Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

staging on speakers is convert-2's biggest weakness. no depth, no real sense of layering, placement of instruments is unstable. music is cast on a 2d flat plane. I can't do without proper staging with speakers. with headphones none of this matters.

the convert2 ultimately was too colored of a dac to be considered a true reference component for me. the boost in transients make poor sounding old recordings too hot and harsh. it was harder for me to pick out the deficiencies in how albums were either badly engineered or mastered since the convert2 imparted too much of its own sonic character and pecularities. resolution is also behind some of the other DACs ive either owned or demo'd like the rockna wavedrean, its missing details from recordings i know should be there.

 

I can't even remember what my Yggdrasil sounded like in its A1 configuration. To complicate matters more I had a completely different speakers, amp and preamp and I had not yet gotten back into headphones. I just remember the A2 being better in that old set up.
Anyway, this is the first time I have read an opinion that the A1 "out-resolves" A2.

My interest is piqued just a tiny bit.

The convert has "hot" outputs right? When I ran a media pc instead of a raspberry PI, I increased the output level on a Digigram PCI express card for kicks and the soundstage depth disappeared. Was the convert 2's soundstage depth consistent no matter what its internal volume level was set at?

 

It seems there is a consensus that the Yggdrasil A2 took a dash of that resolution and loaned it the the Gungnir A2, though I strain to determine if there is a consensus around whether the Gungnir A2 now outresolves the Yggdrasil A2...

 

yggdrasil a1 might be more rsolving due to its gray background elevating more of the noise floor in recordings so you can hear it. I wonder if there is a correlation between resolution and so called "blackground". mike moffat doesnt believe sound comes out of a black nothing, its like there is another layer of reverb that gives the DAC a "wall of sound" effect to pick up on some of the ambience in the background other DACs do not resolve.

yggdrasil a1 staging was problematic with recordings. my mono records it sounded like I was listening to a dot projected directly in the center or sometimes there was very little in the way of width. supposedly the a2 revision addressed this to a degree

 

Really interesting how much the speakers vs headphones thing affects opinions. Dave and Convert 2 assessments both seem to highlight this. Makes me wonder if, as a 'headphone-only' user, I should even expect to hear the nuance folks describe in comparing these DACs.

Seems like 'mid-fi' takes on a whole new meaning here

 

To my ears (on speakers) there is no way Gungnir A2 outresolves Yggdrasil A2. Yggdrasil brings way more low level details, plankton, spatial info, etc than Gungnir Multibit does. Gungnir Multibit A2 brings a drier/squarer presentation and a more neutral frequency response, but does not reach Yggdrasil levels of resolution. Gungnir Multibit A2 also still has a grey blackground compared to Yggdrasil A2.

 

gungnir multibit a2 is supposedly a more neutral dac than its predecessor. i strongly disliked the gungnir a1 as it was much too warm and exaggerated wide staging. odd as moffat himself doesn't tune any of his DACs to have wide stages or slamming bass or sparkly highs.

the problem with having good speakers and amps, with no added transformers and other junk in the signal path, is that it reveals the weaknesses of the converters much more easily. i can tell you everything right and wrong with these dacs with using a track or two.

my dac solution to get away from all the compromises with digital is simple: go full analog

 

headphone impressions basically don't even count without a reference. a pair of JBL 305 mk IIs already have better treble than all headphones for under 200 a pair. The originals had atrocious power handling in the button tweeters that didn't even have ferrofluid in them. Once you start getting better drivers and cabinets without major resonances (no jbl 300s or harbeths), headphones basically are all basically just broken speakers.

most of the special converters are colored because they have to justify themselves to the purchaser soundwise over a bog standard but very good converter that's already really good. not everyone wants to pay for something that costs thousands and sounds great and neutral but isn't special synergy sound like Lynx or DAD. Sometimes you want to make the sound better. Most hifi DACs fail miserably at this. A few of them make things better.

 

Audiophiles also don't know what to make of a lot of progear like Lynx, MOTU, SSL converters and those that are inoffensively colored like Lavry Black, Apogee, Prism, Dangerous, Bricasti, Focusrite Rednet. Audiophiles wouldn't know what the f**k to think of the Burls, Lavry Gold, or UA 2192 where imprinting that conversion on the records pretty much solves a shit ton of problems and negates the need for further processing that might even be more colored. A shit ton of your records already have some of the more extreme color on them.

So the converters that are popular with internet audiophiles tend to be either unobtanium flexes, phat bass, or actually pretty antiseptic, vague clearish but not really clean bad with some major issues like RME (UAD Apollo too) with gross midrange issues due to poor analog design that they can't hear and think are on the recording. Sorry charlie, a lot of warm as f**k gear, going back to tube gear from the 50s actually has a cleaner midrange due to better analog design.

 

When you talk about the Lavry Black Psal, are you talking about the DA10 or DA11?

 

i would take a pair of budget pioneer speakers over most headphones. there are too many Overpriced jewelry headphones saturated in the market. even if you are forced to listen to low volumes, a pair of modest bookshelves and deal with it.

did torq ever listened to any of these dacs outside of his woo amp and headphones?

 

crane song solaris is very popular online with pros. how is it as a converter?

 

May want to check here: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...aris-dac-review-stream-of-consciousness.7044/

 

How is it very popular? I've never seen one in person. I've heard of a few guys online who tried it and thought it was warm, boring, and veiled in the lows but with pushed highs and blown out. It's a boutique product with special parts put out at a very slow rate that can't be made fast enough to satisfy demand and an almost year year long backorders. A lot of people who bought it sold it and thought it was just as colored if not more than Dangerous and Prism.

A few voices does not mean it is popular. Stuff like Avid backed converters (DAD now), Apple-partnered stuff (Apogee and UAD), Lynx, RME, MOTU, the Focusrite Dantes, are popular. There's no money in this to buy dozens of Lavry Golds like major labels did in the 90s. These guys with 5 different 2000 dollar converters, who the hell is paying for it?

 

A lot of you live in Norcal. In a lot of Norcal, the going studio rate is 40 dollars an hour. Good luck justifying 50-75 more hours of work to cover the expense of a two channel converter that might not even be better than your multichannel one assuming you don't have some old digidesign 192.

 

there appeared a lot of demand and it always being sold out. it was on my shortlist of pro dacs to try but i want to get an ear on the new apogee symphony desktop. the matrix sabre pro was another interest.

 

They pop up occasionally here; also they know how to repair SF stuff.
https://www.audio-connexion.com/uvelectronics.html

 

The ORFAS... are mostly deaf retards. Boomy one note bass playing from shit speakers in shit rooms. Things bought based on price. Most of the uber expensive things... are dogshit. Hifi shows being 99% shit. Is mostly true. And they are buying that shit.

The magical special latest and greatest AK47 Scimitar 9000 chips, do not even really matter. The small box offbrand chifi dacs cannot utilize them to their full potential anyway because the designers are incompetent. The designers are totally incompetent. Very basic listening tests and just examining their electrical components shows them to totally suck. Measurements will take much longer to find out how they suck but people have done it. It's not even hard to find. Then the ORFAS with thousands of dollars in mediocre speakers shilling shitty white van gear will bash competent gear as technologically inferior and incompetent.

The JBLs, starting at the cinema sound guy standard LSR 708p, are really good if you don't care about detail from doped paper/pulp/ultralight lightweight synthetic material woofers and soft dome tweeters. They have a tweeter off timbre but the soundonsound review is rofl comparing them to KEFs. They shit on KEFs. KEFs are aluminum can trash. tell those brits to recycle their aluminium. The JBLs will shit on all diy horns. Most ORFAS don't give a f**k about detail (eh JBL could be a lot better here) and dynamics (what the JBLs do) will bash things with actual detail for not having fat enough bass, sparkly enough treble, or not having complex crossovers eqing oem drivers to a flat line like the mediocre Neumann KH monitors and also mediocre DSP Genelecs.

The people who know how to record and mix music mostly all quit the game or do much less work now. Movie sound is its own thing. A lot of the coolest, actually functional new gear is targeted at both markets. Some of the 1:1 or straight up improved western made gear recreations, line stages, portable recorders, high dynamic range preamps, portable tank monitors, are all awesome. Mackie boards, Alesis ADAT, and TC Electronics Finalizer were the beginning of the end. Now popular music production is at rock bottom.

Audiophile music is for people who don't get laid. DSD sucks. The filter itself is colored, universalizing garbage. Most music is still mixed at 44.1 or 48khz pcm even if it was recorded higher due to lower latency in the converters. High rez is a lie.

Audiosciencereview is run by a guy who never owned a record before starting the site and ORFAS who are lucky they haven't been sued yet. @JayNYC linked me two tards there bashing MOTU based on noise. It turned out to be retards with a bunch of diy junk not turning on their gear in the proper, signal path order.