Looking for my first DAC

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.

@markcdaniel - Yeah, given all the positive reviews on both it doesn’t surprise me that they sound pretty similar. Good point on the features though. Someone once posted here that Mytek’s customer responsiveness was a bit lacking, but that was a while back. Any experience with this?  And any idea of their jitter-reduction capabilities?  A lot of DACs, especially in this price range, don't seem to do a whole lot to correct for jitter and the OP's gonna have some. 

mahler123,
Thanks, the Liberty looks great!  
I looked at a used Wyred4sound dac2 as well. It has many upgrades as well.
I still need a trial period so I can listen before I buy, so the Bifrost Multibit is still very much on the list.

So the search continues.

JD

sfar,
I looked at the 2019 list and saw your Pro-ject Pre Box S2 DAC. Seeing as I’m just starting down the path, what can tell me about how the sound changed in your system?  With Crutchfields 60 day trial, I can add it to my list.

JD

FWIW, I had Accoustat 2+2s with both interface As  and OTlL amps. I now have a Oppo 105 that I use as a transport though it  can function as a direct volume control/dac to amp. I upgraded the 105  with an aftermarket Linear Power supply.. still not satisfied with the sound, I bought Audio Alchemy Dac/Pre + outboard PS 5 power supply (outstanding) but  both are for sale (see US AudioMart or Audio Asylum adv that would work great, as I changed to PS Audio Stellar dac/pre and M700 amps