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Review and Measurements of Schiit Yggdrasil V2 DAC

Kal Rubinson

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Good idea to have it measured!

And @Kal Rubinson could send you his Niagara 5000, which is said to give a lower noise floor.

I have an open mind on the issue of power and would read measurement tests with interest.
I would love to see it measured but I ain't taking mine out of the system because there are too many connections to deal with and I ain't packing/shipping it because it is too heavy.
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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You don't expect the community here to just trust you on that, right ;)
Trust me or not, that is what I hear. You and they may hear something different. It is not as if I am endorsing or praising the product. And, since it adds nothing to the signal one way or the other, do you think I would keep it on in my room if it added any noticeable ambient noise?
 

gvl

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Trust me or not, that is what I hear. You and they may hear something different. It is not as if I am endorsing or praising the product. And, since it adds nothing to the signal one way or the other, do you think I would keep it on in my room if it added any noticeable ambient noise?

That was humor, in case you didn't notice 26 pages of this heated discussion are about questionably audible distortions that register on expensive and sensitive measuring equipment.
 

έχω δίκιο

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I hate AQ, their avoidance of measurement and their marketing, too. But, Amir is right. Unless and until measurements are taken, we should try to stay open minded and not jump to conclusions.
You're right, I should try to stay open-minded. Maybe Reference Audio Mods, makers of the aforementioned $485 volume knob, were correct that "micro vibrations from the C37 concept of wood, bronze and the lacquer itself compensate for the volume pots and provide (Good Vibrations) our ear/brain combination like to hear... way better sound!!" We have no measurements to disprove their claims, so we should just say "could be," right?

I'm a skeptic and I intend to remain one. It's what thirty-some years in engineering largely in support of scientific research taught me. If a claim runs counter to logic and what I know about electrical engineering, then I should be skeptical.


But if I weren't open-minded, I would not have suggested a double blind test. If they conduct one properly, with independent, competent auditing, and show that the effect is audible and positive, I'll be happy to shift from doubting that the product works to investigating how and why it works. That's what being open-minded is all about.

Double blind tests aren't guaranteed to work out the way they want to, and would probably still fail to convince the most skeptical people. After all, do you know that the participants weren't all paid? Do you know that they didn't pull some other tricks? It's far more interesting and believable if someone like you randomly bought two of them, gutted one of them, and then did such a test, but the moment Audioquest sponsored something like that directly, credibility would be out of the window.
That's like saying that as soon as a drug company paid people to participate in a double-blind trial of a new medication, "credibility [of the results] would be out the window." Yet people are paid to participate in such trials all of the time.

I don't care if Audioquest pays the participants, because the test is double-blind. Neither the participant nor the person conducting the test would know whether the device was in or out of circuit. I don't care if Audioquest performs ten rounds of internal, unpublished testing just to weed out people who perform poorly. All they have to do is find a few people who can reliably hear the alleged audible improvement, proven through several rounds of testing, and they will have established that the device has a positive effect on the sound. There are independent auditing firms that can certify that tests-for-record were performed as described, that the results were properly reported.
 
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amirm

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I think it is always good idea to put some concrete facts, i.e. measurements, behind our opinions. That is what I hope to do.
 

Ron Texas

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I think it is always good idea to put some concrete facts, i.e. measurements, behind our opinions. That is what I hope to do.
Plus 1
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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That MultiWave idea with the P5 is weird and interesting. What do you make of that?
I drank the Kool Aid and tried that on an older version. It caused transformer buzz, etc. in the plugged in components. That can't be good. I have never been the least tempted to use it since. And, though Paul McGowan has gone through a lot of hand waving about it over the years, I don't think he ever showed a measurement of the audio output of anything being improved by it.

Again, if audio components, don't or can't work optimally when plugged into the wall with the supplied power cord, what in the hell are we paying for? I am a reformed, Kool Aid Anonymous member. I also have a much lower opinion of Paul McGowan.
 

Fitzcaraldo215

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That was humor, in case you didn't notice 26 pages of this heated discussion are about questionably audible distortions that register on expensive and sensitive measuring equipment.
Ok. A Smiley or something might make that clear.

Whoops. Just noticed there was a Smiley. Missed that. Sorry.
 

Blumlein 88

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If we have facts and measurements, we can form conclusions rather than holding opinions.
Why bother with facts and measurements. Conclusions are nice and all, but you can hold an opinion without all the fuss. No matter the opinion, in high end audio we have vendors to confirm your opinion and supply goods for the furtherance of it. What more could you ask for?
 
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amirm

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Day 15 "warm-up" snapshot:
Schiit Yggdrasil DAC Day 15 Dashboard Measurement.png

Schiit Yggdrasil DAC Day 15 Linearity Measurement.png


As noted on the graphs, nothing has changed after 15 days of continuous power on.

I have opened the thread for limited commentary. Please don't start debates unrelated to the product and review at hand.
 

Ron Texas

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@amirm will you be able to do dashboard measurements for a few other recently tested DAC's which you may still have on hand, for comparability. It may be my fault, but I had trouble finding s/n measurements.
 
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amirm

amirm

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@amirm will you be able to do dashboard measurements for a few other recently tested DAC's which you may still have on hand, for comparability. It may be my fault, but I had trouble finding s/n measurements.
Sure. Here is Oppo UDP-205 at the top-end:

index.php


Using SINAD as a single figure of merit, we are seeing 115 dB here versus 86 dB for Schiit Yggdrasil. That is a massive gap in performance as even a few dBs are significant let alone almost 30 dB.

Along the same lines is Auralic Vega:

index.php


Just a step down from Oppo at 113 dB and 27 dB better than Schiit Yggdrasil.

Here is DAC1 that is 10 years or so old design (two generations behind the current DAC3 offering):
index.php


105 dB or nearly 20 dB better than Yggdrasil.

Here is the portable Topping NX4 DSD:

index.php


Nearly 20 dB better than Yggdrasil yet retails for $160.

People ask why I am disappointed in Schiit products. If you test as many well executed ones as I do, the answer should be clear.
 

Ron Texas

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Heavenly numbers...
 
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amirm

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I already have. It was in the review. :)

index.php


If he did the proper Jitter measurements as I have done above with full bandwidth from 20 Hz to 20 kHz, he would have seen that those spikes are a result of power supply noise bleeding into the DAC as I noted originally. It is a (minor) defect in the design of Yggdrasil. It has nothing to do whatsoever with warm up (as if jitter changes with warm of a multi-bit DAC).

Has he considered that his analyzer when measuring such small values changes performance from run to run and from day to day? We are talking spikes at -120 dB here. I have to ask Thomas to not eat any beans as to control his gas as to be able to make such measurements here on the side of the earth!!! :D
 
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amirm

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BTW, here is the same measurement made from another Yggdrasil with my older analyzer:

index.php


Very similar spikes around our main tone. And same problem in low frequencies. I zoomed in there: https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ents-and-review-of-schiit-yggdrasil-dac.2358/

index.php


We easily see power supply noise there. Spikes are at 120 Hz which is 2X of mains frequency. This means it is the AC to DC rectifier noise in the power supply.

No mystery here. It is the power supply noise that is not properly decoupled from the DAC. Has nothing to do with what the DAC (chip) itself does.

And here is yours, just measured using above parameters:
Schiit Yggdrasil DAC Low Frequency Jitter Measurement.png


We see the identical peaks at mains harmonics.

And this is with your unit cold (I turned it off for the first time an hour ago!) versus the other unit which had been running for hours.

So no mystery here, and nothing related to temperatures.
 

Alcophone

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I already have. It was in the review. :)

index.php
REmeasure ;) That's from end of June.
I.e. measure again now that it's been turned on for a long time.

I did suggest that on June 26th as part of the regular measurements to assess the warmup effect in our PM thread:
Since the heat argument is mostly about clock stability as far as I understand, jitter may be interesting to measure, too.

Could be very interesting. Thank you!
 
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