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Are Measurements of Schiit Yggdrasil DAC Inconsistent?

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amirm

amirm

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As if only you folks are clued into the truth. (I have zero opinion of Schitt products myself. Never had one or even heard one.)

W
ell, we ride on the shoulders of the entire body of audio science and research. So we are hardly alone.

If you mean we are the only ones who talk about Topping, then you just have not hung out in the right circles, i.e. the largest audio market out there. And that is the people who buy desktop audio products. That is also where there is an explosion of products. Last time I performed a search on audio DACs on Amazon, it had over 1000 products! Someone has to sort through it all and I am trying to do that. There are a lot of junk out there regardless of price. But lots of good stuff. Without what we are doing here, bad and good would be on equal footing which is not right.

See my point?
I hope you see ours :). We are focused on objective analysis of audio products and having fun while doing it. It does make us unique or alone as you say but it is where we like to be. We don't make our own medical science. Or laws of nature that only make sense to us. We follow established audio research, spread the knowledge, and bring fresh data in the form of measurements and reviews of audio products. We cut through the fog of audiophile myths and beliefs, hardly any of which can be verified to be true. That is what we do.
 

Wombat

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Thanks all for commenting. The only reason I posted was because people in this thread were wondering out loud why folks in other forums or publications would cast aspersions or doubts upon the results found here. That was the whole impetus of this thread. I think the things I pointed out go a long way in describing what is making others "on the outside" of this venue wonder aloud what the heck is going on here.

I'm not saying that anything Amir is doing wrong, or is untrue or unreliable. I'm only saying what an outsider or new member sees when they come here.

Even in this thread the Schitt is compared with the Topping... again. It's kind of non-stop. And, then long time members make fun of Schitt products and other people's opinions of them. While gleefully pointing to the test results that position the $2000 Schitt products as worse than a $300 product no one outside of here as heard of. As if only you folks are clued into the truth. (I have zero opinion of Schitt products myself. Never had one or even heard one.)

See my point?

It's Amir's website. He can do and test and compare with anything he wants. I've no issue with any of that. I myself owned a network of forums 200 times bigger than ASR (not ACR, oops). I ran it my way for 19 years and sold it to retire (I'm nearing 70). So, I get that. I only wanted to offer an outside prospective. Nothing more.

Note; we do not wonder 'why' about reactions to this forum by dissenting members on a few other forums. We are well aware of the reasons behind their discomfort. It seems that you should be asking them to justify their more extreme own reactions to ASR before taking umbrage with milder comments put here.

If members of some of those other forums removed their blinkers they could have discovered good products outside of their tunnel-visioned world themselves rather than finding them through unwanted revelation by others who risk/suffer censure/banning on those forums.
 

Blumlein 88

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When a company's name and product nomenclature are based on sophomoric humor, (Schiit Fulla??) they are going to attract fans that enjoy such humor. But then they should expect some of the public comments about the company and its roducts to be similarly crude and sophomoric.
That is the thing to me. I admit I make plenty of Schiity comments about Schiit. It was an eye/ear catching name they chose, and you can tell by their names of components they've no reason to complain. They make the Schiit Eitr USB cleaner. Fulla Schiit. the Asguard.

I've cast a skeptical eye toward Schiit for some time having seen JA's measurements. As for always bringing in the Topping, well it is the one known about for a comparison in the price range of most of the Schiit. I've never heard a Topping, but how it sounds has to be pretty high fidelity because of the measurements it is capable of getting.

There are already some SMSL products that are better than Schiit, but the Topping is remembered around here because it was so unusually good. I suppose maybe there are no comparably priced products that weren't better than Schiit that have been measured by Amir. Maybe I'm forgetting some.
 

restorer-john

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The Topping product/s are simply very respectably performing, value for money Reference products for Amir. Reference doesn't have to be the world's best, but something everything else can be compared to. That is a basic requirement for establishing valid comparisons.

I'm sure at some stage, another brand or product/s will replace the Topping/s as his reference, but in the meantime, they are compact, low cost and can be duplicated by anyone else wishing to do similar tests against known products.
 

rebbiputzmaker

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Thanks all for commenting. The only reason I posted was because people in this thread were wondering out loud why folks in other forums or publications would cast aspersions or doubts upon the results found here. That was the whole impetus of this thread. I think the things I pointed out go a long way in describing what is making others "on the outside" of this venue wonder aloud what the heck is going on here.

I'm not saying that anything Amir is doing wrong, or is untrue or unreliable. I'm only saying what an outsider or new member sees when they come here.

Even in this thread the Schitt is compared with the Topping... again. It's kind of non-stop. And, then long time members make fun of Schitt products and other people's opinions of them. While gleefully pointing to the test results that position the $2000 Schitt products as worse than a $300 product no one outside of here as heard of. As if only you folks are clued into the truth. (I have zero opinion of Schitt products myself. Never had one or even heard one.)

See my point?

It's Amir's website. He can do and test and compare with anything he wants. I've no issue with any of that. I myself owned a network of forums 200 times bigger than ASR (not ACR, oops). I ran it my way for 19 years and sold it to retire (I'm nearing 70). So, I get that. I only wanted to offer an outside prospective. Nothing more.
Your comments make a great deal of sense IMO but they will probably not go over well here.

The data is the data and should stand on its own. The constant ancillary clown comments actually cloud and dilutes the message, and leaves it open for scrutiny.

But:

Fun is fun, so back to the scheduled programming.
 
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I wish I had all those cool tools and bright shiny toys that amirm has. But I wouldn't know how to use them anyway.
So I had to find my own real world, in your face, reality TV ready, do or die A/B testing of the Schiit vs. Non Schiit!
And so, behold,
I took the right channel from the Topping D50 into the Topping PA3, Input 1 and out to my right speaker.
But look closer, I took the left channel from the D50 and put it thru the Schiit Magni III but out to the left channel of the PA3 in the input 2! And into the left speaker.
The PA3 has 2 inputs and a simple switch to toggle between them!
So I put on a big band track where I knew the drums, bass and horn section would be pretty much in the middle, turned the D50/PA3 up to a good sound level and then, switched inputs!
Slowly turned up the pot on the Mag III, when I reached what I thought was a balance, the sound was MUD, NOTHING BUT MUD!!
Then I just toggled back and forth, input 1 v. input 2
Sad, so so sad.
Oh, and those 6" inch PYST cables? Yeah, I fell for them too.
P1010022.JPG
P1010022.JPG
 

HerbDetective

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I wish I had all those cool tools and bright shiny toys that amirm has. But I wouldn't know how to use them anyway.
So I had to find my own real world, in your face, reality TV ready, do or die A/B testing of the Schiit vs. Non Schiit!
And so, behold,
I took the right channel from the Topping D50 into the Topping PA3, Input 1 and out to my right speaker.
But look closer, I took the left channel from the D50 and put it thru the Schiit Magni III but out to the left channel of the PA3 in the input 2! And into the left speaker.
The PA3 has 2 inputs and a simple switch to toggle between them!
So I put on a big band track where I knew the drums, bass and horn section would be pretty much in the middle, turned the D50/PA3 up to a good sound level and then, switched inputs!
Slowly turned up the pot on the Mag III, when I reached what I thought was a balance, the sound was MUD, NOTHING BUT MUD!!
Then I just toggled back and forth, input 1 v. input 2
Sad, so so sad.
Oh, and those 6" inch PYST cables? Yeah, I fell for them too.
For the audio file, you could downmix them to mono in Audacity, or use the "Downmix channels to mono" DSP in Foobar to output mono. That way the left and right outputs will be identical, at least at the source.

By doing D50 --> Mag III --> PA3 --> Speakers, does the switch to toggle between the two inputs result in the PA3's amplification being applied to the Mag III's signal? The two inputs have independent gain settings?
 

tr1ple6

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At the risk of being hounded off of ACR I'd like to post one opinion about what a new member here sees from day one.

1. It seems that Amir tests and only tests usually. In some of the tests I've seen and I think the Yiggy might be one, he states that he never listened to the equipment play music. OK. But we're interested in how these things sound. Good results on testing is good. Good sounding is better.

2. Test after test here is shown in comparison to a Topping dac. And, outside of ACR Topping is not a mainstream brand. Before coming here I'd NEVER heard of the brand. Period. If Topping is so good, why isn't everyone saying "Wow, that Topping Dac!" Why are there tests here of every Topping Dac and not everywhere else in the audio publishing world? Seems unusual, no? Why would any member of ACR own anything BUT a Topping dac, looking at these reviews and these prices?

3. Vast portions of the audio review and publishing industry is based on the idea that measurements are only one data point. That critical listening to the equipment being reviewed is vital as well. This is why Stereophile splits the two things in their reviews and Absolute Sound has no measurements at all. Here that seems to be ridiculed or certainly depreciated.

4. Some brands here are universally vilified - over and over - and other brands, many of them little known, are praised - over and over. Doesn't mean that the vilified brands are not really bad or that the praised brands are not actually that good. But it does appear suspect from the outside. It may only be a perception, but there it is. Surely objective regulars here can see this?

I'm agnostic on these things. I've not heard any Schitt or Topping equipment. I can't tell you if one is good and the other bad. I'm only saying what a new member sees here when they join and start to read the testing reviews.
I'll only address points 2 & 3.
2. Argumentum ad populum. The popularity of something doesn't equate to whether it is objectively better or worse.
"Why would any member of ACR own anything BUT a Topping dac, looking at these reviews and these prices?" - Personal Incredulity. Just because you do not and cannot know the reasons why not everyone on ASR owns a Topping product, doesn't give you the right to conclude anything about how good or bad Topping is.

3. Appeal to authority. An authority figure proclaiming something doesn't speak to the validity of your claim. You need to provide supporting evidence of claims and not just say it's true because someone in authority said so.
 

Grave

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Yes there are many fallacies in that post.

1) There is no magical difference between good measuring and good sounding equipment in my experience.
2) Hardly anyone cares about actual hi-fi, most people who are into audio like overpriced low-fi.
3) Most of the audio industry is a joke and saturated with BS.
4) Measurements trump subjective impressions so this is the result.

This forum is great to me so far because I have no been arbitrarily banned for disagreeing with people like I have been on many other audio forums.
 
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andreasmaaan

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At the risk of being hounded off of ACR I'd like to post one opinion about what a new member here sees from day one.

1. It seems that Amir tests and only tests usually. In some of the tests I've seen and I think the Yiggy might be one, he states that he never listened to the equipment play music. OK. But we're interested in how these things sound. Good results on testing is good. Good sounding is better.

2. Test after test here is shown in comparison to a Topping dac. And, outside of ACR Topping is not a mainstream brand. Before coming here I'd NEVER heard of the brand. Period. If Topping is so good, why isn't everyone saying "Wow, that Topping Dac!" Why are there tests here of every Topping Dac and not everywhere else in the audio publishing world? Seems unusual, no? Why would any member of ACR own anything BUT a Topping dac, looking at these reviews and these prices?

3. Vast portions of the audio review and publishing industry is based on the idea that measurements are only one data point. That critical listening to the equipment being reviewed is vital as well. This is why Stereophile splits the two things in their reviews and Absolute Sound has no measurements at all. Here that seems to be ridiculed or certainly depreciated.

4. Some brands here are universally vilified - over and over - and other brands, many of them little known, are praised - over and over. Doesn't mean that the vilified brands are not really bad or that the praised brands are not actually that good. But it does appear suspect from the outside. It may only be a perception, but there it is. Surely objective regulars here can see this?

I'm agnostic on these things. I've not heard any Schitt or Topping equipment. I can't tell you if one is good and the other bad. I'm only saying what a new member sees here when they join and start to read the testing reviews.

I think others have answered points 1-3 very well, so I'd just like to address point 4. I think there's merit to your observation about the repeated vilification of Schiit products.

I see how Schiit is a legitimate target, given its numerous unfounded and unsupported claims, and its apparent marketing strategy of insisting that other manufacturers are following trends determined by chip designers whose priority is cost-saving rather than fidelity. While this may well be true to some extent, it is nevertheless completely irrelevant given that many products designed with those chips Schiit vilifies actually do fulfil all the requirements for transparency, while products designed by Schiit and sold for quite a lot of money often seem not to.

But I did also wonder when first joining this forum why so much negative energy was dedicated to Schiit (another factor was that I'm in Europe and we've barely heard of this company here). I can now see that there is a history of antipathy between members here and members elsewhere, and a lot of unjustified aggression towards Amir and others from outside this forum, so the extent of that energy expenditure now makes sense. But I still don't think it's very productive.

If Schiit's proponents refuse to accept that Schiit products don't perform as claimed or don't perform as well as other products in their price range, then that's their problem. There are certainly some far more expensive products out there that perform far worse (and seemingly also many internal iphone DACs out there that perform slightly better).
 
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For the audio file, you could downmix them to mono in Audacity, or use the "Downmix channels to mono" DSP in Foobar to output mono. That way the left and right outputs will be identical, at least at the source.

By doing D50 --> Mag III --> PA3 --> Speakers, does the switch to toggle between the two inputs result in the PA3's amplification being applied to the Mag III's signal? The two inputs have independent gain settings?

Not at all. The Mag III can act as a pre-amp. They speak highly of it's versatility . The D50 goes to the Mag III , then the Mag III goes to the PA3..
The PA3 is the amplifier of the signal from the Mag III. Just as the PA3 is the amplifier for the direct feed from the D50.
I forgot about Foobar . Have been using JRiver. Might try the DSP to mono option.
 

rebbiputzmaker

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I think others have answered points 1-3 very well, so I'd just like to address point 4. I think there's merit to your observation about the repeated vilification of Schiit products.

I see how Schiit is a legitimate target, given its numerous unfounded and unsupported claims, and its apparent marketing strategy of insisting that other manufacturers are following trends determined by chip designers whose priority is cost-saving rather than fidelity. While this may well be true to some extent, it is nevertheless completely irrelevant given that many products designed with those chips Schiit vilifies actually do fulfil all the requirements for transparency, while products designed by Schiit and sold for quite a lot of money often seem not to.

But I did also wonder when first joining this forum why so much negative energy was dedicated to Schiit (another factor was that I'm in Europe and we've barely heard of this company here). I can now see that there is a history of antipathy between members here and members elsewhere, and a lot of unjustified aggression towards Amir and others from outside this forum, so the extent of that energy expenditure now makes sense. But I still don't think it's very productive.

If Schiit's proponents refuse to accept that Schiit products don't perform as claimed or don't perform as well as other products in their price range, then that's their problem. There are certainly some far more expensive products out there that perform far worse (and seemingly also many internal iphone DACs out there that perform slightly better).
You finish up very well but much of the discourse mentioned in the body of the post IMO is not really caused by the manufacturer. They do not vilify SD design' but do build multi-bit and feel it is better sounding. As far as price, they sell multi-bit DACs starting at $250, so people do have choices. If one feel measurements are the only arbiter, they should not buy a multi-bit DAC from any manufacturer. If people believe what they are hearing (no matter how misguided they may be) they shouldn't be faulted for this choice.
 

Blumlein 88

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You finish up very well but much of the discourse mentioned in the body of the post IMO is not really caused by the manufacturer. They do not vilify SD design' but do build multi-bit and feel it is better sounding. As far as price, they sell multi-bit DACs starting at $250, so people do have choices. If one feel measurements are the only arbiter, they should not buy a multi-bit DAC from any manufacturer. If people believe what they are hearing (no matter how misguided they may be) they shouldn't be faulted for this choice.

Maybe someone needs to examine if multi-bit fans are actually hearing anything. If they are, and its related to substandard measurements, then no problem to DSP a sigma-delta and get it to sound the same. I'm pretty sure no one would buy one however. As I'm pretty sure the only things special about multi-bit sound is in the brain of the perceiver.
 

glenhansen

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1) There is no magical difference between good measuring and good sounding gear in my experience. You will never try and will never experience something different.
 
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amirm

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They do not vilify SD design' but do build multi-bit and feel it is better sounding.
Doesn't look like you have read their marketing material. Here it is for Yggdrasil (sans the USB part I have omitted):

1533015512259.png


I see nothing in there about "how it sounds." Instead, there are a ton of words trying to imply you get perfection out of this DAC. And perfection is precisely what we measure and where this DAC and rest of their multibit DACs fail.

All of this has greatly misled people who have bought these products on that basis. Ask 10 audiophiles what multibit means and all will tell you it means more perfect than sigma-delta. Our measurements are shining a good light on that mistruth.

And as I showed, their ads show nothing but a measurement of very low amplitude (-144 db) sine wave:

index.php


By having the company principals in forums, they have heavily cemented this position of technical superiority. So it reasons that we check their technical statements to see if they are correct.

They have created this marketing strategy. And until they change it, they need to produce superior measuring gear.
 

derp1n

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They do not vilify SD design
So wearing a t-shirt to audio shows that reads "Delta-Sigma: For When Sound Doesn't Matter" is not vilifying delta-sigma DACs?

Or making statements such as "D-S tech is cheap and easily executable by morons" - a hilarious statement considering the execution in Schiit D-S DACs.

Or "an improvement over the complete dogschiit delta sigma filters".

Or "my lack of respect for delta sigma DACs is only slightly exceeded by the same for sigma delta A2D converters". A post which also included "USB is for children and feral wannabe engineers" - again, amusing given Schiit's historical USB implementations compared to the competition.

How about "delta sigma DACs (cheaper, measure well, but devoid of feeling)". Is that the feeling of suckerscustomers cash in your wallet?

From the Bifrost FAQ:
"I can’t get over the fact that Bifrost Multibit is only 16 bits!
You didn’t have any problem with delta-sigma being 2 to 5 bits, did you?"

There's plenty more of this if you care to dig.

Maybe Moffatt thinks D-S is bad because his implementations have been so poor compared to the competition?
 

rebbiputzmaker

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a time- and frequency-domain optimized digital filter with a true closed-form solution. This means it retains all the original samples, performing a true interpolation. This digital filter gives you the best of both NOS (all original samples retained) and upsampling (easier filtering of out-of-band noise) designs.
Curious; What is your opinion of the above?
 

derp1n

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Curious; What is your opinion of the above?
Their magic filter only uses 18000 taps. You need at least one million taps for decent sound quality.

Something to note there - Chord's marketing is full of a different type of BS to Schiit's, but whether you buy into their claims or not, at least their DACs actually measure decently.
 

restorer-john

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As I'm pretty sure the only things special about multi-bit sound is in the brain of the perceiver.

Apologies for the long post, but I got out my (worn) soapbox... :)

When Philips first released "Bitstream" and Sony released a PDM Bitstream-like D/A in one of their TOTL ES integrated amplifiers, I listened to their offerings against the current SOTA at the time which was the PCM-58P selection K, J and S which were in their flawlessly reviewed CDP-338esD and CDP-X7esd. Soon after the PCM-63 based Denons and others came along. The Denons were extremely good.

Very soon after, Matsushita released their MASH (PWM) and Sony had their own silicon (High Density Linear D/A), Pioneer called theirs the Direct Linear Conversion and Yamaha had S-Bit. We sold them all and played with them all, compared each model etc.

None of the 1st generation 'one bit' machines sounded anywhere near as clean as either TOTL TDA-1541 (S1) (Philips) based machines or the PCM-58/63 (Burr Brown) based Japanese machines (most with 8x O/S) chipsets by that stage.

What I heard (in very quiet and well designed demonstration rooms and at home with loan models), was a loss of detail in low level parts of classical music and a general 'fuzz' as reverb/echoes faded out.

By the time '1 bit' had come along, digital recording was about as good as it ever got for CD- the early issues with A/Ds had been solved and dynamics were still being preserved. Plenty of recording were SBM or better and we were getting fewer 'this CD was originally recorded on analog equipment' (i.e. lots of low level woodles* and hiss etc)

So, I made many speeches to my audiophile friends (back in the early 90s) that this new 'single bit' was flawed and sounded poor. It was only ever conceived to save money (which is perfectly true- read the Philips development details on the design), but had a few gains in a few parameters. Philips themselves stated the design was for portable, consumer and car audio and certainly not for the discerning (read wealthy audiophiles perhaps?) let alone state of the art products.

I bought and stockpiled a number of run-out TOTL multibit machines which I still have and use. My daily go-to CD player is a Sony CDP-X7esd (USD $2000 in 1989/90). The tested performance of that machine is still state of the art for 16/44. In a few parameters, I'm yet to see it bettered.**

The only 'single bit' D/A I listened without prejudice (sorry George Michael) to back in around 2000ish was was a gorgeous little Rotel RDP-980 which incidentally contained an Asahi Kasei D/A converter (a small and unknown company at the time actually). It was a joy to listen to and finally banished the prejudice I had to PWM. That said, I could hear the muting at LSB/0dB level, and that annoyed me. (fussy a##hole I am) I still use that D/A for TV and movie sound via SPDIF optical from the flat panel TV.

If we weren't so geographically separated, it'd be easy (and fun) to compare some of my classic TOTL CD players with modern offerings. On 16/44, I'd be happy to wager that most of the new D/As only perform better on 24/44 or above, and, even then, the incremental improvement is nowhere near the theoretical. Consider that in 1990, THD in commercial D/As (multibit) had hit the theoretical limit of what 16/44 was capable of- you can't say the same of anything made these days.

So, yes, 'the brain of the perceiver' can have an effect, but I'd like to think that back then, when the D/A world was young (and so was I), I gave any and all conversion methods a fair go. Multibit won out for me back then. I was ridiculed when I was snapping up BB based machines at cost less 40%, but I know for sure it was the right decision.

* woodles. Tape head LF modulation from analog recorders
** review data (AP system 1) from a few individual magazine reviews on file (I can dig them out)
 
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