Just got a Yggdrasil!

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It's widely reported that the Yggdrasil requires 7 days of burn-in, and then it should be left on at all times to avoid it having to re-gain optimal thermal equilibrium.

 

The Yggdrasil's AD5791BRUZ is low resolution but very accurate DAC chip. In conjunction with Schiit's closed-form filters and advanced clocking I could definitely see how it could be compelling.

 

 

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It's a 20-bit DAC in a 32-bit world. But more to the point, it doesn't support DSD or DXD.

 

Native DSD is very very good and DXD sounds amazing. A Yggdrasil owner will never get to enjoy those.

 

Also, high end DACs can resolve 24 bits of high definition audio...the Yggdrasil can't.

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39 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

 

The DAC designers I talk to all say they can get 20 bits and possibly 21 on a good day with the wind at their backs. 

 

The MSB V Diamond can do 26-bit for example.

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Sorry, I meant resolution in terms of processing resolution. The AD5791 does 20 bits, and other high-end ladder DACs can do 24-bits and above.

 

Some of you guys may not know, but recently Schiit got into an internet battle with John Atkinson (senior editor at Stereophile) who tweeted that the Yggdrasil was obsolete. Jason Stoddard blew a gasket and demanded that Atkinson amend the tweet, who stood by his statement. So Stoddard called up their Stereophile ad manager to make a last minute change to a certain ad placement:

 

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13 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Since it and a $35,000 MSB Diamond V DAC sound pretty much identical, I'd say that it was more than just a "good buy" (I borrowed one over last weekend).

 

Considering the 7K MSB Analog is clearly superior to the Yggdrasil, it's surprising to hear that the Diamond V performs so poorly.

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5 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

With all due respect, WRT DSD and DXD, saying that Yggy owners will never get to enjoy these is something you can't possibly know. The Yggy was designed to be upgradable and has multiple daughter boards to facilitate adding function. In fact, the front panel has an extra LED that is not being used put there to allow for just such an upgrade. Mike Moffat decided to not support Direct Stream Digital initially, because he felt that there wasn't enough call for it and he wanted to concentrate on getting the LPCM right. He told me that if DSD ever became a major market consideration, that he would add it to the Yggy, hence the unused resolution light on the front panel!

 

I agree that DSD isn't a major market force. But, the market a product like the Yggdrasil caters to is just the sort of market that would be interesting in exploring DSD -- currently, there are several high-volume consumer grade DAC chips that are capable of processing DSD natively, either as a true 1-bit stream or as a multi-bit stream. They are also capable of processing DXD, which, if you have heard it through a resolving DAC, is very nice. In fact, DXD with my system competes with native DSD -- it's not 1:1, as native DSD has a certain realism that PCM will never have, but DXD masters are really, really good. Yes, I know that there are hardly any DXD masters out there even compared to DSD.

 

Everyone should listen to a native DSD track through a high quality, resolving system. You won't understand how bad PCM is until you've heard the alternative.

 

Oh, I very much considering getting a Yggdrasil, just to compare best-in-price-class PCM vs native DSD and PCM upsampled DSD through I2S.

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BTW, I'm still not clear on how a transistor ladder in the Holo can process 1-bit streams.

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Also, here is the MSB Diamond IV's 24-bit sine wave:

 

And the Yggdrasil's:

 

OUCH!

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I found this I2S bridge a while back that has SDIF outputs. I bought one.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/122209728498?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

You can pick XMOS or Amanero version.

 

The Tascam DA-3000 ($800) can native decode (direct skipping SRC) DSD over SDIF. Kind of moot now with all these good, cheap I2S DACs available...

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Well I don't hate Schiit. I've auditioned most of their amps, found most of them lacking -- but I currently own the Mjolnir 2. I haven't tried their multibit products, but I am meaning to.

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11 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

 

 

How can you say the MSB Analog is "clearly superior" to Yggdrasil when you haven't tried any of the Schiit Audio multibit DACs? I am not saying it's not because I have haven't tried out any of the MSB products. It just seems odd to make bold statements like that without any personal experience. How you tried out the MSB Analog or you just going by specs and prices?

That's based on a detailed review of the Yggdrasil which compared it to the Analog.

 

To paraphrase, the Yggdrasil with the Hydra Z bridge plus power supply brought it somewhat close to the Analog. The Analog with the latest updated Quad USB module put the Analog way out ahead.

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Also, if you look at the comments posted on the Stereophile review, JA says Schiit's claim of LSBs not being truncated is false because he says the measurements show that they are, in fact, being truncated.

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I don't think anyone hates the Yggdrasil or Schiit in general in this thread. I have noted, however, a tendency to shill for Schiit beyond reason in some Internet communities such as Head-Fi and SBAF. Some people just lose their marbles when design failures and strange measurements are exposed in Schiit products.

 

Was JA being overly harsh when he called the Yggdrasil "obsolete"? I think so, yeah. But, if you take it in context with all the bad measurements, design flaws and falsehoods he's seen out of Schiit, you can appreciate where he was coming from, emotionally.

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2 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

 

Design flaws and falsehoods? Who the hell do you think you are?

 

Case in point!

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3 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

 

Sure. That Schiit communicated falsehoods.....

 

I assume JA has a basis for believing Schiit told him a falsehood. 

 

There was also the Asgard power off power glitch that was reported on publically and which Schiit lied about several times before fixing the issue. http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2011/07/banned-at-head-fi.html

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12 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

Interesting, I assume that this is the same nwavguy of Objective DAC fame?  In Schiit's defense, such a damning occurrence is more likely to be the result from some last minute (and untested) design change that had unforeseen consequences, or from ordering a batch of widgets with this or that specification but the (most likely Asian) supplier delivering widgets with a different specification (but stamped with what you ordered, of course) than anything intentional by Jason.  nwavguy is probably wrong in his speculation that Schiit simply did not bother to do minimal measurements...probably...

 

That said, it is incumbent upon companies (big and small) to "not be evil" and listen to their customers.  Either that, or suffer from the fallout.

 

It's the same guy, yeah.

 

It started with this:

 

Schiit came out and said there was nothing to worry about and it was normal. Someone did some measurements that showed the output current was many times what Schiit claimed. Schiit denied it a few more times, but then ultimately resolved the issue by adding a delay to the circuit during shutdown.

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3 minutes ago, Speed Racer said:

Mani doesn't even know if "the glitch" is what causes  his "ears to bleed". Yet no one else says Yggy causes their ears to bleed. My ears are enriched when listening to the Yggdrasil.

 

GUTB makes claims the Yggdrasil has design flaws AND that Schiit responds with falsehoods. No problem. It's just an opinion......

 

 

They aren't going to provide facts and you are going to let them keep spitting this crap.

 

Like I said, I am done with this crap.....

 

 

 

 

I didn't say Schiit was lying about the Yggdrasil, just that JA believes that Schiit made a false claim that the LSBs are rounded. He based that judgment on his measurements.

 

The design flaws are well documented in this thread, no need to go over them again. Another famous example of a design flaw is the Ragnarok's intelligent bias system which resulted in audible artifacts.

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14 hours ago, Jud said:

 

What I read in JA's testing was his *assumption* regarding truncation (prior to Jason Stoddard's clarification on Head-Fi that rounding is used), and no statement from him about false manufacturer claims.  Do you know of any such statement by John Atkinson?

 

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Listened to Yggdrasil in the Schiit room at AXPONA. Vidar and Freya setup playing on a Song3 tower speakers. Very resolving, up there with the better DACs at the show -- W4S DAC2v2SE, Optologic, etc. The Schiit setup was a little thin on harmonics and shallow soundstage.

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14 hours ago, semente said:

 

Your constant references to shallow soundstage and thin harmonics probably mean that you really enjoy euphonic distortion and should get a DAC with a valve output stage, or even an analogue source.

I wonder is this can be DSP'ed to taste...

 

R

 

It sounds like you've never heard an actual soundstage. You probably think a good soundstage is hearing a left and right and a center.

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2 hours ago, the_bat said:

 

Interesting. I've never really got this concentration on soundstage.  I've often come away from a concert thinking "that was some performance - they really sang and played well".  I've sometimes come away thinking "that Gibson Hummingbird is a beautiful sounding guitar".  I don't think I've ever come away thinking "what really impressed me was where they were standing".

 

Hey, are you the same guy on SABF who has some guy's butt as an avatar?

 

Soundstage is important to me. I want it wide (i.e., at least a couple feet beyond the edge of my speakers), and I want it three-dimensional -- with DEPTH. I'm coming to learn this is a difficult challenge. It seems to be related to room acoustics, speaker power handling and amp coherence / linearity. Any one of those factors is degraded, the soundstage depth is crushed. 

 

Soundstage width was NOT a problem at AXPONA -- I heard several systems that had very wide soundstages, such as sounds coming from the walls almost 90 degrees from me. Only a few systems had superior soundstage depth / dimentionality. The MBL system was stunning, it seemed to transcend listening room to large movie theatre. The Synergistic Research setup was fabulously dimensional with even a clear height element in stage.

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Okay guys. Check out these two tracks. What's your guys' impression on the soundstage and imaging?

 

01-Tea Picking And Butterfly Chasing [The Chinese Music Ensemble Of New York].flac

05-I Get A Kick Out Of You.flac

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39 minutes ago, Barton said:

I found this thread of great interest regarding stereo imaging. For brevity skim down and read all of Doctor Fine's posts which despite a little scotch when written offer a lot of great perspective. His work and his goals seem to me the pinnacle of hi fi, and it's not just about the components. The discussion is lively enough that it attracted comments by John Atkinson- 

http://www.stereophile.com/content/how-robust-speaker-imaging-1

 

Dr. Fine sounds like he knows what's he talking about. Of course, when he says you need $20k of gear, he is likely to lose most of us here

 

It's good to see that depth of soundstage is actually something that should exist, in stark contrast to what many on here seem to believe.

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Okay so, hear me out.

 

I suspect, now, that many of you guys have never been exposed to real hi-fi. I was informed in hi-fi by high-end headphone listening. With high end headphones and quality amp/dac, you should be able to place instruments in your head-stage with very good accuracy. They should have not only distance relative to each other in 2D, but also in 3D. Now, the imaging capabilities of even very high end headphones is very limited. The stage is a globe around your head, with most of it inside your head. It's a very intimate presentation.

 

When I listen to a stereo speaker setup and I can't place the 3rd-dimension it aggravates me because the system is falling short. Obviously, many types of music, like modern pop rock, hip-hop, etc, won't be able to produce a 3D image. A stereo transfer from a mono recording isn't going to have 3D capabilities. But anything recorded in stereo with correct mic placement / mixing SHOULD produce a 3D image. The large majority of my music library SHOULD produce a 3D image.

 

If I may, it seems like many of you guys think hi-fi is clarity, dynamics and timbre -- and imaging is something that you adjust to taste. For example, do you like a focused center, or a more dispersed, wider sound? Soundstage doesn't make or break hi-fi to you guys. Is that about right? You guys would have been very impressed with the Schiit room -- clear, detailed, coherent. Except that the image lacked DEPTH, so it didn't impress me.

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18 hours ago, esldude said:

Do you know how many recordings are made with the kind of miking and limited track mixing so there is even a possibility of realistic 3-dimensions (which actually you really are only talking about 2 dimensions)?  The number is a tiny percentage not even a majority of 1 % of all recordings.  If the large majority of your music library is made of such it is very, very unusual.  Not impossible, I don't know what you have, but unusual to the point of being unlikely.

 

For instance of the two you asked us about, only one has the chance, and that is the Chesky.  The other was recorded in a way it could never have that highly dimensional soundstage as part of it other than as an effect.  The effect could be pretty convincing, but actually not what was recorded.  A case of judging recordings thinking you are doing so by fidelity when actually it is simply by preference.

 

I picked two tracks that were close to extremes in my library between depth and soundstage and no soundstage. I can perceive depth in I Get a Kick Out of You, but it's mild, perhaps in just an artifact of my 845 SET. I agree with your assessment that it's a traditional left-right mix with no depth information to speak of. Tea Picking is the opposite extreme. In my system, you get a clear sense that that the steel percussions are floating from a far distance away, as if you were sitting well back from the stage of a hall.

 

Other comments by others here seems like they aren't used to hearing depth in the soundstage. But, doesn't common sense dictate that we perceive depth because our brains process time/phase cues? To record depth information, all you need are mics that pick up the depth cues and mixing that doesn't destroy that.