Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

yeah, same for me but I also find the soundstage very slightly flatter on speakers compared to my NOS R2R, far from a deal breaker though. the slightly bright signature of the Yggdrasil is fatiguing depending on the recording. I find with jazz and classical, that the Yggdrasil really sound mindblowing.

I love the sound of the Yggdrasil and it really suits certain genre better then other, but I find the NOS R2R sound simply more forgiving for poor recordings and I listen to a lot of shitty electronica, hip hop or 90's grunge that just is poorly mastered and the Yggdrasil make those records less enjoyable for me.

 

I'm quite happy with my current chain. Yggdrasil is definitely on the bright in your face side, and so are the Utopia HPs, but I found some NOS Tesla tubes for the MJ2 that balance out the extremes. Tons of detail, and that lively energy that I enjoy at live events, but without the annoyances.

It's easier to subtract detail/energy than it is to add it later. I'd like to hear DAVE, but it's still about a whole chain.

 

What is life without the real joy?

whats the name and models of those hi end NOS DACs? Thanks

 

I think Tony use Metrum Pavane. for a good "budget" NOS R2R, I love my Ecdesings Mosaic T which is even cheaper then my Yggdrasil

 

Might depend on your definition of "hi end", but the Spring Holo DAC is a very good NOS DAC (at least the Lvl 3 KTE version, and possibly the lower ones as well).

Check this thread if you want to know more: http://superbestaudiofriends.org/in...tsune-tuned-edition-impressions-reviews.3172/

 

I wonder if @baldr would ever consider selectable filters on his DACs for dealing with this kind of thing, and include a filter that is a bit more "forgiving" to deal with some of those really bright or less than great recordings.

 

Torq said in his review that he places it on par with the Yggdrasil, and the LVL 1 and 2 were 95 and 98% the level 3 respectively. Hands sorta liked it, and Gbeast put it around the same as the Pavane, but also said the things the Spring DAC did better are things he'd just buy a Yggdrasil for. You have to $179-399 because the USB implementation is poo.

The Spring DAC thread on head-fi puts it on the Yggdrasil' level with the caveat that it isn't the best choice for speakers and more headphone oriented.

 

Anyone know much about the Holo Audio Cyan? There was some talk about it on CA and HF, not up on the Holo website but I guess available for early orders by contacting Holo Audio directly from what I can gather. Post below has more details, but essentially r2r dac + balanced amp with the option of ordering in either PCM or DSD flavors, priced below $1500.

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/...dac-r2r-dsd512/?do=findComment&comment=724934

 

Curious. My Yggdrasil chain is Aries>Yggdrasil>Hegel H360>KEF Reference 1s+REL T7i. "Normal" living room with no special treatments but quite deep, high ceilings, large absorbing surfaces (sofas, carpet). I sit around 11 ft from the speakers. I never heard Dave, but with the right recordings, there's plenty of depth and width in what I hear from the Yggdrasil. For example, the fabulous Reiner/CSO "Living Stereo" recordings, or the Dorati/LSO "Living Presence" ones, place the instruments where I expect them, with strings well forward of woodwinds and brass, and with percussion clearly behind. For something very different, Jordi Savall's live recording of "Llibre Vermell de Montserrat" in a Barcelona cathedral renders very well the depth of the venue, down to the echo of someone's steps during the performance. And I could go on with many other examples of well-recorded classical, jazz, and Malian music. But this is not the case for everything. Quite a few studio recordings, otherwise well done, have very diffuse instrument placement.

 

The Yggdrasil definitely sounds better with speakers. However, it still has it's limitations with regards to sound staging/imaging. Once you try a PS DirectStream or the Dave in the same setup, you'll probably hear the difference that I'm talking about.

 

Yep - Pavane Level 1. I just got back to Auckland after dropping the DAC off to the local dealer who has arranged for the upgrade to Level 2 to be done locally. This doubles the number of R2R chips and adds a second FGPA (one per channel). Should get it back before the end of the year. Will be interesting to hear the difference.

 

Interesting... brings back memories of a Musical Fideliti DAC I had before moving to Yggdrasil. The MF had a very wide expansive vertiginous sound stage. The MF DAC fed a Musical Fideliti M6i integrated speaker amp or a Ragnarok. Speakers were Monitor Audio GX100 and headphones HD800 and HD800S. It sounded like those early 90s car radios with a 'WIDE' button that made everything wiiiidddder, holographic and 'superspatious' but sounding like crap.

The Yggdrasil was a revelation. Besides fixing tonality, it brought all the instruments in their place with a narrower fixed stable and more life-like orchestral staging. A wider, expansile or 'deeper' stage does not necessarily mean accuracy. That said I briefly listened to Dave on HEKv2 and Utopia, that like all cans are really crap at staging anyway, so hard to tell difference with Yggdrasil in reproducing my reference... sitting in the middle of a theatre / symphony hall with great acoustics listening to orchestral music with musicians sitting at their respective seats not metres apart as the MF Dac ("re-")produced.

 

Maybe. But I'll note that I listen to 20-30 live jazz and classical shows/year, from good seats, and what I get from my current Yggdrasil-based system with good recordings matches that experience fairly well given the physical limitations of my living room. IOW, reproduced instruments appear where I expect them, both back-to-front and left-to-right.

 

Exactly my thoughts being an avid classical concert goer. I listened to a string trio live some time ago. I purchased a CD recording after the concert, recorded in exactly the same setting by the same musicians few days before. Listened to it on Yggdrasil via speakers. The violinist was placed next to the violist and the double bass player as expected. I could percieve the minor movements of the arms of the string players. Listening to say a string quartet when the violinist is metres away from the viola player is plain ridiculous. Having the left hand of a piano in one corner of a room and the right on the other side is plain wrong. Piano staging is tricky in the far field setting anyway.

Sometimes I wonder how more spacious is percieved as better on speakers. Well when I listen to Mozart's Figaro singing with Susanna in the opening scenes, I want to have a realistically staged opera singers in front of me. Yggdrasil makes that happen in my setting.

 

I own the Blu2/Dave, DirectStream, and Yggdrasil (though I will probably sell it soon) and do the majority of my listening on speakers. I would say that, at least in the two loudspeaker setups I have at home, both the DS and the Dave are more precise in their imaging and have a more natural sounding attack/decay that comes through to me as more realistic-sounding timbre and more of the surrounding acoustic space being intelligible on recordings. In comparison, the Yggdrasil is slightly diffuse to me: precise enough to locate an instrument in space, but just slightly vague enough that instruments and people are a little "cloudy" and my mind isn't quite tricked into believing that a properly-sized person or instrument is the source of the sound. In long-term listening, I find the Yggdrasil's handling of transients to be a little too enthusiastic; at first, it's impressive with certain types of music, but something about the first few ms of decay after a transient sounds weirdly "off" (somehow both exaggerated and incomplete at the same time), which seems to interfere with timbre and room acoustics. In some recordings, I feel that stringed instruments and percussion sound a little unnaturally metallic through the Yggdrasil. I sometimes experience an uncanny sense that I can "hear" the walls of a venue with the DS/Dave that doesn't quite come across on the same recordings with the Yggdrasil.

That being said, the retail price of the Yggdrasil is considerably lower than the other two DACs and I'm not really sure if I've heard anything in the same price neighborhood that compares well with the Yggdrasil at these criteria. I would still recommend the Yggdrasil to somebody whose budget tops out near this price point, though I would probably also point out that it's crazy annoying that it seems to take at least a week to warm up and that the sound of the muting relay gets on my nerves.

 

Modding the Yggdrasil to be used with tubes would be awesome but only a select few know how and not willing to publish what they've done specifically (for Schitt's sake I assume).

 

So did @Torq get production analog 2's or prototypes, better peek inside, could be a rats nest -->


*yeah it's a 70's wire wrapped apple 1 or pdp-11 io card -- thought it was funny

 

I know I have read Mike feels that tubes have no business being in a digital device. I am not sure if this is just a principle or what, but I find once you get to the analog waveform, current output or not, all bets are off as far as what you put after that as far as I'm concerned.

 

I think his idea is just that if you want tubes, have them in a preamp or amp. Not worth the hassle of putting them in the same chassis with different power and noise/interference needs. Or at least that makes sense to me.

 

When your R2R ladder becomes R2R spaghetti?