Just got a Yggdrasil!

[manisandher]

7 hours ago, mourip said:

I used to have one like this except in robins egg blue with a red interior. 57' Speedster with 63' Super90 engine. I paid $1800 for it. Worth a tad more now...

 

 

Aha... the 356. Totally gorgeous. $1800??? Wow. My 5 year old's got one BTW:

 

 

Mani.

 

[manisandher]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Then I thought to get rich by quitting that hobby.

 

I should perhaps point out that Peter certainly did not get rich by starting Phasure. He already owned a successful CRM software company when he extended his hifi hobby into a commercial enterprise.

 

Mani.

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

There is no substitute for an old Pooschey.

 

 

 

 

Oh I don't know.  They have that rear engine weight bias crossover glitch (as in "why am I going backwards through this curve right now?").  Also, that resistor air cooling design simply does not measure nearly as well as modern single bit water cooling.  There is only so much you can do with what is essentially a VW bug with a bit more power. I am going to go with JA and say they are "obsolete"...

[crenca]

1 minute ago, crenca said:

 

 

[semente]

7 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

Oh I don't know.  They have that rear engine weight bias crossover glitch (as in "why am I going backwards through this curve right now?").  Also, that resistor air cooling design simply does not measure nearly as well as modern single bit water cooling.  There is only so much you can do with what is essentially a VW bug with a bit more power. I am going to go with JA and say they are "obsolete"...

 

And they are.

If you are looking for accuracy/performance get a Cayman, not a 911.

[manisandher]

12 minutes ago, semente said:

If you are looking for accuracy/performance get a Cayman, not a 911.

 

But Caymans don't look like this:

 

 

Mani.

 

[semente]

Just now, manisandher said:

 

But Caymans don't look like this:

 

 

Mani.

 

 

Ultimately it depends on what drives you...looks or performance (although sometimes you do get both).

Same with hi-fi (e.g. your speakers tick both boxes).

 

For looks alone I'd rather go with this or preferably this.

[manisandher]

23 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

More on topic, what DACs at or near or under the price of the Yggy sound better or as good?

 

Well, if Schiit have improved the digital side with the Yggy gen2, it's got to be a contender. I thought the Chord 2Qute was very good for the money when I had one here for a couple of months. And I wouldn't discount looking around for a used bargain. I paid $1k for the Altmann Attraction DAC I have (a tad less than the ridiculous 16k Euros it apparently costs now). Upsampling redbook to 176.4 and feeding to the Altmann produces very, very good results. Oh, and the Holo Spring is getting great reviews (though I've never personally heard one).

 

Mani.

[ElviaCaprice]

3 minutes ago, manisandher said:

 

Well, if Schiit have improved the digital side with the Yggy gen2, it's got to be a contender. I thought the Chord 2Qute was very good for the money when I had one here for a couple of months. And I wouldn't discount looking around for a used bargain. I paid $1k for the Altmann Attraction DAC I have (a tad less than the ridiculous 16k Euros it apparently costs now). Upsampling redbook to 176.4 and feeding to the Altmann produces very, very good results. Oh, and the Holo Spring is getting great reviews (though I've never personally heard one).

 

Mani.

I just picked up a new 2Qute, unused, purchased a month before, for $900.  If you want to buy new, Taobao has them for around 1K  after shipping and credit card fees.

https://world.taobao.com/item/523198206780.htm?spm=a312a.7700714.0.0.IXxOco#detail

 

Highly recommend a new power supply with the 2Qute.  Using 2 LPS-1's in a series made a big difference.

[mourip]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

 

Oh I don't know.  They have that rear engine weight bias crossover glitch (as in "why am I going backwards through this curve right now?").  Also, that resistor air cooling design simply does not measure nearly as well as modern single bit water cooling.  There is only so much you can do with what is essentially a VW bug with a bit more power. I am going to go with JA and say they are "obsolete"...

 

I also had a 2001 Boxster "S" briefly and much more recently. A very different car.

 

Yup the Speedster was like a beautiful VW. Once that rear started to come around you were pretty much screwed. I did a 540 degree spin coming off the freeway the first day I had it. Sobering...

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

 

Oh I don't know.  They have that rear engine weight bias crossover glitch (as in "why am I going backwards through this curve right now?").  Also, that resistor air cooling design simply does not measure nearly as well as modern single bit water cooling.  There is only so much you can do with what is essentially a VW bug with a bit more power. I am going to go with JA and say they are "obsolete"...

 

I knew a guy in college who had a VW Beetle with a Porsche 356 engine in it. He said that it just dropped right in. He wrecked it though. Backed though a fence into some farmer's field. That ol' terminal oversteer; the bane of essentially all rear-engined cars. The thing that I admire most about Porsche is that they took an essentially wrong-headed concept (engine behind the rear axle line) and worked on it and worked on it until they got it more-or-less right! However, 911 Porsches can still bite you. All of these successful young execs go out and buy themselves a 911 as soon as they can, but you can tell that they never drive them as they were meant to be driven because, they haven't stacked them up! 911s are not easy to drive even though they handle magnificently and will kill the neophyte driver who doesn't know how to drive one.  

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, mourip said:

As long as we are having an intermission. I used to have one like this except in robins egg blue with a red interior. 57' Speedster with 63' Super90 engine. I paid $1800 for it. Worth a tad more now...

 

 

Love Bathtub Speedsters. There's a company in LA that will build you a really nice replica fairly reasonably (<$30K). they use Subaru "boxer" fours* as engines for both their Speedster replicas and their 550K replicas. I've often thought about buying one. The nice thing about replicas, is you can actually drive them, unlike real ones which  are actually too valuable to drive in the spirited manner Porsche intended. 

 

*Interesting trivia about the Subaru Boxer 4. Subaru bought the design from Alfa Romeo in the '70's. Alfa designed the concept for the Alfasud, a front-wheel-drive car designed in conjunction with the Italian government to be built in a factory near Naples (Pomigliano d'Arco) to help relieve some of the high unemployment in Southern Italy. Almost a million Alfasuds (which means Alfa South) were built between 1971 and 1989 when production ceased. They were never sold in the USA and even though they were popular in Europe and were very reliable, they gained a reputation for being Alka-Seltzer cars, i.e, they dissolved in the presence of water... 

[Ralf11]

...

[mourip]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

I knew a guy in college who had a VW Beetle with a Porsche 356 engine in it. He said that it just dropped right in. He wrecked it though. Backed though a fence into some farmer's field. That ol' terminal oversteer; the bane of essentially all rear-engined cars. The thing that I admire most about Porsche is that they took an essentially wrong-headed concept (engine behind the rear axle line) and worked on it and worked on it until they got it more-or-less right!...

 

I did that exact thing in my Speedster. Went out with my girl friend for a night time drive in the surrounding hilly farming country with a gallon jug of Red Mountain Chablis, turned through a gravel corner and the rear end came around like a sling shot. We went backwards through a barb wire fence but luckily there were no injuries..except my youthful pride.

[PeterSt]

14 hours ago, gmgraves said:

*Interesting trivia about the Subaru Boxer 4. Subaru bought the design from Alfa Romeo in the '70's. Alfa designed the concept for the Alfasud, a front-wheel-drive car designed in conjunction with the Italian government to be built in a factory near Naples (Pomigliano d'Arco) to help relieve some of the high unemployment in Southern Italy. Almost a million Alfasuds (which means Alfa South) were built between 1971 and 1989 when production ceased. They were never sold in the USA and even though they were popular in Europe and were very reliable, they gained a reputation for being Alka-Seltzer cars, i.e, they dissolved in the presence of water... 

 

Over here we always said that they rusted in the showroom already. All Alfa's btw.

 

My first car was an Alfasud (a "sports" version IIRC). I was always and ever active with fixing holes in the chassis. They just dropped in when you were staring at the car. I think the car was hold together by the huge CBIE's I had up the front. 

 

What I never knew was that this boxer engine was some kind of predecessor of the Subaru's great boxer engine. Uhm, at present my wife drives one (Impreza). 320BHP or somewhere that abouts.

 

Thank you for this info George.

[Jud]

16 hours ago, manisandher said:

Well, if Schiit have improved the digital side with the Yggy gen2

 

I think a Gen 2 may have been just a rumor, though of course I'm ready to be proved wrong.

[Allan F]

22 hours ago, gmgraves said:

 

That ol' terminal oversteer; the bane of essentially all rear-engined cars.

Especially true since the natural reaction of most drivers is to ease off the gas, which works fine for understeer but only exacerbates the situation with oversteer.

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, Allan F said:

Especially true since the natural reaction of most drivers is to ease off the gas, which works fine for understeer but only exacerbates the situation with oversteer.

 

That's probably the biggest mistake neophyte Porsche owners make. They don't understand vehicle dynamics and don't realize what they are doing. Like you say, the natural reaction when they get into a corner over their heads is to ease-off on the gas and hit the brake to bleed off speed. In a tail-heavy car, that is exactly the wrong thing to do. Unfortunately many affluent guys buy 911s like they buy Rolex watches: because its part of the young professional's "uniform". They have no idea of the difference between initial and terminal understeer and initial understeer and terminal oversteer (which is how modern Porsches handle) . Luckily, most Porsches are purchased for status and not for "driving" and their owners never do anything with their cars more adventurous than an occasional "stoplight grands prix". I have an acquaintance who, after years of driving Alfas, bought an Alpine Renault R4. He brought it to one of the Alfa club's driving tours in the Santa Cruz Mountains soon after he bought it. The Alpine was rear engined - like a Porsche, and he backed into a ditch while over exuberantly negotiating a turn that he had taken many times in various Alfas. Whoops! 

[LarryMagoo]

Here is all you need to know about the Yggy reviewed Robert Hartley from The Absolute Sound...

 

Conclusion

I don’t know how Schiit Audio has done it, but the $2300 Yggy

is in many ways competitive with any DAC I’ve heard regardless

of price. In some criteria—transient speed without etch, clarity

of musical line, whole-body involvement—the Yggy is as good

as digital gets. Yet the Yggy’s bold incisiveness may not resonate

with listeners who prefer a more relaxed and easygoing sound.

I, however, have no such reservation; this is a DAC I could

listen to and enjoy for a long time. In fact, there was something

different about the Yggy that pushed my buttons—I felt a musical

exhilaration that was experienced not as some intellectual

abstraction, but at a more fundamentally visceral level.

If you’re looking for a DAC that does quad-rate DSD, decodes

MQA, offers a volume control, and includes a headphone

amp, look elsewhere. But if the very best reproduction of PCM

sources is your goal, the Yggdrasil is the ticket. It’s a spectacular

performer on an absolute level, and an out-of-this world bargain.

The Yggy is not just a tremendous value in today’s DACs,

it’s one of the greatest bargains in the history of high-end audio

[LarryMagoo]

Now JA can go piss himself...he's lost all credibility with me anyway...

 

Robert Hartley said the Yggy was one of the 3 best DACs he has ever heard...

 

 I can’t tell you how Moffatt

did it, but I can  describe

how the Yggy sounds, and

why its one of the three best

DACs I’ve heard regardless

of price. (The other two are

the $19,500 Berkeley Alpha

Reference and the $35,000

dCS Vivaldi. I suspect that

the MSB Select is outstanding,

after hearing it many

times at shows, but I haven’t

evaluated it in my own system.)

 

Back to my day....

[Ralf11]

What are the best high-end cables to use with the Yggy?

[Jud]

10 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the best high-end cables to use with the Yggy?

 

Schiit Pyst, of course.

[Ralf11]

are they better than the Sacrificial Chicken Schiit cables?

[LarryMagoo]

35 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the best high-end cables to use with the Yggy?

RCA?  XLR? AES?  USB?    Audioquest is a great place to start...so is Blue Jean Cables and Better Cables for a great place to look for value

 

I bought a AQ Carbon for my AES input...

[semente]

2 hours ago, LarryMagoo said:

Here is all you need to know about the Yggy reviewed Robert Hartley from The Absolute Sound...

 

Conclusion

I don’t know how Schiit Audio has done it, but the $2300 Yggy

is in many ways competitive with any DAC I’ve heard regardless

of price. In some criteria—transient speed without etch, clarity

of musical line, whole-body involvement—the Yggy is as good

as digital gets. Yet the Yggy’s bold incisiveness may not resonate

with listeners who prefer a more relaxed and easygoing sound.

I, however, have no such reservation; this is a DAC I could

listen to and enjoy for a long time. In fact, there was something

different about the Yggy that pushed my buttons—I felt a musical

exhilaration that was experienced not as some intellectual

abstraction, but at a more fundamentally visceral level.

If you’re looking for a DAC that does quad-rate DSD, decodes

MQA, offers a volume control, and includes a headphone

amp, look elsewhere. But if the very best reproduction of PCM

sources is your goal, the Yggdrasil is the ticket. It’s a spectacular

performer on an absolute level, and an out-of-this world bargain.

The Yggy is not just a tremendous value in today’s DACs,

it’s one of the greatest bargains in the history of high-end audio

 

Who is Robert Hartley.

 

I know (not personally) Hal Hartley and admire his work, but not Robert...