much and was actually ready to upgrade to Gumby (from Bimby) but the Schiit guy said what he said which I thought was odd. I sincerely appreciate the information as what you describe with the Bimby is what I hear also and, good as Bimby is, I do want to improve the sonics.