Delightful DAC Week :~)

[Stereolab42]

It is a digital filter/sample rate converter designed to convert all audio to 352.8 or 396KHz sample rates so that it may drive our DACs. You get it uniquely from us; it is our filter. It took five people many years to design and perfect at the dawn of digital playback, way back in the early eighties. It keeps all original samples; those samples contain frequency and phase information which can be optimized not only in the time domain but in the frequency domain. We do precisely this; the mechanic is we add 7 new optimized samples between the original ones.

 

Hmm. You'd think this would actually be easier to do mathematically -- that is, keep the original samples and just interpolate between them for the extra samples. So it is puzzling why "everybody" doesn't just do it that way. But I am undoubtedly vastly underestimating the difficulty of doing so...

 

The other thing to address is that the Yggy, being a true ladder DAC, is advertised as only being able to express at most 21 bits of depth. I know the traditional defense for that is "you can't hear the lost bits anyways above the noise floor", but that is kind of a lame defense IMHO; it's exactly the argument that opponents of HiRes audio throw at it in the first place. I wonder if the best PDM DACs are equally unable to express the equivalent of that bit depth. If not, then the deficiency is shared, but if so, then that could be a point against the Yggy.

[Stereolab42]

Here's some more information on the megaburrito filter

New Schiit! Ragnarok and Yggdrasil - Page 331

 

So for decades nobody else has thought of publishing or even implementing a sample-preserving/phase-shift-minimizing upsampling algorithm for PCM? Again, seems hard to believe. Is there nobody out there with the necessary knowledge willing to examine these claims critically?

[Stereolab42]

Regarding bit depth - no, it's really not a problem. It's explained in an FAQ at the Schiit website, and has been discussed here in other threads.

 

The FAQ claims that the ENOB ("effective number of bits", learned a new acronym today) for "32-bit DACs" is 19.5, yet here there is a claim it's actually 22.5 on the ESS Sabre:

 

Schiit Yggdrasil Impressions thread - Page 53

 

Assuming that poster's method of deriving it from the datasheet SNR is accurate.

[Stereolab42]

Too bad the forum ignore function isn't smart enough to also hide posts that quote the ignored.