I see people talking about setting it on 24/44.1 or 24/48 which would allow the Bifrost to oversample instead of Windows.
Ahh, apologies, I didnāt register the full extent of your question. Youāre right but itās an issue that youāll have to figure out for yourself. If you bring it down to 24/48 then files you have (which may not be a problem to you if you have all 16/44) then windows will down sample a 24/96 file. I donāt have a lot but a good 10% of my music collection is.
Does the BF2 upsample to 24/96 as itās max or does it upsample to 24/192?
I believe it upsamples to 24/192. Most of my collection is 16/44.
So most of the time I will just hop on YouTube and I think they use 48k. Windows settings have 16, 24, 32 bit options and 44.1 to 192khz options.
Thatās where benefits of exclusive mode comes in. It will query the destination for what rate it can support and change on the fly. Not sure if Amazon supports that, but I do use it for Tidal and Roon. And you see the DAC change the resolution based on whatās coming in. The upsampling happens in the DAC itself and from what I can see the DAC even though it up samples, still shows 44/48/88/96/192 depending on what content Iām playing. If youāre using YouTube as your source, then donāt sweat it, just enjoy the music. You wouldnāt want to start scratching below the surface as to what they do in the way of compression.
I have exclusive mode checked. You think I should set it to 24/48 and let the DAC upsample if it chooses to?
If the playback software is set to exclusive mode, MOST software will select the native Bitrate for each track.
The one exception to this Iām aware of is Amazon music, that leaves it with the windows selected bitrate.
If the bulk of what you play is 44.1/16 then set it to that if you really want to avoid the windows resampler.
192/24 or 96/24 is a reasonable compromise if your playing āHi-Resā audio, since they are usually at multiples of 48KHz.
BF upsamples everything. And it does a better job than your computer (part of the reason for its price 
)Let BF do its thing.
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Wow this dac is impressive. I have a love/hate relationship with first impressions but here it goes. Things that stood out after a few hours are an overall level up in resolution, bass texture and nuance are really well defined, staging is really nice giving me a clear picture of where everything is in a way that I can almost picture the person playing, improved timbre.
It has a very lush and full sound that initially threw me off but I very quickly came to like it and I think that quality has toned down a bit or I have gotten used to it, idk.
On the desk with the bhc + speedball and beyer t1.2. Dacs Iām coming from are the multibit in the asgard 3 and the earman donald dac.
Iām getting a sense of why itās so beloved on the forum 
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Thatās awesome. Iām looking forward to owning one some day. 
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I second the positive impressions on the BF2. That being said I do struggle with isolating exactly how much of the sound change comes sorely from the dac itself. I only briefly compared the MLP/BF2 to the Geshelli stack before I sent those off. Iām assuming most of the increase in detail came from the BF2 but itās hard to tell. Regardless, Iām quite pleased with it and itāll (most likely) stay my endgame dac.
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Yeah thatās a difficult one lol I think what you have now is probably a tier above the geshelli stack and also sonically quite different as well from what I read/hear. Doesnāt really matter either I guess as long as youāre digging it 
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Donāt forget that since it is a Multibit DAC, it will sound better after being warmed up. When I first got mine, I noticed a pretty noticeable change after I let it warm up for about 2 hours and came back to it. That is one of the few pieces of gear that I own that I donāt shut off.
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Very true. Though truthfully that jump in sound made me very curious as to what else Iām missing so I ended up selling the MLP for another shiny new toy. Iāll upload it when it arrives this Saturday. Very hyped.
Same! Itās very useful to turn on and forget about it.
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Thatās pretty interesting. I did let it warm up about 30 mins but that lush fullness I mentioned did seemingly tone down bringing a greater sense of refinement. Iāll just follow your lead then and leave the thing on when Iām home.
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dang, you got me hyped up for my bf2 that is (hopefully) arriving tmr
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Took it off the desk and into the room today and itās doing really well here too. Doesnāt feel like thereās a bottleneck anymore.
Technicalities improved across the board. Staging and imaging are vastly improved but I have one knit pick here being depth. I expected more improvement tbh but itās not bad. Layering and imaging are on point but the separation could be greater for my preferences.
Might be too laid back with my other gear as well but itās too early to tell. My opinions and preferences of course.
Early impressions here again but it wowed me more on the desk.
Used with halo a23+ and freya+ and br03ās.
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Pretty nice boost in performance on the Asgard 3 with the Bifrost 2 compared to the internal multibit. Wider more defined stage and really nice isolation with sounds and instruments. I think improved micro details which imo has a plethora of benefits associated with it. It just gives the A3 a nicer sense of refinement
Not sure if the A3 will scale up too much past this but itās nice to hear it at its potential best.
Itās pretty satisfying to hear all these benefits from a new piece of gear. Usually donāt have this much to say about things but Iām really enjoying this dac a lot.
Edit: all impressions with lcd-2 pre-faz
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That is nice to hear that you are enjoying the Bifrost 2. It is one of the few pieces of gear that I wouldnāt sell unless I absolutely had to (along with the V200). I think you are spot on with what you are hearing. I will also say that the Asgard 3 scales up really well and does pair nicely with the BF2.
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Appreciate the validation. Good to hear the v200 has made a positive early impression on you. My patience waiting for one to pop up on the used market (in good shape) paid off yesterday so hopefully that gets to my desk in the not so distant future (but usps so patience is a must lol)
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