Review and Measurements of Schiit Yggdrasil V2 DAC

[Blumlein 88]

I hope you can get your hands on another quality oversampling multi-bit DAC, such as those from Soekris, and compare it to the Yggy, or even a vintage one from the 90s based on the 20-bit chips from that era, e.g. PCM63 or UltraAnalog. It would be more of an apples to apples comparison than putting it against a Delta-Sigma unit that's based on the (almost) top of the line ESS chip of current production. That said, there is no excuse for the mains noise.

BE718 measured one of the Soekris for us here.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/soekris-dam1021-r2r-dac-measurements.2324/

 

[gvl]

BE718 measured one of the Soekris for us here.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ds/soekris-dam1021-r2r-dac-measurements.2324/

It would be interesting to see results using the same equipment/methods, plus it was a test for a DIY module, not a complete DAC unit that's now available from Soekris.

 

[amirm]

Trying to rationalize measurements, here is a comparison of THD+N measurement as made by Jude on Head-fi and mine:

Focusing on Yggdrasil measurements first, my graph (in red) is essentially the same as Jude's.

The difference in our approaches is that I show competing products on the same graph so that you can immediately gauge if the performance is good or not. Addition of Topping DX7s clearly shows that what when put in context, the Schiit Yggdrasil is not competitive. And by a wide gap.

And again, there is agreement in our measurements here (unlike linearity).

My goal is to teach, and not bombard you with graphs and let you fend for yourself. Heck, even I can't keep track of good and bad numbers for every possible measurement in my head. It is through AB comparison that we can instantly tell.

 

[amirm]

Another disputed measurement was the degradation of THD+N in Gen 2 analog board of Schiit Yggdrasil when measuring unbalanced RCA connections. Here is the original measurement in my previous review of Schiit Yggdrasil:

We see that sharp rise in distortion as frequencies get lower.

Here are the measurements I just made but with 90 kHz bandwidth so that the THD+N is correct to 20 kHz:

As we see in the pink measurement, the same problem is absolutely there in the unit I am testing which is the latest with Analog board 2. There is a regression in performance here which Schiit needs to investigate.

BTW, here are Jude's measurements of the same:

I tested two different Schiit Yggdrasils with A2 boards and I get a different results than his. Conclusion?

 

[rebbiputzmaker]

In the world of high-end, this is actually "cheap." In the world of personal audio, it is of course quite expensive.

Maybe I am stupid, but what does this actually mean? How does one differentiate between"high-end" and "personal" audio? Do you mean headphone users? If so, there are some that do have mega-buck systems also. TIA

One other question. What about not have everything plugged into the same power strip. I actually use isolation transformers for my DACs. Just seems a bit unhygienic to me. Do you have one to try?

 

[Grave]

This is very interesting.

Can you add the measurements in the form of a spec table listing FR, THD, IMD, noise, crosstalk, etc. so they are easier to interpret for those of us who are not very technical?

 

[amirm]

Maybe I am stupid, but what does this actually mean? How does one differentiate between"high-end" and "personal" audio? Do you mean headphone users? If so, there are some that do have mega-buck systems also. TIA

High-end audio means a store you go to to buy things. THey are not advertised online. Have high cost of sales and huge margins. So most everything costs a few thousand dollars and goes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the price of Schiit Yggdrasil DAC, you won't even be able to buy a "decent" power cable in that stratosphere.

In the desktop market, you can hook up a headphone to your laptop and be good. Then you can upgrade to a $100 DAC. Spending the price of Schiit Yggdrasil is a huge deal and way at the higher limit of expenditure for this market.

 

[Alcophone]

This is a detailed review and measurements of Schiit Yggdrasil with upgraded "Gen 5 USB" interface and "Analog 2" DAC+analog board.

One thing to point out: this unit came new with Analog 2 and USB gen 5, i.e. it wasn't upgraded to that after the fact. Might not matter, but I wanted to make that clear.

I see this informally called Yggdrasil V2 even though there is no such model name on Schiit website.

Yes, Mike Moffat is on record saying there won't be an actual Yggdrasil 2, so apparently Yggdrasil with Analog 2 morphed into Yggy 2. Well.

I think it is the most expensive product Schiit makes (?).

It is. The second one in line is the Ragnarok headphone/speaker amp at $1,699.

Still, I will make it even easier by providing all the project setting files including the measurements for what you see on request.

Yay, I welcome this move!

As usual I like to compare two units so that there is context for their measured performance. Importantly any methodology mistakes will be reflected in both products making it a) easier to find and b) invariant to the conclusions if there are difference in performance. For this testing I picked the Topping DX7s which retails for USD $499 but often goes on sale for less.

Great, I have that one, too! In terms of sound quality, a clearly inferior DAC to the Yggdrasil, though it has some benefits like supporting a remote, more clearly displaying the incoming sample rate and the coax out, which is really a built-in USB-to-coax converter that is completely independent of the rest of the unit.

And just in case it makes a difference, it was cloudy yesterday and temps inside were around 75 degrees.

lol

I circled the frequency counter showing 1.00008 kHz instead of perfect 1 kHz. We can't get perfection here as there are clock errors but this is 80 parts per million which is quite high. Usually I see just the last dig going +1 to -1 for 10 parts per million. The clock source in Schiit Yggdrasil DAC is definitely running fast. Fortunately our ears are completely immune to such errors so not an audible concern. Just lack of precision which should exist in any such caliber DAC.

That's certainly a good candidate to remeasure after leaving it on for a week, since it's supposedly the clocks that take a while to reach thermal stability.

The Schiit Yggdrasil DAC has 4.2 volt RMS versus 4 volts for Topping DX7s. So if you are ever comparing the two audibly, be very careful of this as it would tilt the odds in favor of Yggy DAC just because it is louder.

That is in line with what I expected based on my A/Bs, the Yggdrasil is indeed a tiny bit louder, which I didn't even notice at first.

The balanced output as tested before is fine. The unbalanced should be identical to it, albeit at lower amplitude. But instead, we have "shelf" starting around 300 Hz and going down. FYI it is fine to have a drop at say, 15 Hz as the balanced output is doing. But not the weird shape that we are seeing and the drop so far up the frequency range.

That's a bummer, indeed. Confirms that it's best to use it balanced only, and possibly convert the single ended later in the chain, if necessary.

Hard to see this on the left but in a real-time display on my analyzer, it was easy to see the waveform dancing up and down a bit to the tune of mains harmonics. The variations became much larger in unbalanced output (not shown). Looking at the FFT on the right, we see confirmation of it with the power supply contributions a larger portion of our -90 dB 1 kHz tone.

I'm curious whether the iFi iPurifier AC has any impact on this hum.

I know this is an uncomfortable message for the owners of these expensive DACs. Personally I was wishing the balanced output would measure well so that I would not worry about their angst and all the follow up arguments that are bound to start. But the data speaks otherwise.

Haha, I'm okay. Maybe it's my ears, but whatever Yggy is doing worse than the DX7s, I don't hear. But I do hear a few things it does better.
It took me a while to notice any difference to pretty much any other DAC I ever heard, frankly. For the first week I was contemplating sending it back. A direct comparison with the iFi nano iDSD showed that the Yggy has a tighter grip on the bass. Another thing I noticed was that cymbals sounded quite pleasant on the Yggdrasil. Makes Deftones significantly more enjoyable. But that was about all I could claim.
By now, after months of ownership and using the Gustard H20 instead of a Jotunheim, the Yggdrasil sounds more natural, more real to me - with acoustic music, of course. For mostly electronic music, the premium is not worth it, I would say. With the right recordings, the Gustard H20 and the MrSpeakers Ether C Flow, the Yggdrasil also has a lovely sound stage depth that the DX7s does not achieve.

Once I get it back, I'll see how much of that is there how soon after turning it on ^^ I simply followed the advice I was reading so far and turned it off as little as possible (i.e. for maybe 30s when I need to plug it into a different outlet). So I'm not claiming it does make a difference, as I haven't heard that difference myself yet.

I like to thank the kind owner of this unit for loaning it to me. I think it is helping to bring a lot more clarity to the objective performance of this unit and for that, I am immensely appreciative.

You're very welcome! Thanks for offering to pay for return shipping, that made it easier.

Ah, Jude was kind enough to post his linearity script for Audio Precision APx555 which we both have. I took his script which already had his measurements and ran it against my Yggdrasil DAC. I had not seen it mention that he was using balanced AES digital input on Yggdrasil before. So I did the same. Here are the results with full screen of the app visible so that there is no question about what is being run:

View attachment 13509

As you see, my results are completely different than his. And quite consistent with what I post in the review with my custom filtering.

So at this point we can put aside the food fight on measurement setting differences.

The unknowns left are different units being tested. Hmmm.

And anything funny with your equipment / environment that maybe the Yggdrasil is unusually sensitive to. Maybe instead of returning it to me, you should pass it on to Jude :-D
But I don't think he ever answered how long his unit was on before measuring, so there's still that variable.

I hope you can get your hands on another quality oversampling multi-bit DAC, such as those from Soekris, and compare it to the Yggy, or even a vintage one from the 90s based on the 20-bit chips from that era, e.g. PCM63 or UltraAnalog. It would be more of an apples to apples comparison than putting it against a Delta-Sigma unit that's based on the (almost) top of the line ESS chip of current production. That said, there is no excuse for the mains noise.

That would be cool to see. SBAF for the most part seemed to love the Holo Audio Spring DAC (Kitsune level 3). Another DAC I heard good things about (as in: potentially sounding better than the Yggdrasil) is the Denafrips Terminator. Even costlier...

 

[svart-hvitt]

Amir,

I need to report you to the moderators of this site. You’re supposed to be the Chief Fun Officer? Isn’t this place all about fun? And yet, what you do is serving us the one Schiit tragedy after the other.

I will put savage Thomas on the case to make you fun compliant again!

 

[amirm]

This is very interesting.

Can you add the measurements in the form of a spec table listing FR, THD, IMD, noise, crosstalk, etc. so they are easier to interpret for those of us who are not very technical?

I like to encourage you to learn to read the graphs as they are far, far more useful than single numbers. For example, THD distortion at 2 to 4 kHz is far more important than 100 Hz as your hearing is exceptionally sensitive there.

If you still want them, I am working on my automation script to spit them all out. It is work in progress but I just ran it and these are the numbers. I have not verified them to be correct or not.

THD+N Ratio (6/30/2018 2:17:50.519 PM)
Ch1 0.005009 %
Ch2 0.005648 %

Crosstalk (6/30/2018 2:18:06.641 PM)
Ch1 112.288 dB
Ch2 107.528 dB

I think that is it. Rest are graphs.

 

[amirm]

One thing to point out: this unit came new with Analog 2 and USB gen 5, i.e. it wasn't upgraded to that after the fact. Might not matter, but I wanted to make that clear.

That's super important. My other unit was sent in for upgrade.

When is the approximate purchase date if I may ask?

 

[rebbiputzmaker]

High-end audio means a store you go to to buy things. THey are not advertised online. Have high cost of sales and huge margins. So most everything costs a few thousand dollars and goes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. For the price of Schiit Yggdrasil DAC, you won't even be able to buy a "decent" power cable in that stratosphere.

In the desktop market, you can hook up a headphone to your laptop and be good. Then you can upgrade to a $100 DAC. Spending the price of Schiit Yggdrasil is a huge deal and way at the higher limit of expenditure for this market.

OK, I edited my post added another question while you were answering. Thanks.

 

[Alcophone]

That's super important. My other unit was sent in for upgrade.

When is the approximate purchase date if I may ask?

I got the order confirmation on January 16th, 2018. Approximately at 8:04am
Schiit had silently been selling the upgraded version for a few months already, but announced it that day or the day before, not sure, while increasing the price by $100. Sadly I was on a plane at the time, so I was one of the first to order it with the new price. Lucky me!

 

[Blumlein 88]

And anything funny with your equipment / environment that maybe the Yggdrasil is unusually sensitive to. Maybe instead of returning it to me, you should pass it on to Jude :-D
But I don't think he ever answered how long his unit was on before measuring, so there's still that variable.

First thank you for loaning it for measurement by Amir. And a generous offer to send it on to Jude. That certainly sounds like an excellent idea. Have Jude and Amir measure the same actual device to see if something is different in their procedures though I'm at a loss as to what it might be.

 

[Alcophone]

There's a thread on Head-Fi about Jotunheim noise issues. One user gets noise simply by placing a Modi Multibit on the Jotunheim*, despite using rubber feat. I'm wondering whether the Yggdrasil needs more breathing room to other devices than you're giving it here. Then again, it didn't seem to mind a Gustard H20 directly on top, and a Topping DX7s on top of that. But I've never had any electronics underneath it. Just a thought.
While obviously I like devices that are insensitive to things like that, it's still good if there are workarounds for any remaining issues.

*Edit: previously said Yggdrasil by mistake

 

[amirm]

I'm wondering whether the Yggdrasil needs more breathing room to other devices than you're giving it here. T

For $2,300 all the breathing room it needs better have come with it.

Would putting it on the floor satisfy? If so, tell me one test you want me to re-run on it and will do so.

 

[derp1n]

Let's remember that we need 93 dB for our CDs properly dithered.

16*6.02 = 96.32dB undithered. Dithered is 110-120dB ish.

 

[rebbiputzmaker]

For $2,300 all the breathing room it needs better have come with it.

Would putting it on the floor satisfy? If so, tell me one test you want me to re-run on it and will do so.

I mentioned power isolation. Do you have, or have access to an isolation transformer?

 

[Grave]

The THD+N exceeds 0.01% >10 kHz so that might be audible.
The FR is at -0.5 dB at 20 Hz but I doubt this is audible.
The SNR is at >110 dB which is excellent.

The price is ridiculous, but the performance looks marginal to me, not terrible.

 

[Thomas savage]

Amir,

I need to report you to the moderators of this site. You’re supposed to be the Chief Fun Officer? Isn’t this place all about fun? And yet, what you do is serving us the one Schiit tragedy after the other.

I will put savage Thomas on the case to make you fun compliant again!