Yggdrasil Refined - New Schiit Yggdrasil Analog 2 (Yggdrasil A2) Sound Impressions

About two weeks for me too: arrived at Schiit on April 12, shipped out yesterday, April 27.

 

@Chris F sure please do check the cable and let me know Where can i get the belkin gold cant seem to find it anyhere

and thanks for the info its been 9 days since they got mine so looking at around 1-2 weeks more lets see i'll update this post for how long they took just as a benchmark for other people

 

Received my Yggdrasil upgrade back from Schiit (Analog 2 & Gen 5). While I don't have an Analog 1 to do a pure A/B compare my subjective impression using my "reference" recordings (not necessarily hi-fi spectaculars but more stuff I know the best have lived with for decades) is that Analog 2 seems a tad bit smoother/warmer/sweeter while keeping all the detail that Yggdrasil is known for. Not sure if it will change any further with additional burn in but it sounds great to me so far.

 

Started listening to my Yggdrasil A2 today after 5 days of warm up via Ether Flows on a Sonett 2. If OG Yggdrasil was considered to be 'clinical' I don't get that sense with Yggdrasil A2 and also hear the smooth/warm/sweet. Going from OG Gungnir Multibit to Yggdrasil A2 though, I can't say that the difference is night and day to me yet. I should have my Af back in a day or two which might take better advantage of Yggdrasil A2, which is apparently still on it's way to full equilibrium.

 

My Yggdrasil A2 has been on for about 2 days now, and the first few hours sounded discombobulated, but over the last 24 hours or so, it's coming into its own. The biggest thing I've noticed so far is that things are a little rounder, like someone taking sandpaper to a surface that's just slightly rough. It's sweeter, but isn't covering stuff up in warm goo: everything is just a little more refined. When the music gets spiky, the Yggdrasil A2 is faithful but things that are beautiful are more so now.

 

So I have to send the Yggdrasil for the upgrade tomorrow and I had just tonight to test it against the pavane. I used the exact same setup on both so P12, wywires silver power cables, both fed from LPS powered AES16 from the same breakout cable and both with wywires platinum interconnects to the apex teton. For the teton I used my most accurate but still musical tube combo(WE422A,Bendix 6080WB and Sylvania 6SN7W short bottle). HD800SDR hardwired and K1K were used.
The differences were smaller than I expected
- both detail monsters with the same amount of micro detail. No case of I can hear something in A I can't in B
- The pavane has just a pinch better high end detail while been smother at the same time
- Yggdrasil had a slight tendency to emphasise the treble detail but had just a dab of grain compared to the pavane
- midrange(mostly voices) on the pavane had just a smidgen more detail in it with slightly better presence. The Yggdrasil at times can be cooler and just slightly distant.
- bass is really really close but on old rap songs the pavane has a wee bit more control/weight
- the soundstage on the pavane is a tad better on width making the Yggdrasil sound slightly compressed by comparasions.
- depth is just pinch deeper on the pavane.

These differences weren't obvious all at the same time on all songs. On some I could't tell them apart and most had just a few at once.

Now the individual differences while small make for a big picture in end for me. This is my second Yggdrasil and I would sell it again but I want see what the upgrade can do. In the end I find the pavane more engaging and easier to listen to. I hope the upgrade fixes my main complaint, the damn treble that makes it sound analytical. On the K1K it was enough on some tracks to push it over the edge into to dreaded ssssssssssssss land.

On value the Yggdrasil is a no brainer since I got it for about a quarter of the price of the new pavane. Man, at this level any extra % improvements are horrendously expensive.

 

Which level Pavane?

 

Level 2

 

FWIW, Belkin discontinued the Gold awhile ago. It was a staple for cheap audio cables... you can find them on ebay once and awhile (typically overpriced)

 

Curious how folks are feeding their Yggdrasil to balanced HP amp and balanced speaker amp without manual cable swapping. Someone suggested a Gold Point box. Stretched out over long enough, the investment would be worth it to me, but I'm curious who's gone this route and whether it's a sound way to go.

 

Y splitter cable is the other option, but you need to be sure that your amps don't short their inputs when switched off. You can check this by running balanced cable to your amp, RCA to something else, then switching off the balanced amp and seeing if the device receiving the RCA signal sounds distorted to shit. If this happens with either of your two balanced amps then you are in trouble and HAVE to use a switch. If not then a y-splitter would work just as well. If you have cable nervosa you may not be happy with this option.

 

If as Garn mentioned one of the amp shorts the signal when off, or if the current drain of both amps is too much especially if you have older Yggdrasil Analog 1 (you’ll be easily able to tell by the nasty sounding distortion), you can build your own switch really economically. It’s only 3 wires and one of them is ground, so actually really simple.

Get a quality double pole double throw toggle switch and wire up pin 2 and 3 of the XLR cables to it. You can tie together all the pin 1 cables since that’s ground.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'm in cable nervosa recovery and susceptible to relapse. I'll give this a whirl. I've got the Yggdrasil Analog 2.

 

You'll have to take this as a layman's impression...

So, quick and dirty review... I dig it. The chain is RME9632/Yggdrasil A2/Modded Af/Ether Flows.

Originally with the Af on OG Gungnir Multibit with RCA or EH 2A3 tubes I was a little unsure about the bass on the Af. Going to JJ 2A3's and Yggdrasil A2 has me happy now with the bass. Af felt a little bass light but those 2 changes have filled out the bottom end. I'm not sure how much of that was the tubes vs. the DAC. I could experiment a little if any one wanted me to.

I'm not very familiar with Yggy1 but if there was any aspect of that iteration being 'clinical' I'm not hearing it on Yggdrasil A2. I've heard Yggdrasil A2 be described as having a 'sweetness' to it and I'll be one more that would agree with that. Nothing about the sound strikes me as sterile on any level. The noticeable difference in going from Gungnir Multibit to Yggdrasil A2 on a big-boy tube amp, for me, is the stage. Yggdrasil A2 is much more out of your head with dimensionality and separation to instruments with an expanded holographic stage without becoming diffuse.

All together the chain sort of gives a cocoon effect of a really full, lush without being diffuse, sound.

I'm hoping for the chance to hear Auteurs on this setup but don't have any complaints with the EFlows which I think sound Really good.

 

Just ordered a new Yggdrasil. I currently have the Jotunheim with multibit card and I'm actually very happy with this combo while using my utopias and monoprice m1060 headphones. But something keeps nagging me to try out the Yggdrasil. I will try and compare the built in MB card and the Yggdrasil outputting to the Jot amp. Part of me is hoping I can hear the difference and a part of me isn't LOL.

 

Just make sure to give a good warm up time. Preferably a few weeks of non stop warm up time to get a fair evaluation.

 

Having received Yggdrasil A2 4 weeks back, I do 320kbps playback to Yggdrasil optical interface, from Yggdrasil XLR interface to Cambridge Audio CXA80 to DynaAudio Emit20 Speakers via Chord Epic Cables. I also do FLAC/320kbps playback to Yggdrasil USB interface.

Yggdrasil produce life like sound especially enjoyable when I do playing back of LIVE concert and Audiophile Vocal recordings. Yggdrasil sounds near to the sound-stage, and many instruments and bass can be heard distinctively.

I left it power ON running for weeks, Yggdrasil sound is very life like till my wife switch it OFF momentarily by accident, and the sound went plain-flat. When left powered on continuously, Yggdrasil only feels slightly warm, and It have not consume too much more electricity to make a diff in my electricity bill.

On CXA80, 320kpbs and FLAC music playback makes night and day different. With Yggdrasil, 320kbps playback is very close FLAC performance. FLAC may put in more definition but 320kbps is already 80% there.

Yggdrasil produce such Life-Like musically pleasant sound to the ears that I prefer Yggdrasil many times over steroid dark sound from Lossless playback on Hegel CD+H160 with DynaAudio Emit20.

 

Every time I start reading about Yggdrasil, comments like this scare the sh*t out of me. Is it really that bad?

My Onyx always sounds as expected from the first second and continues so no matter how long it is on. I cannot spot any changes to its sound over time. No initial harshness, no roughness, no blur etc. The same applied to Modi Multibit when I had it - it just sounded great from the first second on. (I dont leave my DACs on all the time, I switch them off everytime I end my listening session.)

Why is Yggdrasil different, why it requires so many hours of on-time before it sounds as intended?

 

I got mine and it took 3 weeks or so for a glitch with constant loud electronic noises to trigger a clipping like sound. I thought it was power related or some current limiting problem with the DAC chips. That problem is now gone completely. ZERO issues with my Yggdrasil Analog 2.

I have turned it off to test out different power cords, switch power strips etc and have noticed no degradation of sound. It seems that as long as everything inside is at a stable temperature, Yggdrasil will perform at it's best. quick on and offs after it has reached it's operating temperature seem to be fine.

 

I'd think the Onyx & Modi Multibit do benefit from warm up time too, just not to the extent (or long period) that the Yggdrasil or other bigger/heavier DACs do.