Schiit Reference Sytem review: Freya into Yggdrasil, into Vidar
That said, I take JA of stereophile's comments as a serious concern with regard to the Yggdrasil. You can find other DACs in this price range that Stereophile has given a much cleaner "medical health checkup"! Didn't we just go through this? https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/schiit-yggdrasil-21-bit Don't you think you might be giving **WAY** to much credence to John Atkinson and Stereophile's review? |
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up.701... @ghosthouse Thank you!! |
@shadorne Thought you might find the following excerpt from https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/reviews/schiit-audio-yggdrasil-multibit-dac-review/ interesting. ------------------- The "Yggdrasil is the world’s only closed-form multibit DAC, delivering 21 bits of resolution with no guessing anywhere in the digital or analog path." According to Schiit Audio. Let’s dive into that statement a bit. Many audio enthusiasts will immediately see the 21 bit number assume this DAC is inferior to other DACs that claim 24 or even 32 bits of resolution. Several manufacturers today advertise the fact that their DACs feature multiple 32 bit DAC chips per channel. Making a judgement on a DAC’s superiority or inferiority based on the number of bits advertised is foolish. For example, a 24 bit DAC has a theoretical maximum SNR of 144 dB, but the best current DACs can only obtain an SNR of 124 dB or 21 bits due to the noise floor of the components. In addition, human hearing has a dynamic range of about 120-130 dB. What’s more, DACs have what’s called Equivalent Number of Bits (ENOB) to signify the actual resolution of the DAC. A closer look at many 32 bit DACs reveals they actually have an ENOB of 19.5. Can you see why making judgements about DACs based on specifications is ridiculous? Readers may be asking themselves, what happens when I play a 24 bit recording on the Yggdrasil if it only supports 21 bits? The reality is that 24 bit recordings don’t have 24 bits of resolution / information. It’s possible to select 24 or even 32 bits as the output resolution for the Yggdrasil in Audio Midi. The truth is that it doesn’t matter on any DAC. Note 1: Vinyl playback has about 12 bits of resolution, CD has 16 bits. Note 2: The Yggdrasil doesn’t support DSD. ------------------------- |
It’s only an advantage with noise, if the interconnects are over 10mts long. Single ended in most cases sound better, because many balanced inputs or outputs are just a balanced opamps thrown into the signal path before or after the true single ended input or output!! I believe balanced is advantageous from a noise perspective regardless of the length. But sure, the longer the length, the more advantageous. And, while I do agree that balanced cables doesn’t necessarily mean a true balanced circuit in its entirety, the signal level is typically +6 db hotter than straight SE, and that too can (although sometimes not do to clipping) also be advantageous. I disagree, however, that SE sounds better in *most* cases. In fact, I believe the opposite is true, that balanced sounds better in most (but do agree not all) cases. EDIT: And what does this have to do with the topic/thread? Well, in the case of the Yggdrasil, Schiit prefers balanced by stating (in the manual) "if you don’t have balanced gear, we’ve provided two sets of summed single ended outputs that preserves much of the balanced "magic" of the Yggdrasil." I think the operative word there is that it preserves *much* of the balanced magic, but not all. |
@georgehifi To your thread, which involves a Freya, Yggdrasil and Vidar, all of that can be connected via balanced cabling, true? I’m assuming Vidar in mono. If so, and the owner of said equipment desired to go that route, how would the Loki be connected within the systems three components? Hence the reason I stated " to bad the Loki doesn’t have balanced connectivity in/out". |
