Schiit Urd Impressions

That's what I took from it. I totally understood the context of your statement "kicks my streamer's ass". (We are a small enough community that we should get these kinds of statements, especially if they are so ridic!) I don't know Winders personally. However, another member texted me to remind me that he kinda has small penis syndrome. He gets really sensitive if anybody remotely says that any of his gear is not da best, highest value, etc. Even though in this case, his gear has absolutely nothing to do your informal comparison. LOLZ.

 

The term is SDE. Get it right

 

Means absolutely nothing. In fact, if you want to argue measurements or "bits are bits" even though you claim you are "not a bits by bits guy by any stretch" (it would do you well to make up your mind), I'd argue the Rockna is better despite worse jitter numbers. The spectrum looks cleaner. It's the nature of the jitter, not the singular number.

Holo Red


Rockna. Higher jitter number, but less crap in the spectrum: less grass, more ordered grass in the ultrasonics, and much lower at 50Hz jitter.


Heck, I've even argue that the Mercury streamer, despite MUCH poorer singular jitter numbers, is competitive with the Holo Red. There no jitter in the 150-200Hz area and ultrasonics other than the 88kHz spike doesn't look worse despite the higher ps floor.

Mercury streamer


Again, it's the nature of jitter. And even then I'd like to see more study in this area. What I would be curious is @GoldenOne's results with the Urd. However, this would require a CD with stimulus signal.

Trying to make out measurements is complex. One cannot simply provide a link to a set of measurements in isolation however excellent the singular numbers are (and however excellent the tester), and proclaim "disbelief" at another's subjective impressions, particularly when the device in question has not yet been tested. What you've done, your argument, makes absolutely no sense.

 

Then call people out on their hyperbole / FOTM or ask for clarification.

Passively aggressively attacking people with weak rhetorical devices (e.g., playing the Schiit card, proclaiming others have expectation bias - when it's clearly obvious you do, providing links to measurements to your own gear (which has nothing to do with anything here) then saying you are not bits are bits, using false unequivalent comparisons, etc.)

Grow up dude. This isn't the first time you've pulled off this shit. I don't think I've ever come down on you so hard before, but you are just REALLY F'ING WEIRD, man.

 

Yep. A few subjective notes. Long term blind even.

Then @GoldenOne's jitter spectrums.

 

No idea. I can only guess. What Mike did here appears to be modern reinterpretation of what he did at Theta using the ST glass fiber to carry SPDIF from the CD transport to the DAC. I'm sure after Unison was developed, the Mike/Dave/Ivana team wondered how Unison would sound as a CD to to DAC data transmission mechanism. Unison was already known to measure much better than the Cmedia stuff*. Heck, even ASR lauded Unison.

As for what Mike was chasing. That's easy. It either sounds "good" or sounds "like ass". It's pretty binary with him. Brilliant guy, but enjoying reproduced music was a very simple endeavor with him. People forget Mike invented or was one of the first who invented the concept of jitter for digital.

*Yes, the USB out from the source device matters. I still preferred pi2AES over Unison unless I used a certain USB PCI card on my PC: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...usb-break-out-pci-usb-card-with-unison.11822/

P.S. I actually have not heard Urd using a CD for playback to a DAC! And the most I will say about Unison from USB is that it sounds different not necessarily better. From most USB out sources, Unison is a bit too "tubey" for me.

 

So thinking about this more, the APx555 jitter measurements suck balls. I mean, WTF does 5ps mean at 50Hz? I F'ING HATE SINGULAR NUMBERS. Here's another idea. Totally unbaked, so there's good chance this could be a dead end. Hey, at least I'm trying to be creative.

The idea is a 3D plot that shows us the spectrum for test tones from 20Hz to 20kHz. Any numbers there are for illustrative purposes.


Any grad students out there? Because AP ain't gonna do this stuff, and if they do, it's gonna be a $6000 software upgrade.

 

I suspect the Urd --Unison--> Yggdrasil gives the Schiit ecosystem a leg up because both source and destination may speak the same Unison "language". In-house developed USB, with both source and destination optimized for each other. I don't think Winders considered this.