Schiit Byygy Dac Just Landed

[edit] please see the next post for the full context in this thread
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No, I believe what was mentioned is the slide deck by Rahmi Hezar, a long time TI engineer now with Apple. The deck was presented to some IEEE occasion back in 2013, more than a decade ago…


https://ewh.ieee.org/r5/dallas/sscs/slides/SMU_IEEE_seminar_10142013.pdf

 

We are discussing the slide deck that @earnmyturns shared. It's from a seminar from 2013 given in some IEEE context, and it has Texas Instruments written on all the slides, so I don't think its BS. In fact @earnmyturns said it is these concepts that his Linn Organik converters are based on.
Schiit Byygy Dac Just Landed

Sorry if I made it sound like marketing material, I was trying to simplify for @artur9 who already gave it 2 days trying to understand.

 

The reason is 1 bit delta sigma is mathematically wrong, cannot be dithered, and all positive 1 values are clipped. 2-bit gives you 4 possible values with 2-bits of dither that can be shaped away and is linear to its noise floor. More values and higher sample rates enable further noise shaping to lower the noise floor.

Resistor DAs were already being noise shaped. Delta-Sigma just takes it further and is able to be quieter than most of them for less money. There is no inherent downside to it other than the need for very good clocks and sometimes the filters and analog parts on the chips aren't very good.

Many of these ho hum prosumer interfaces and hifi converters really are that bad with easily measurable distortion, terrible analog parts and poor filters.

 

There's a good paper online about why we shouldn't use single bit delta sigma converters, it brings up the same points Psalm just did.

 

Wasn't DSD a 1-bit thingamjig?

 

very cool paper. weiss has also just flat out said dsd is a worse storage format. paul frindle who built some of the earlier multi-bit delta-sigma designs laid out why sony went all in on dsd in the 90s: they could patent it while multi-bit noise shaping converters (late 80s) and delta-sigma modulation (from the 60s) itself were not patentable.

 

it's nothing more than 1-bit pcm with delta-sigma noise shaping and a crazy filter so the tweeter doesn't blow up from chirpies and shape quantization distortion (instead of noise).

 

I have purposefully not yet put down a deposit because I want to be further down the list, give others time to get ears on this thing and report back. When I do put the deposit down, it will be on the card only, and that's to secure the discount. If the reports are it's not a huge improvement over existing boards, I'll cancel. I am undoubtedly curious. I've heard some fantastic D/S implementations and the fact that this is genuinely bespoke is exciting. Also the fact that they're making this available in a variety of configurations speaks to the forward thinking and consumer minded approach Schiit has always taken with the Yggdrasil. Kudos to them for not making this a whole new product at $10k that makes Yggdrasil the new "second best" DAC. I'm still loving my A1 in my GS2+, this stuff doesn't automatically become obsolete just because something better gets released.

Regarding GPUs, I haven't had a Windows PC in at least 15 years, maybe 20. With all the tariff bullshit happening, I splurged on a prebuilt with a 9070 XT. I'm hoping by the time I need an upgrade on that card the insanity surrounding consumer GPUs will be over and done with. The 9070 is a beast of a card and with Optiscaler I can inject FSR 4 into the vast majority of games with minimal extra effort, and I'm glad to contribute to the efforts to undo NVIDIA's stranglehold on the industry. f**k this shit with $1500 MSRP cards that go for $3-$4k that are at best 5% better than the last gen, with drivers that don't even work.

 

And yet it's all in the implementation as near as I can tell. Why do I prefer a HQPlayer > Holo's 1 bit modulator (any version I have heard - from Cyan 2 to May) over any multi bit delta-sigma dac I have heard including Dave? Pro's and cons of course, but in the end the HQPlayer's > Holo's chain has more pros. It gets beat in bass texture by my Yggdrasil A2 (which I have been listening to lately), Dave bests it in ultimate separation/detail. The only DAC I have heard that may approach or best it overall is the WaveDream, though I would need to do a side-by-side comparison to confirm.

So at least in the sub < $10k realm 1 bit still rules for my preferences, or rather a certain implementation does...

 

Yes, that 2001 paper is a good place to start for someone becoming acquainted with these concepts like @artur9 . It is explained in the paper that in spite of the mathematical perfection of 1-bit converters, in practice the physical components do not conform to the naive mathematical model. Improving the model to include these physical imperfections presents opportunities to advance the design.

It must be pointed out that in general, a solution arises mathematically from modelling the behaviour of the electrical components. It is simply an optimisation problem given the specifications of the desired behaviour and some models of the electrical components available. However, being unaware of general optimisation methods, engineers try all kinds of "brute-force" trickery to try and approximate optimisation. The second way that this process goes awry is lack of awareness of the initial assumptions when modelling the electronic components. This leads to a "levels of understanding" type situation:



The level of awareness implies a corresponding solution:

 

edit: nevermind, poor reading comprehension on my part

 

I heard back from Schiit (RE: going Singular Card vs Yggdrasil-to-Byggy transformation)... they confirmed you just won't get the extra input, the Unison 384, Forkbeard capability going with Singular Card...will sound like Byggy aside from that...

I have a deposit down and understand the (earned, well-deserved) excitement. This would be my 5th Schiit DAC.

 

So Unison 384 won't be available as an upgrade to the non-plus casework USB card?

I guess my bigger question is how much of the new "flavor" is in the Singular cards, versus Unison 384 USB implementation, versus the new DSP card and new oscillators?

 

Maybe I should have held off on posting about their response to me. Not trying to add any confusion. I have the OG Chassis and that's what they told me. If you want all the Byggy features you have to send it in for 2k with OG Chassis. If I'm adding noise - my bad - I'll edit as needed.

 

You can only get the Byggy features (DSP card, new SPDIF/AES/optical card, Unison 384 card) with the + chassis - among other reasons, the way the new digital inputs are arranged requires a modular back panel that the OG chassis can’t accommodate. Jason has confirmed there should be a path sometime next year at the earliest for people who just get the Singular card (including those of us with a non-+ chassis) to send in to get the rest of the Byggy upgrade (which yes will include a + chassis), and since you already have the Singular card installed in that scenario, it should be cheaper in theory than 2k. Probably somewhere down the line I guess if there’s someone who doesn’t want Singular but does want the rest of the upgrade, they’ll offer that too (so LIM/MIB/MIL/A1/A2 cards but with new input and DSP boards and + chassis).