Schiit Yggdrasil Vs PS Audio Directstream Junior

[audio.bill]

Since you stated that you only listen to PCM, that should be a significant factor favoring the Yggdrasil over the PS Audio. The Yggy's design supports PCM playback exclusively and is optimized accordingly, while the DS DACs convert PCM into DSD and then decode it from the DSD stream.

[audio.bill]

Many DSD users have reported similar initial impressions, only to then be thrilled after allowing several hundred hours of burn in. I know it sounds ridiculous to most of us and we'd all like our gear to sound ideal right out of the box with a bit of warm up time, but this piece in particular is known to have a long break in period. As long as you purchased it direct from PS Audio with their 30 day return privilege you have nothing much to lose by giving it a shot to reach its potential before returning it and never really knowing for sure if it would have improved. You don't need to listen to it all that time, just have it locked to an active digital signal and connected to your amp's input, you can even leave the amp (or volume) off. Let it run like that locked to a digital signal 24 hours a day, that's my suggestion. Patience is a virtue, but most audiophiles (myself included) want instant gratification with their system. 

[audio.bill]

With all due respect I concur that an Onkyo receiver does not provide an appropriate level of performance to be able to reveal the true potential of the DS DAC. Nothing wrong with it and Onkyo makes a good product, but it will be a bottleneck in the system with a source component like the DS. There's no end to the madness... 

[audio.bill]

7 hours ago, mintakax said:

So.... I am probably going to be trading in the Lumin D2 for a DS Sr.  I want the best upfront source I can get for the new system, plus I have a number of SACDs and would like to plug my old DV-50s to the DS Sr. to take advantage of newer DAC technology.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news... According to the specs of the DS DAC I believe that the only way to feed the DSD layer from SACDs into the DS DAC is via I2S from the matching DS Memory Player, or if you have ability to rip the DSD data into files which can be fed from a server via USB into the DS DAC. As described on the DS DAC's product page, DSD can only be input via DoP as well as raw DSD on I2S and USB inputs. While the I2S input uses an HDMI connector, it is wired differently and is not compatible with a standard HDMI output which you might have thought you could use from the Esoteric DV-50s. You could connect the Esoteric via a coaxial or optical digital output, but that will only transmit the CD resolution data from hybrid SACDs and not the hi-res DSD data. I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong about this...