This is a winding - and probably totally ignorant - question but I can't seem to find the answer I'm looking for through search.
I've traditionally had a hifi analog setup (turntable --> preamp --> bottlehead crack headphone amp --> hd650) which has been an absolute blast and I figured I might as well loop in my digital stuff as I have a fairly huge library of high(ish) quality digital stuff.
I picked up a Schiit Bifrost because people general seemed to say nice things about it and attempted to loop it into my system which is iTunes --> Airport --> Bifrost --> AV receiver --> bottlehead crack headphone amp --> hd650 and it sounded pretty terrible. The audio was constantly clipping and it all sounded generally distorted/muddy. I thought it might be interference from my receiver but even after pulling that out of the chain the quality improvement was marginal if there was any at all.
I know there are a bunch of things I could do to subtly improve this (stop streaming, get a proper stereo receiver, etc) but I can't imagine that's the difference between things sounding awful and things sounding great. Is there something I'm missing that I could do make my digital stuff not sound like it's coming out of a tin can?