Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

Can you give us an idea what you are running? What are your components? In terms of "aspects", can you further break these things down (other than dynamics and timbre which you already covered - for example what about resolution?) for Yggdrasil and the Lampi in relation to the BP DAC that you auditioned in your system? Also what model Lampi?

Might be worth loaner program? What do you think @Hands?

 

Scot Hull likes it. He says its "better than everything else", but then again, he writes a lot of fluff, and I don't see much in terms of comprehensive or comparative DAC reviews or impressions from him.

I kind of feel that we can just take his BP DAC review, and just find/replace "BorderPatrol DAC" with <any good DAC> and the review would read just fine.

Maybe we can do a shared risk thing with @Hands, since he loves NOS DACs. If it's good, we can pay him off to put the DAC on the loaner program, or he can just keep it for himself.

 

I'm surprised after reading their site:

1. "It is used without digital filtering and over-sampling and also without an Op-Amp output buffer, another source of the unnatural sound that plagues most digital to analogue converters." - This does not sound good. I hope there is at least an analog low pass filter.
2. "The DAC is housed in a copper case chosen for it's rich, lustrous sound quality" - How does the DAC case affect sound quality richness and lustrous-ness?
3. "My budget-favorite (~$1,000)" ... "Prices: S SE
   USB or SPDIF only $995 $1350
   USB and SPDIF (switchable) $1500 $1850" - Entry level my ass. All these sounds fishy. R-2R for less than ~$1000. Get a Mjolnir. More? Get a Yggdrasil. But YMMV. Definitively not entry level, and nowhere near cheap bastid material.

Whether one is in the D-S or R-2R camp or both, from a sort of technical/cursory perspective, it seems to me multi-bit R-2R Schiit products are better implementations.

 

Well, it could sound good if the input impedance of the device is sufficiently high so the chips' output isn't stressed. The chips are voltage output, so no IV stage necessary. Not anything different from what I did with Freya, taking the Gungnir Multibit's AD chip outputs directly into the tube-pre inputs of Freya for a significant increase in clarity and resolution. Curious about the DAC's source impedance though.

Copper case could provide EMI shielding and mass loading.

Scot Hull did say: makes most other DACs sound broken

 

BTW, they need to change the company name from BoarderPatrol to ImmigrationAndNaturalizationService DAC. It conveys not only immigration of digital bits to analog woodness, but also their naturalization.

 

I would be concerned about the sync like filtering that happens if there is no oversampling for the 44.1 kHz source cases. May result in the usual treble roll off.

Furthermore, w/o any sort of digital filtering, ultrasonic images might be problematic downstream. An analog filter (assuming there is one at all) may have a difficult time on it's own.

 

I liked the Lampi DAC's I've heard (4,5,6 a few years ago) except for one thing: Wolfson delta-sigma stridency and rasp. Not all Wolfson DACs sound like this, but the Lampi sure does. I have not heard the newer stuff like GG, Atlantic, Big 7, etc.

 

Heh, that's the bad one. I forgot. The good one is the TDA1541, with two crowns, or maybe three.

 

I mean I'll listen to about anything if I'm not paying for it. 1543 is a budget DAC. Maybe good for 13-14 bits and with other technical limitations. I'm not buying these claims of this DAC's performamce.

 

What about the new Metrum above the Musette? The Musette was alright, just not $1200. Quite frankly, I'm scared because the mediocre line of Metrum stuff has a tendency of taking a dump in value over time.

 

Hmm...well, I think the Menuet is a big step up in an almost unrecognizable sense. But it suffers noticeably with SE output. The Pavane and Adagio sound nice with SE output, likely due to the actual output transformers. I'm unsure if the Musette suffered because of some SE shenanigans, i.e. DACs or output stage just not meant for SE without OPT, or if it's because it only used two DAC ONE modules and effectively did 16 bits max. The higher end models use the FPGA and/or even better DAC modules to get higher performance.

I would be curious if the new Amethyst, essentially a Musette with the DAC TWO modules, would be a step up. In theory, it should... (DAC TWO = two DACs in one module + FPGA built into each...can be confusing.)

It's a tough call. I feel I would need to hear the Amethyst before suggesting we spend funds on any of their other DACs. The Menuet, again, has handicapped SE sound and even then I don't think captures the "magic" of the Pavane and Adagio that made some of us local Coloradans fall in love (yes, even Yggdrasil fans - albeit potentially not sane individuals).

I know that's not really an answer, but I don't have a hard answer in this case. Trying to be cautious.

 

Dunno at all if these are shit, but price wise they are cheap bastid approved:

https://www.amazon.com/Tda1543x4-DIR9001-TDA1543-Parallel-Connect/dp/B0095NSFJQ

There is also this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/L1387DAC-8X...222596?hash=item2cbe0f1d44:g:LMkAAOSwRUhY~et9

But 3x more pricey, so not that cheap bastid approved.

Who knows how they sound but they have TDA woodness on them.