Schiit Yggdrasil Stereophile Review + Measurements

Yep,
Subjective sound is one thing, and accuracy /uniformity of the test results are another.
Yes they made Dave sound great, but I find a difference between beauty and reality.

I starting to think that all those extra "number of taps" are like what an "air brush" does to a painting. .. get it to show more pretty, or like what "MSG" does to food, to make it more than what it is...
I am wondering if the Dave "constructing" more than what was originally there to make up for less bit depth than Yggdrasil.
Just my own speculation sorry ..

Also,
off topic, but to me, something is also going on when the Dave headphone output which seemed to adjust itself at higher volumes to "not sound strained" on heavy bass passages using 20ohm HEK. Very impressive.

Regardless, if more posters would call out for fairness, maybe they wouldn't get away with shitting on schiit, and all kisses for Chord.

 

Well, it ain't all grits-and-glory on the DAVE front either, at least from the Stereophile perspective. Here JA gets called out for tsk-tsking DAVE's lack of MQA capability, as well as for using a much more expensive Meridian (MQA enabled) DAC as the primary reference for the review:
https://www.audioasylum.com/forums/critics/messages/8/86375.html

 

Oh dear, JA is on the MQA boat, is he? That's it then. Last trace of respect gone.

 

Why do you jump to this conclusion?

John pointed out that the Dave is incompatible with MQA. That is an objective fact.

John has done a lot of testing to verify MQA claims. John has shown that MQA does reduce file size. He also compared the files, and found: "My analyses comparing the spectrum of the original WAV file with that of the decoded MQA version did indeed prove that MQA's "music origami" worked, the spectra of the original WAV file and the decoded MQA version overlaying one another exactly up to the 44.1kHz Nyquist frequency of the original recording.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-mqa#iBupIvcgp5RQuVOJ.99
"
I haven't read anything from him promoting MQA. All he seems to do in analyst and report on it, which is what I would expect of Sterophile.

I do have or use MQA, and I don't plan to in the future unless circumstances change. I just don't like how people jump to conclusion based incomplete data.

 

On the back of @powermatic "tsk tsk" comment. So, second-hand, yes.

Personally, I think MQA is another music-Indiustry con, and an attempt by Meridian to take a cut out of every piece of music that we listen to. No, I haven't done any of the work that you claim JA has done. To me, it would be a bit like setting up labs to investigate Monsanto.

Yep... MQA, Monsanto, probably dozens of other things: could well be just my prejudices.

 

Just ordered the Yggdrasil 4. Should sound 4 times better.

 

Intel just announced the core i9. The core i10 will be used in the Yggdrasil 5, so I recommend waiting until then.

 

MQA is harmful. It is an egregious lock-in play that is fundamentally anti-consumer. It's also a shitty way to handle audio, it's lossy and loses to FLAC. If people are contemptuous or sensitive about someone mentioning lack of MQA support as a downside, that'd be why.

Here's a potentially useful comment:

There's a lot more smoke and mirrors; shiftiness about masters and business shenanigans galore associated with it. MQA should be Krytonite to any reasonably well-informed music consumer. So yeah, don't be surprised if criticising a DAC for not supporting is taken as a sign that a reviewer is either lamentably gullible or shady.

It's not like DSD, which is just rather pointless and irrelevant. It's bordering on actually evil.

(Sorry. That just had to come out.)

 

You mean that the music industry would engage in a cynical cash grab, to the detriment of consumers, and attempt to camouflage it under the "quality" banner?

I'm shocked, particularly as the music industry has such a great record of consumer advocacy. It's not like it's yet another ploy to get us to buy the same music all over again [EDIT - and get their sticky fingers into every step of the audio chain]. That would be deplorable.

 

wtf!

 

Yeah as someone who pm'ed you I'm honestly not sure what the deal is either.

It wasn't even on my radar but I was getting pmed about it and saw it getting recommended everywhere. Only a handful have even heard it and everyone is bouncing off the walls. I was only really looking at the Holo Spring Dac L3 as a possible alternative. (which I'm still researching, not fully clear on it yet)

Gonna be another No Man's Sky if the hype keeps building.

Even that Source AV guy was saying Hugo 2 over Yggdrasil all day. (Though I don't know him all that well, would it be even or of course he is?)

 

My first guess? Over-zealous/over-excited Chord fanboys.

I've no doubt Hugo 2 will improve on Hugo - which I didn't like as much as I did Mojo. And then I went off Mojo in relatively short order.

Based on both the original Hugo and on DAVEs performance, I don't see Hugo 2 beating Yggdrasil in raw terms, though there will of course be those that legitimately prefer Chord's approach. I could be wrong, of course. But if not then it'll be interesting to see if it can best Gungnir MB (which is not a direct comparison I was able to do properly before very recently). Of course Hugo 2 has some utility beyond being just a DAC.

I think more interesting speculation is "what comes next".

I can't imagine any thinking-person that's aware of Hugo 2's "imminent"* arrival wanting to take the plunge on either a 2Qute or a Hugo TT at this point, since it would seem entirely probably that both of those products will get updated with the new Hugo 2 core. And if they don't, then one has to question if the changes to the core of the thing really are as big an upgrade, relatively speaking, as they've being lauded to be (and if they aren't, well ... what's the bloody point).

 

As ever, the best course of action is to figure out what you want to potentially audition, using secondary and tertiary sources/references to narrow down the audition list - and then actually listen to them yourself. Sadly this is not always possible, but in those cases I'd be more inclined to limit myself to choices that I could audition than blow thousands on promises, futures, hopes and prayers.

Of course, when you're dealing with nonsense like the current situation between, say, Yggdrasil and DAVE "measurements" in one of the more prominent tertiary sources that gets made vastly more difficult.

 

Yeah a lot of people buy into the hype. As someone who is kinda of a... well almost you for gaming laptops, I'm well used to it and don't really buy into hype. The amount of times people expect something from Razer and it's garbage... smh...

Pending you or other users here strongly disagreeing when I am about to buy I'll most likely just go with Yggdrasil so I can easily plug it into my speaker system.

Yeah I was thinking of using The Cable Company? To rent a pair of Utopias to audition? Is that a smart move when I can't go anywhere myself? Too bad that no one carries schiit stuff for those purposes, but I agree with Schiit's values.

 

I used them for my original Abyss and HE-1000 audition, it was easy and worked well for me (I knew I'd be spending the amount of my rental there one way or another - since I'd decide I was buying at least one of them).

 

I forget the name of one of the magazines I use to receive monthly; maybe Audiophile. Anyway I gave up on it too because it was impossible not to notice that the preferences almost always seemed to be a simple 1:1, the more it costs, the less critical the reviews. Ironically it should probably be the other way around, the more it costs, the more the buyer should beware of what to expect. It was also hard not to notice that over the time they were spending almost all the effort on increasingly astronomical priced products vs products that most of us might reasonably afford. A 4" driver in a fancy polished box, $25,000. You could just tell the reviewer just wanted to find something to like about products like this. At some point I just couldn't continue reading that magazine either.

 

Before we let this subthread go... what's the betting that JA and BS are old mates? Funny how I find those initials, BS, so easy to remember.

@Kattefjaes , thank you for your enlightened summing up of MQA.

 

As a side note....did anyone see these beasts? Grado HP's for $2700????
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...-ps2000e-flagship-headphones-maple-wood-metal

 

LMAO this is a joke. Nobody should even pay 100$ for that horrible build quality.
EDIT: I'm still sweating from laughing my ass off