Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

We'll have to see how it goes with the EC Designs stuff. @murphythecat had said he'd ping(ed) the manufacturer suggesting they contact me which, if that's the case, they've so far not elected to do. At a convenient time I may reach out to them again (I did so once before, when the original thread started and they were responsive but couldn't make anything happen), but I'm not sure why they'd be able to make it work now when they couldn't back then.

 

Understandable from your point of view.
Keep up the good ride you are on.

 

EC designs manufacture everything in house: enclosure, soldering, pcb tracing, everything is soldered by hand, ect. they are a small company.
Ive spoken to ec designs this week and the first batch of 10 units of the new mosaic usb have been sold locally. a next batch will be ready in about a month or two, where I hope to receive my unit.
id say reach out to them in about 2-3 months!

 

Outside of point-to-point builds, I can't consider that a good thing.

I hope future batches of this stuff are going to be bigger runs ... or, honestly, I think this thing is going to be WAY too niche to be relevant.

And that's exactly the way it ended with the Mosaic-T ...

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Can't say I'm encouraged to be honest. I was under the impression that you already had one of these things that you were willing to ship to me. So other than some interesting design commentary which, honestly, raises a lot more skepticism from an engineering perspective than it provides hope for audio-nirvana, there doesn't seem to be much else here.

Has anyone relevant actually had their ears on one of these things?

 

EC design tried to outsource the placing and soldering of components but none could do it at an acceptable quality level..

as soon as I have my mosaic UV dac, ill send it to you for your review. this will take about 2 months! ill be in touch.

and thanks again for all your work, amazing really!

 

The car analogy is apt. There are cars that cost hundreds of thousands & they perform worse than cars that cost a fraction of that, BUT there are cars in that high price range that totally justify the price point & have the performance to back it up.

A lot of those astronomical prices are from the dealership mark ups & boutique name, but there probably are legit higher end DACs that use the more expensive parts & more complicated designs that do add up that would justify the price.

 

Unless there are no SMDs involved, I find that very hard to believe. Automated paste screening, pick and place, and precisely controlled reflow ovens are going to give more consistent and, in general, vastly more accurate results than doing fine-pitch work manually can even begin to approach.

The point here was not that I want you to send me your DAC. It was that it sounded like you actually had one already. And since you don't, and if no one relevant has even heard this thing, then it seems we're getting "all excited" over some semi-coherent engineering claims for a product that, currently, has a "production" run of ten units sometime in the last, maybe, month.

This sort of thing just pisses me off.

 

maybe I should have waited until the units are ready to ship before suggesting the Mosaic dac. They are only on Pre order.

Once the Mosaic UV will be available for purchase, I suppose it wont be difficult for anyone to buy a unit.

 

My issue wasn't so much about justifying their price ... it was more that there wasn't, in my opinion, enough head room left in the development/performance of audio-centric DACs to "absolutely cream" something at Yggdrasil's level. Outperform it? Yeah, that's possible. I doubt, for example, that Mike himself hasn't had ideas about things he'd tweak or improve if they were possible/practical.

But to my original statement ... to me to "absolutely cream" something at this level would require a differential in performance that would render the unit being "beaten" as just, well, lousy. And even the cheapest competent DACs out there really don't fall THAT far from "good". So, in reality we're talking about honing an already shaving-sharp blade and are VERY deep into the realms of diminishing returns, and are not comparing a surgical blade to a spoon.

 

I've already addressed the specifics in previous posts - be it claims about "new" or "unique" approaches that, at least on the face of it, just aren't, or statements about what is, and is not, still required in terms of audio. Those seem to be opinions at best, and either demonstrably wrong or incomplete/incoherent enough to do more than raise questions at worst.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; so far, there's lots of the former and, as far as I can tell, none of the latter.

And yes, I could go to DIYAudio and ask for clarification, but I just don't care to - because even if I did it wouldn't tell me a damn thing about how it sounds. And even if it was purely to satisfy my academic interest it would currently be for a "product" that is apparently not yet even available to buy ...

And that puts this a bit too close to "Hype-Fi" for my liking.

I'd probably be less irritated if this wasn't the exact pattern we went through with the Mosaic T.

 

Yeah the Yggdrasil is barely better than the Gungnir Multibit which isn't really better than the good DS DACs which are only slightly better than the low end Schiit offerings (except for Modi Multibit, Jot DAC, and the Fulla as those are aren't that great).

I used the second cheapest Steinberg interface for a bit as a cheap USB speaker DAC. The U22 mkII uses the Cirrus CS4270 codec I believe as both an ADC and DAC. The thing really didn't sound that bad and easily beat up a few hideous DACs that cost over a thousand.

 

Forget Marvey's DAC chart, folks, this is all you need.

 

Well yeah all DACs that don't suck sound okay. I'm not going to kill myself or rage out over having to listen to music on a dongle from LH Labs, Grace, or Apogee even if they have audibly less high end detail than a Modi. An ODAC, Mytek , Tascam DAC though? Hand me my axe and I'll cleave it like Gimli.

 

No worries, I updated the official DAC chart to reflect these latest developments.

 

Modi2U (4396) needs to be higher.

 

I award you two internets for this excellent post.

 

I thought the same that's why I replied.

 

Then why would anyone buy an Yggdrasil? Or an even more expensive DAC? Seems like it would be waste of money based on what Psalmanazar said. You guys are high on stopping people from spending money unwisely. Shouldn't you discourage people from buying an Yggdrasil or Gungnir Multibit? A Chord Mojo should suffice, right? It's a "good" DS DAC....

 

@k4rstar did update the chart.

 

Spend however the hell you want tbh. Sound quality is, beyond broken parts and truly terrible designs, subjective.

post by Mike Moffat on HF: