Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

@Torq Ah! Kudos! Bravo! Very well written, as always of course, but getting extra likes from me having spent lots of time and money on Linn over the years.
You're capturing what I heard as well and I'm happy that Linn with Katalyst is getting rid of what might be perceived as dry and boring.

I'm so happy to see the Yggdrasil up there. I went from Klimax to Yggdrasil to essentially hear more music from the music, and also I wasn't willing to pay the Katalyst upgrade price. I'm very happy with the move.

But I must admit that Linn always has a special place in my heart, and should I ever find my way back to speakers again - Linn Katalyst, Exakt and Space Opt. is on my shortlist.

 

It was very frustrating having the Linn DS stuff go from being close the top of the pile (and certainly the best sounding streaming units available, at least that I've come across), to it falling behind other DACs - with Linn having no apparent answer to that. And then to have Exakt drop, with no notice, and confuse the upgrade path (as well as making it way more expensive - as it was forcing you into an all active system as well), and somehow still not quite manage to meet the musical performance of a number of much less expensive, if more fiddly, solutions didn't help matters.

Of course, it will not surprise me at all if standalone DACs, especially at Yggdrasil's level, don't beat out the current KDS/3 in the not very distant future. And, for users of conventional systems with analog pre-amps, power-amps and passive speakers, that'll be a much easier thing to switch between. For people like me, where my speaker rig is becoming something of a luxury with changing living circumstances, at least the new stuff is a useful step forward. It is, for sure, trading convenience and the ability to essentially disappear into a room, for ultimate sound quality at some point, but I'm past the days where I want my audio-gear on prominent display and where I live is a lot more important than the final 10% sound quality.

Honestly, as good as this new stuff is, if we'd not made the decision to begin our "world tour" about 10 years earlier than originally planned, I probably would have gone in a totally different direction. As it is, living in multiple countries, for a couple of years at a time, and getting the most out of those places (i.e. living in the best spots they have to offer - which is typically going to mean smaller places located in the hearts of major cultural areas), means the "big rig" has to be simpler than I'd otherwise run. This fits that purpose nicely. And still, at least for today, is the best sound I've heard in the digital realm in a system that can fulfill my other needs.

 

@Torq have you heard the new RME ADI-2 Pro? I'm curious as to what RME can get out of the AKM Velvet Sound architecture. Schiit seems to be using the linear phase slow roll off AKM filter in the Bifrost 4490 thus the overly wide staging compared to Grace M9XX.

 

Not yet, but it is on the pending list to audition.

 

Cool. I'm super curious to how it compares with the other AKM 4490 onward DACs, the Hilo, and the Gungnir Multibit/Yggdrasil.

 

Sound like a decent trade off to get... SWEET JESUS, IT COSTS $23,000, never mind!
Anything above 10k for a DAC & I expect it to absolute cream the Yggdrasil/Theta V-A/Sonic Froniters SFD2.

Not to just have incremental upgrades for only a few certain aspects of the frequency.

 

In reality, nothing is going to "absolutely cream" those units. As it is, the differences are a couple or three percentage points overall between all three.

 

Guess @baldr already knew that when he designed it.

 

Some of the better revered higher end DACs have power supplies that weigh as much as a stand alone power amp or have 20-40 DAC chips per channel.
I don't think anyone here has heard anything of that caliber (yet). The Linn KDS is probably the most high end DAC anyone here has come close to hearing.

 

I started to unpack and examine all of the assumptions contained in the three statements in this post but it would be too long and no one would read it any way, so I'll do my Emily Litella impression- never mind.

 

Well, you'd be wrong on those counts.

I've heard all manner of high-end DACs. I won't say I've auditioned them all at the level I'm doing with the units here, but then that was as much because they just weren't sufficiently inspiring based on a couple of hours demo to even want to spend more time with.

This has included things like the Nagra HD DAC (>$28K), mentioned in the second post, and covered properly in this thread. Not as good as Yggdrasil by some measure. Or the big Audio Note stuff (well north of $30K),, that is more expensive still, has power-supplies and transformers that cost as much as a BMW and weigh more than I'd care to try and lift. While I wouldn't doubt that the cost of actually building the things is a sizable chunk of their price, sadly their actual performance fell short of things costing 1/30th as much.

And increasing the number of DAC modules does not necessarily improve things much if at all. It will drive up complexity, but won't necessarily have any measurable, let alone audible, benefit. A lot of that is just a numbers game.

You'll have a hard time convincing me that I need 40 DAC chips and a 50lb PSU to recreate what was ultimately captured by a single $29.00 ADC chip fed by a $59 CoTS SMPS buried in the veritable electronic noise-fest that is a typical studio recording desk. That it takes as much as it does to get as close to some of these masters as I've heard is, honestly, quite surprising. Which might mean that ADC is an easier cat to skin than DAC. Or it might mean nothing.

But for sure, weight, size and cost have little to no reliable correlation to anything other than how much your wallet or back is going to hurt when dealing with pointlessly over-engineered audio gear at premium-car prices.

Current reality is that the level of difference between a basic Modi 2 and Yggdrasil is not on the order of "absolutely creams" in any realistic terms. Easily discernible and usefully better? Sure. But unless we we're working with completely different idea of what that phrase means, it's probably best to keep the hyperbole in check and not get distracted by marketing and big numbers.

 

In my canoodling with the ADI-2Pro so far, I found myself leaning more towards their "Sharp" and "Slow Delay Sharp" filters. In their manual they state the slow has more ideal response but has rolloff at the upper frequencies. In listening, it seemed somewhat blunted to me and just nebulously "off" in sound... although the sharp filters veered towards creating that slightly V-shaped feeling. They also have a "super slow aka NOS" filter setting, but that one just didn't feel right, almost like a mild pressure in the sound.

The above was using it as a dac. Using the built-in headphone outputs, I lean slightly towards the slow filters.

Eh I'll have to doublecheck my notes.

 

The two DACs I'm most excited for your to test:
- EAR DACute or DAC 4
- A Franken Schiit DAC.

 

agreed. and selfishly i'd love to hear about franken fryggy vs gumbreya since they're priced in the realm of mortals (even though it's still a solid piece of change) and some/many already have the Gungnir Multibit or Yggdrasil platform to begin with the surgical procedures.

 

Your last write up is quite impressive and on multiple fronts.
Well written and fully expressed which makes it much easier for us to follow along at home.

Interesting, the outcome ranking, given the players in the field of play.

JJ

 

As Torq said, he's heard "higher," but this is like criticizing the performance of a fully loaded Tesla or BMW because of some one-off trade-show super-vehicle. Just because it exists doesn't mean it is better, and even if it was, would you torture yourself over never being able to have it? If you could have it, would it be a lot better or just a little? I'd say a little. And a little better isn't worth $30k+ to me.

On with the show!

 

The DAC 4 is already on the list, and I'll be interested to see what Tim has come up with there - I've yet to hear anything of his that I didn't enjoy. That I have a soft spot for WM8741-based designs makes it all the more interesting to me.

I'd be happy to do the Fryggy vs. Gumbreya comparison, but doing so is likely going to be dependent on borrowing a Freya and using someone else's modified Yggdrasil/Gungnir - at least for the time being.

 

Back on the subject of hardware priced like a new car again ... and on some of these comparisons in general ...

It's worth noting, and I should call this out specifically in the KDS/3 thread I suppose (though at this point I'd kind of hoped it was a sufficiently common theme to not need that), these commentaries are based on intensive "audition style" listening as much, or perhaps more, than they are "just listening to music". Going into each of the listening series it's generally somewhere between very hard and damn-near impossible to tell the units apart at all. It takes a lot of focus, some specific music, a lot of repetition, and some machine assisted "blind(ish)" testing to come up with differences at all in many cases.

In the case of the KDS/3, DAVE and Yggdrasil it's not so hard to tell them apart ... once you get through a suitable evaluation list that brings out their respective strengths - though I defy anyone to do it without that. Feed them all a diet of pure J-Pop and you'd never know. Hell, use all analog-masters or any mic'd recording and no purely electronic music at all and you could potentially miss just how black the backdrop of the Linn is. I think you'd still tell it was the "blackest" but you might not appreciate how much of an effect that has without the detailed comparisons.

And then determining which is better ... well ... at this level, hell even at much lower levels, that is generally going to be a matter of personal preference.

In this case I suspect most people here would genuinely prefer the Yggdrasil. I've got two of the buggers and I have no plans to get rid of either of them. That Yggdrasil is less than 1/10th the price of the Linn (even given that the Linn isn't "just" a DAC) really just serves to highlight how damn good Mike's box of tricks is. Minor tweaks could easily flip how I ranked them even irrespective of price.

Now, DAVE, on the other hand ... that's fallen a bit in my estimation since I first did a proper audition with it. Even used (ex-demo, technically), for $6,500 (if I buy in the U.K., which is easy, since I maintain a place there, they're only $8,500 new by the time I get my VAT exempted), I still haven't pulled the trigger on one. That should say a lot more about how I currently feel about that unit than anything else I could write.

 

At this point I'm most interested in reading impressions of the updated Pavane, given that the previous version got high marks and even at full price is still within the range of mere mortals.

 

I really do understand @Torq reasons but it's also a shame as an European to not have it properly reviewed since, like you said, sometimes it's not easy to get some quality products around these parts, either by low availability or by not-so-friendly customs fees.

Going forward, keep up the good work @Torq this as been a mixture of entertainment and learning.