![]() ![]() When it comes to music and comparisons, I find the Bifrost offers more meat on music’s bones, making the DacMagic 200M sound comparatively lighter weight, presenting a skinnier version of the music at hand. No headphone amp, no balanced output, no Bluetooth, no MQA, no DSD, and the Bifrost maxes out at 24-bit/192kHz. Feature-wise, the Bifrost does not compete with the riches of the DacMagic 200M as it’s just a DAC, offering USB and 2x S/PDIF (Coax and Toslink) inputs, and a pair of single-ended RCA outputs. The current incarnation of the Bifrost is US$699. The Schiit Bifrost Multibit DAC has been sharing the barn with me since 2019. After reviewing well over a hundred DACs, which means living with and listening to each one in my system, it’s difficult to forget the excitement that some gear elicits. The majority of those years were spent solely focused on digital replay. The thing is, it’s my job to not listen to anything in isolation, and I’ve spent the better part of 8 years, full-time, comparing this to that, and the other. In fact, I spent a few weeks mainly listening through it, and was never bothered, annoyed, or distracted, happily going about my daily music explorations and enjoyments more or less unfettered. If I was to gauge the sound of the DacMagic 200M in isolation, I could easily walk away with nothing but praise for its punchy, taught, and wiry, muscular sound. ![]() It gets the job done without calling undue attention to itself. On a pure sound quality basis, I would rate the DacMagic 200M as being good for its price. Everything was tied together with AudioQuest cables. All of these amps fed a pair of GoldenEar Triton Reference Towers. The resulting analogue signal was routed into a number of integrated amplifiers including the Schiit Ragnarok, Ayre EX-8, and a Cambridge Audio Edge A. In Barn, a Raspberry Pi 4 USB fed a Denafrips IRIS II Digital to Digital Converter which in turn fed the DacMagic 200M with coaxial S/PDIF. Among all of the DacMagic 200M’s traits, this rich feature set is its ace card. I can easily imagine it handling the Toslink output from a flat-screen TV, Coax from a CD transport, and USB from a computer or network player, all feeding a hifi for in-room fun as well as more private, headphone-based moments. ![]() Seeing as no commercially available 32-bit/768kHz files or streams exist, such PCM heights are probably there for people who want to upsample their music before it gets to the DacMagic 200M, either using a hardware box (unlikely at this price point) or a software solution like Roon or HQPlayer.ĭue to its long feature-set list, the Cambridge DacMagic 200M can sit at the center of a pretty busy hifi. The whole show is wrapped in a dark gray steel box.įrom a real-world perspective, MQA really means you have to subscribe to Tidal’s HiFi tier ($19.99/mo.) since it’s by far the largest source of MQA content. The Lunar Gray aluminum front panel also includes a power button, a single-source selection button to choose from the USB, 2x Coax, 2x Toslink, and Bluetooth inputs, a big digital volume control knob for the headphone output, a total of 10 LEDs indicating the sample rate of the incoming music signal, 2 more to indicate MQA or DSD, and a 6.3mm headphone jack. And the DacMagic 200M stuffs all of this stuff into a chassis measuring just 52 x 215 x 191mm, about the size of two really good books.ĭigital to analog conversion is handled by a pair of ESS ES9028Q2M DACs, and Cambridge has opted to make its selectable filters (Fast, Slow, Short delay) selectable via a front panel button. The Cambridge Audio DacMagic 200M is feature-rich, checking most boxes on today’s DAC to-do list: MQA, PCM resolutions up to 32-bit/768kHz(!), DSD256, Bluetooth (AptX), plus balanced and unbalanced outputs a headphone output adds the final check. To compete in this class, a DAC has to be outstanding in some way. They are all solid examples of units that deliver great sound at their price point. Heading north from there (and in ascending price order) we have the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt, the Chord Mojo, and the Denafrips ARES II. There are some pretty great DACs starting at $100, like the Helm BOLT. These days, the competition in and around this mark is fierce. Once upon a time, a new DAC costing around US$500 was news. I have therefore asked Twittering Machinist and Darko.Audio contributor Michael Lavorgna for a second opinion – JD It failed to stack up against the competition: specifically, the Chord Mojo and the Denafrips Ares II. Upon release, it attracted favourable reviews but when I got to hear one, I found myself more impressed by its connectivity than its sound quality. Publisher’s note: The 200M is the latest iteration of the well-respected DacMagic D/A converter from Cambridge Audio. ![]()
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