A devastating situation that ended up being a blessing, ever have this?

Hi All,

So I have had a Schiit Bifrost 2 as my DAC in my main system and have been enjoying it for almost 2 years. However, I have always been intrigued with the Denafrips Ares II (mostly due to all the excellent press it gets on this site). But being it's in the same category price wise as Bifrost (and being totally content with Bifrost) I couldn't justify switching unheard. Well 2 weeks ago I was able to get my hands on some Transparent Super Balanced IC's for a great price. During the process of switching out my Shunyata Venom Balanced for the Transparent something must have happened as my Bifrost got extremely warm and I started noticing a weird smell. Long story short it turns out somehow my Bifrost fried and then just completely called in sick. Horrified. I couldn't believe it, how did this happen?

Well I sucked it up and ordered the Denafrips Ares from Vinshine Audio (cannot say enough about their amazing customer service). It arrived and after a few days for break in I sat down and was just awestruck! WOW! Obviously, everything in this hobby is subjective. That said as great as the Bifrost is, I have found the Denafrips to be superior in pretty much every way. More air, that littlest extra smidge of detail, tighter bass and just having a more natural all-around sound. Please trust me this is in no way a knock on Bifrost (I ended up reaching out to them and sent it back and they fixed it free of charge-another example of excellent customer service-especially when I wasn't expecting anything and figured it'd cost an arm and a leg and not worth fixing) but a testament to Denafrips and how good this DAC really is.

If this had never have happened I would have always just been curious about the Denafrips but probably would have never known how great this DAC is...Funny and fortuitous how something so horrifying at the time, turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Have any of you had this happen?

By the way I'm now going to connect the Bifrost to my second system to upgrade my DAC there. So, for me this was truly a win win (with the added expense of the Denafrips obviously but worth every penny)!