Please Recommend Transport + DAC for $5K total

Schiit Yggdrasil without question. I too had the same concerns about buying without listening. But after reading web site after web site of pro and consumer reviews, in addition to other do diligence, I took the leap of faith. Boy am I glad I did. Frankly I’d recommend a Yggy if your budget were 10K. They do give a 15 day trial, albeit with a 5% penalty should you decide to return it. But the 15 days begins from when you sign the fedex receipt. As for a transport, anything really that can send the Yggy digital via coax, usb, aes/ebu or optical.

gdhal: I’ve encountered a variety of opinions re: Yggdrasil. One common observation is that 15 days is an inadequate trial period, due to a very long burn-in time. What was your experience in this regard?

@stuartk

I’ll preface this reply by stating that I’d typically be considered a rebel in most everything and that includes audio/video. That said, you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. I too have encountered a variety of opinions regarding the burn-in time and whether or not to keep it on 24/7. And that may not just be a result of this forum, but other forums as well as feedback from electronics repair guys. PM me if you want the number to some outstanding electronics repair people in the Long Island and Manhattan NY area who can speak to burn-in and pluses/minus of leaving equipment on/off. Each scenario has advantages/disadvantages.

My experience in the 18 days or so that I’ve had the Yggy is that (a) it does NOT need to be kept on 24/7 to sound its best, (b) sounds amazing from a cold start, (c) is worthwhile breaking-in once when new and it achieves said break-in within a week, (d) 15 day trial is plenty and it probably wouldn’t take you that long to realize how incredible it is and (e) the 15 day trial is "generous" only in-so-far as the clock starts from when you sign that its been received from fedex, not when it ships.

EDIT:

Don't just take my word for it, if you're seriously interested in the Yggy, it behooves you to do two other things. (1) Email Nick at their support email address and ask questions and (2) read and or post here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-yggdrasil-impressions-thread.766347/ . The grand high exalted mystic ruler himself posts on occasion.  

In my opinion, the Oppo players do not make a good transport for PCM audio. It uses two low grade clocks (25mhz and 27mhz I think). One is for CPU and the other is for HDMI interface. They are not good crystal clocks and are not even close to the native audio sampling rates. The CPU has to do integer math based on 27mhz to generate the 44.1khz or 48khz or whatever sampling rate output. This is okay, but not as good as a dedicated audio clock.

@auxinput 

Appreciate your opinion. But why would/should that matter if the external DAC is doing the re-clocking? In the case of Yggy

"Yggdrasil accepts up to 5 digital inputs and carefully manages them with our Adapticlock™ clock regeneration system. Adapticlock is the most sophisticated clock management system in the world. It assesses the quality of all inputs, measures their incoming center frequency and jitter, and automatically routes the input to the best clock regeneration system. And, our Gen 5 USB features full galvanic isolation via transformers, self-power for low-noise and latching sections, and high-quality local clocking for both 44.1 and 48k multiples. "