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...