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

I would be utterly surprised if the Yggdrasil is a core product; I assume it's Schiit's Corvette. A niche product. A $100 increase is noise in the big picture.

 

Ok, ok ok. Compared to Apple and this is *nothing*. Every year, Apple makes something that makes your current iPhone/Mac/iPad look like crap. What's your upgrade path? Oh it's toss out your old device and buy a new one. So Schiit wants to make it a little cheaper to upgrade your hardware? At least they didn't seal the battery compartment, make it so you couldn't remove RAM and get zero access to the hard drive. What Apple product is that? Oh all of them.

Seriously, people should be ecstatic it's this cheap. Basically you can get a Yggdrasil 2 for $600ish. But you can never, ever get your happiness with how the Yggdrasil 1 sounded back now that you know there is something allegedly better.

 

Exactly. Whining because there is in upgrade path is utterly stupid.

 

Seems to me there has been far, far more whining being done here about those customers who were up in arms about the Analog 2 upgrade, than the actual initial whining dumped by said customers. 20:1, I promise you. It's a tad bizarre. The majority of complaining that took place on the Head-Fi thread was by a couple of customers who had purchased their units in and around October, and yet had discovered their units had 'A' serial numbers, despite Schiit announcing that all purchases "since October 2017" would contain the latest boards. A couple of minor honest mistakes on Schiit's part, which they corrected. (https://tinyurl.com/y87vvz8g)

Also just wanted to ditto what @dmckean44 said about the interval between Gen 5 USB and Analog 2. Gen 5 was announced on July 17, and the Analog 2 boards began shipping less than 2.5 months later, and was otherwise announced six months later on Jan 16. I'm not bothered either way – Jason was guessing 8 months two pages prior is all.

I realize I've also added to the noise on some level, so here's my Analog 2 question: Does anyone have a sense of where the 'B' iteration fits, in terms of its sonic signature – tonality-wise, or to whatever degree of warmth or sweetness it possesses over the 'A' version – between the 'A' version and the warmer Gungnir Multibit? From Marvey's impressions, it seems that it may sit between 'A' Yggdrasil and Gungnir Multibit, yet adding a bit more resolution than what even le original Yggdrasil provides... which sounds beyond perfect to me. I guess I'll find out for myself once I can afford to do the upgrade.

 

Don't be a party pooper, @Turdski. We like shitting on the diaper wearing crybabies of HF.

Their first option should have been to contact Schiit. Instead, they chose to take a #2. Most of the verbal diarrhea they unleashed publicly was irrational. They should have just gone and pinched a loaf and chilled out instead of exploding all over the forums with speculative doo doo. Yes, there were some kernels of truth in the floating turd that was the forums that week. The signal to noise ratio was excrementally high.

Uhhh...

I'm out of shit puns.

Good day.

 

Follow up power, ya2 -->



ya1 23w/25w

ya2 24w/25w

*it normally does not go thru that scuzzy apc battery, has a nice accurate watt meter.

 

Of interest, I note that the latest version of the downloadable PDF manual for Yggdrasil no longer suggests leaving it on all the time. Not sure what that means but that text now reads -

Can I leave Yggdrasil on all the time?
Sure, if you want to. In fact, we leave all our DACs on all the time. It
won’t hurt anything.

 

Sounds like they stil prefer "on". Schiit's not the only one -- Audioquest had an article about this a few years ago.
http://www.audioquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Phase-Noise-Jitter-Report-0317-14.pdf

 

who the heck turns off dacs? my psaudio dl3's been on since 2009, except the few hours I modded it: no plans to turn off ya2 either

 

Are we ready to get back to the "sound impressions" that the thread title suggests?

Whiners can start a "Schiit whining" thread if they feel the need.

 

One good thing at least for me out of the upgrade is the super low price of the original Yggdrasil. So I got the Yggdrasil again. Currently listening to it cold and it sounds like warm porridge. Rolled off with loose bass that bleeds into the mids. I'll have enough time to compare to the pavane until the new boards are available in the UK. Then will see if the pavane is still better.

 

One thing I'm curious about while I'm waiting for my upgrade request to get to to the front of the queue: some of the comments I've read on how Analog 2 sounds suggest that maybe it does not need as much warm-up/burn-in/whatever stabilization time as the original. Is this just wishful thinking/listening bias, or something real?

 

One more thing about the warm-up, is it just about the analogue boards? Are those the only things that need to be warm?

 

I do not have analog 2 sound impressions,
But I do have Gen5 sound impressions...

It is basically a larger & more liquid presentation than Original USB.
It sounds "analog"..

Gen5 still does not surpass my Spdiff input in top end clarity and focus.
Gen5 soundstage almost as expansive as spdif input.

I am using a DXIO Pro3Z usb to spdif converter which is fed by a Regen.
Nothing fancy.

So yeah while the Analog 2 board should be worthy, the Gen5 is questionable.

And the biggest whiners about the upgrade are actually the low ballers trying to buy used yggys and crying that they "HAVE TO" upgrade so the seller should lower his price.
Now a used Yggdrasil resale value is rediculously low without the Analog 2 board.

 

Wishful thinking? Marv mentioned once that his unit took three weeks to fully stabilize, so doesn't seem like shorter warm-up time than the original boards...

 

To those who have their Analog 2 Yggys back already can any of you confirm whether or not it can drive two devices without SQ degradation? I'm specifically interested in using both the XLR and one of the RCA outputs.

I got an email from Schiit so I get to ship mine off today.

 

Did the previous Yggdrasil have this issue? I do this with Gungnir Multibit today and didn't notice any problems, but have never really paid attention or A/B'd to compare...

 

Yes. I even emailed Schiit about it around a year ago and they replied that the Yggdrasil was designed to only use one output at a time which I thought was insanely weird.

XLR and RCA is ok but there is more noise. Using both RCAs at the same time is impossible. But I have one of the first 200 Yggys (in the 170s IIRC). So schiit may have quietly improved them after I got mine.

 

Not being a Schiit fanboy and defending them, but there is a logical technical reason on the original analog boards. My understanding (and I could be wrong) is the original analog board had a limit on the amount of clean current it can deliver. If you either pull too much current on just one output or pull simultaneously too much current on balanced and single ended, then the output signal may/will distort. Not everyone ran into this (or a better way to state this is some batches probably had more current headroom so would not distort at a point where another batch with less headroom would).

From what I’ve read the analog 2 board solves this with a more current capable output.