Review and Measurements of Schiit Yggdrasil V2 DAC

[ElNino]

View attachment 41497

That's a blatant lie.

If anyone has a logic analyzer on hand, it would be interesting to look at the raw output from Schiit's digital filter and finally put a nail in their impossible claims about the "Comboburrito" filter.

 

[ShiZo]

@VintageFlanker, strange both you and I have had both the v1 and v2 rme without experiencing this issue. I've never read of it either.

Unless he is talking of the sample rate having to be manually changed.

 

[solderdude]

AFAIK the Comboburrito filter claim is that the actual sample values are still 'bit perfect' and the 'inbetween calculated' sampes are 'invented'.
It appears to me it is entirely possible to do this instead of re-calculating all samples based on previous, current and following sample values.
I don't see how that would sound any better though.
The R2R sample-hold signal would have to pass a decent filter anyway which makes it moot.

 

[solderdude]

i ment bit perfect playback in OS, not DAC,

I was responding to @ElNino

But you haven't answerred my question yet... were the tests 'sighted', with that I mean everone listening to the devices when swapped were knowing what was playing and it was discussed ?

 

[pozz]

i was playing with reference level settings a lot to match 2V, maybe it was +7, i don't really remember because it was 6 months ago. Is it so hard to accept I forgot that detail after half a year?

RME USB driver doesn't do exclusive mode properly, where it just works with Chord and Schiit when using TIDAL and Foobar. I had to use 3rd party ASIO drivers (VB Audio virtual audio cable, or something like that) to get bit perfect exclusive mode without windows mixer and upsampling.

Its so funny how you think that it should sound better because it measures better But, as i said, enjoy your perfectly measured DAC, whatever that is!

@pozz "please expect to be able to back up your experience and opinion with evidence."
- thats exactly what I did - best a/b test I could do: listen one device, switch to another, listen, repeat for several weeks. Thats most scientific i can do, and sorry if its not enough for you. Thats why i just write my humble experiences on forum and not writing science papers or official reviews. Yggy is much better in my system, to me. Thats all.

Hey, I hope you stick around @hudo

 

[KxDx]

How good is your hearing (no offense, dead serious)? Also, if the other devices in your chain are colored as well, it can affect the final output making one dac sound better than the other under those conditions. You arent really hearing the dacs output if your sending it through a tube ect.

Ive had my favorite headphones change moving from colored to transparent gear. It was like i was hearing what the headphones/speakers actually sounded like for the first time with uncolored reproduction.

I see so many posts like this it makes me question there authenticity (i have no way of really knowing). Also when i learned my schiit gear sucked there was a bit of disbelief and denial at first. " who is this amir guy, what does he know. My schiit sounds good!"

Thank god i eventually capitulated. My friends d50 plus atom sounds basically as good as my rme. And 50x better than the thousands i spent on schiit gear for a fraction of the price.

Not to mention schiit produces dangerous ungrounded gear that when given an opportunity to fix it, they couldn't for me.

It really comes down to some people preferring the sound of audible distortion... but they don't want to call it that because they feel "distortion" is a negative word. Thus they give it positive attributes such as "air" and "warmth" and "liquidity."

And that's fine, if only they'd call a spade a spade. Heck, you give my stepson a stereo, the first thing he's going to do is crank the bass up as high as it goes. Only then will he say "that shit sounds good." Not flat, not accurate, but it's the way he enjoys music.

 

[ShiZo]

I totally agree. I just wish manufactures were more straight forward about it. I would have zero issues with it then.

"it measures badly but we think it sounds good anyway" or even "we don't believe in measurements here, we only care how the gear sounds, because we believe sound is subjective."

But they won't do that, because they'll lose sales.

The thing is, there may very well be attributes to sound reproduction that we don't measure and understand. But the things that are measured are understood to affect sound quality (up to a certain point).

 

[pozz]

do you really think they measure and then just start selling when numbers are good enough?

@solderdude it wasn't blind test, no. I have normal living room and listening conditions, not a lab. And its hard to hide not-so-small Yggi.

@pozz don't worry, Im off soon, this forum is just too hostile and mean for me

Sorry this was your first impression. I think the point, which was not well-communicated, is that tests and measurements are pretty useless unless the conditions are understood, with listening tests being a tool, not unlike audio analyzers. So just like you can buy precision digital calipers or use a ruler to try to figure out the thickness of wire, listening tests can be more or less well-controlled to ensure consistent results. Unfortunately, casual listening sessions are just that, with the results being casual at best, too (and therefore not comparable).

Would you really, for example, want to live in the kind of world where playback gear all had irreplaceably unique and special sounds? And that certain parts of the world, with less cash and less access to bigger markets, would be barred from great sound because of the cost of gear? Or that simply being young means you'll never hear great sound on your own? I get that this isn't a perspective most people like to consider. But Schiit and other boutique companies, because of their success, are building just that kind of world. Because if measurements show that the differences in most available playback gear will impart no audibly unique signature, then the world is simpler, more manageable and open.

 

[Thomas savage]

I deleted the trolls posts and banned his account .

If those who quoted and engaged him would like to remove their posts we can pretend like it never happened.

I think I know who it was .

 

[pozz]

Ah well. I meant what I said.

Thanks @Thomas savage

 

[ShiZo]

I had a feeling that was a shill. He wasn't very good at hiding it.

I think the subjectivists are feeling pain in their pocketbook from this forum.

 

[VintageFlanker]

I think the subjectivists are feeling pain in their pocketbook from this forum.

Obviously. ASR is destroying the resale value of their so much more natural, organic, analog gears...

 

[ElNino]

AFAIK the Comboburrito filter claim is that the actual sample values are still 'bit perfect' and the 'inbetween calculated' sampes are 'invented'.
It appears to me it is entirely possible to do this instead of re-calculating all samples based on previous, current and following sample values.
I don't see how that would sound any better though.
The R2R sample-hold signal would have to pass a decent filter anyway which makes it moot.

Intuitively it sounds like it should be possible, particularly if you don't have a signal processing background, but it's not -- it would imply that the passband has zero passband ripple.

 

[VintageFlanker]

I think I know who it was .

I think I found as well. Some months ago, a guy just registered to claim how his Yggy sounded so much better than his RME. Funniest part: Even his 8 years old son said to him: "Daddy, the RME doesn't sound right". Then he invited few friends (obviously musicians) who confirmed the same thing. etc etc.

 

[pozz]

Obviously. ASR is destroying the resale value of their so much more natural, organic, analog gears...

We should have some sympathy for that. All part the tuition, given our own stories.

 

[trl]

I was asked to comment on a specific "dynamic range" measurement by Bob Smith (AtomicBob). Specifically, he shows the FFT spectrum of a -60 dB tone and on it, declares a signal to noise ratio of 122 dB. As usual, his charts are impossible to read. So please allow me to annotate them such:
View attachment 13771

As you see, his "FFT meters" are declaring that there is 121+ dB of Signal to noise ratio.

That data directly conflicts what the FFT is actually showing. The mains hum alone is enough to make that difference around 65 dB, not 122 dB. Add up all the other distortions and noise and there is no way we have 122 dB of proper dynamic range.

And no, you can't look at the noise floor of the FFT and measure that difference. FFT noise floor gets artificially lowered based on its parameters (called "FFT gain"). But even if we did, that noise floor is at -160 db so subtracting our -60 dB signal from it, we get 100 dB, not 122.

So what is going on? First, let's look at the same measurement using my Audio Precision analyzer of the same -60 dB signal:

View attachment 13772

We see the same mains contribution at 120 Hz and bunch of harmonic distortion. The dedicated meter in Audio Precision is reporting about 60 dB of dynamic range above our noise and distortion which matches more or less the manual math I performed on AtomicBob's graph. And we can with eye confirm the same. Starting with -60 dB signal, the noise floor would have to be -180 dB for us to get the math and no way can we get there.

The key thing for now is that both of our FFT measurements are producing essentially identical results. So the issue is not the device being tested but what the meters on AtomicBob's graph is saying.

Alas, despite all the shouting that goes on on accuracy and documentation of measurements, we have none here from AtomicBob. The meter says: "USER: DAC SNR Residual Async." Good luck trying to find out what that means.

Fortunately I have used the Prism Sound analyzer and still have the software. So I went in there and found this custom script to make measurements from FFT. This is what it looks like when not minimized as he has done:
View attachment 13773

I know, I know, still makes no sense. But stay with me. What this is trying to do is filter out the tone at 1000 Hz ("band reject"). As with any filter, the bandwidth matters. Here, we are interested in taking out our main tone and look at what is left as our distortion+noise power. Unfortunately, the filter used here by default is improper. It has a wide bandwidth of 1/3 octave instead of just a hertz or two to take out the 1 kHz tone.

Prism Sound help file explains the motivation and problems with it:

View attachment 13774

Yup, the 1/3 octave filtering is there to emulate old analog THD+N meters! It was hard to filter sharply as we can today with our digital signal processing (and much better analog ones too). As they say, using of this method results in "residual components .... to be underestimated." And underestimated it is and hence the reason he is showing much better values than it should.

Lesson here is that custom scripts for making measurements in analyzers need to read and understood. And results confirmed to make sure it passes the smell test. Clearly an FFT that shows noise components just -65 dB below the signal can't have any useful figure out merit of 120+ dB.

Summary
My measurements/FFT spectrum of a -60 dB tone essentially matches AtomicBob's data. That results in SINAD (signal over noise+distortion power) of just 60 dB. The meter used in AtomicBob's graph to derive the Signal to Noise ratio is simply wrong and not configured correctly. We can easily confirm this on his graph as I have shown.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Old post, I know, but just found it now, sorry, and I guess SNR is still a viable option to measure amplifiers, so we can know for sure if we'll hear any background noise out of them or not. For DACs maybe there's not much sense to measure SNR/dynamic range, given that background noise is pretty low these days, so SIgnalNoiseAndDistortions is definitely a way much better measurement for a DAC for sure. Although, given the audio masking that occurs while listening to the music, I doubt many of us would be able to spot a 90dB SINAD DAC vs. a 120dB one in a properly conducted A/B test, but it's great to on what your money goes when your buying audio gear.

I do like TI's explanation from http://www.ti.com/lit/an/slaa114/slaa114.pdf, page 10, regarding "Signal-to-Noise Ratio" and "THD+N vs Output Power".

 

[Veri]

Anyone else notice that Schiit now has AP reports for their flagship DACs, too? This under "specs" tab
Yggdrasil Gen 1 https://www.schiit.com/products/yggdrasil
Yggdrasil Gen 2 https://www.schiit.com/products/yggdrasil
Gungnir / Gungnir MB https://www.schiit.com/products/gungnir
Funnily enough, the bifrost 2 represents their lowest noise, lowest distortion "true multibit" product.

Unsurprisingly, Modi 3 remains the best objective high-performance DAC they are selling. With heresy it's a good "ASR" stack.

 

[ElNino]

Funnily enough, the bifrost 2 represents their lowest noise, lowest distortion "true multibit" product.

I don't think that's true. The Bifrost 2 outperforms the Yggdrasil on some measurements, but if you look at the 19+20kHz IMD measurement done by SBAF, it has truly enormous levels of IMD (well, not PerfectWave levels of IMD, but very high). Schiit doesn't post the 19+20kHz measurement from their AP, but based on Stereophile's measurements the Yggdrasil doesn't seem to have the same specific issue.

IMHO the best measuring Schiit multibit DAC appears to be the Modi Multibit (current revision B), which actually has pretty decent performance except for the very prominent 2nd harmonic, but that will be subjectively more benign (if audible, would be audible as a bassier/warmer sound) than a lot of IMD.

 

[Veri]

IMHO the best measuring Schiit multibit DAC appears to be the Modi Multibit (current revision B), which actually has pretty decent performance except for the very prominent 2nd harmonic, but that will be subjectively more benign (if audible, would be audible as a bassier/warmer sound) than a lot of IMD.

This one? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-battle-of-schiit-audio-dacs.5487/

In the review there it looks pretty bad. Not audio-gd bad but close... Besides, all the revision 'B' firmware does is actual dithering from 24-bit to 16-bit for much improved linearity. The other characteristics have not changed.

 

[Veri]

I don't think that's true. The Bifrost 2 outperforms the Yggdrasil on some measurements, but if you look at the 19+20kHz IMD measurement done by SBAF, it has truly enormous levels of IMD (well, not PerfectWave levels of IMD, but very high). Schiit doesn't post the 19+20kHz measurement from their AP, but based on Stereophile's measurements the Yggdrasil doesn't seem to have the same specific issue.

You're right btw, Bifrost 2 IMD is pretty bad. That is unfortunate, since it seems to measure better distortion-wise than their other multibits. Odd.