Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by Torq, Mar 1, 2017.

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  1. landroni

    landroni Friend

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    Value is in the eye of the beholder. A subtle difference to you may be an irrelevant afterthought to me. The crowd here, in audiophilia, clearly trades in hyperbolic subtleties. In this sense, the usual "objectivist" arguments that "all DACs sound the same" has some value, i.e. by pointing out that in the grand scheme of things DACs really make for devilishly subtle differences. (Not that they cannot be DBT'ed with suitable training and in appropriate conditions, if that's your thing.) But these subtleties can be exceedingly important to some*, and we're not talking placebo here.

    Thus it's helpful when @Torq articulates differences between gear by pointing out perceived differences, especially when eked out in blind conditions**, and then pours some cold water by stipulating the relative differences in proportions from a "best-in-class" benchmark. This allows people to keep perspective, and stop stressing about gear, and start enjoying content with gear they have or can easily obtain. In this sense something like Modi Multibit or Gungnir Multibit can be valid end-game setups for many folks, unless you have the ears and brain*** and training to be appreciating the minute differences and improvements better designed gear can bring, but also have the wallet that goes with those tastes.

    So whether a "good" Rembrandt copy instead of an unobtanium original... err... a Chord Mojo over an Yggdrasil is "good enough" for you is a very personal thing indeed. Choose what works best for you, and don't stress over what others think or do.


    * Let me give an example here. I would be perfectly content with a full-scale Rembrandt copy hanging in my living room. That would be absolutely AWESOME. Propose this to an art critic, though, and they would scream BLOODY MURDER! It's a fraud, I tells ye, the colors are nothing like the original, the shades are all wrong, this is a cheap affront to the artistic heritage of humanity! Or something to that effect.

    ** Only that they exist and can be detected reliably, NOT
    what they are.

    *** Cause it's all about pattern processing...
     
  2. brencho

    brencho Friend

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    I don't think psalm or anyone here is saying that one shouldn't buy an Yggdrasil or Gungnir Multibit. The chord mojo on the other hand, is an epic fail in my book and should be destroyed with fire and axes.

    Too clunky to be a good portable unit. Too shitty to be a standalone desk unit bc, and here's the irony- It's battery to reduce USB noise but is still noisier than the sound of its own life being destroyed by fire and axes.

    Edit: Gungnir Multibit/Yggdrasil still sound rather lean to me. So time to spend more on a freya to go ass2ass with them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2017
  3. winders

    winders boomer

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    I hear you. I was playing the role of Devil's advocate with my post. It's been a long time since I was really into audio....35 years or so. My ears have aged some and I have not listened to music critically in a long time. But, I still know what I like and don't like. I know what sounds good and what doesn't even if I can't articulate the reasons. It will take some time to retrain my ears/brain to be able to discern nuances like I used to be able to do.

    When I listen to my friend's Auralic Vega or my other friend's Chord Hugo using my computer and the music I like, I can tell that I don't like the sound as much as I do with my Yggdrasil. The differences are subtle but the difference in listening pleasure is not. The Yggdrasil is the first DAC that caused me to tear up listening to a track. I can also tell that I like all three of those DACs much more than the Chord Mojo, the Modi 2 Uber, and my MacBook Pro's built-in DAC.

    I guess that I don't agree with the premise that all good DACs sound about the same. But hey, that may just be me......
     
  4. johnjen

    johnjen Doesn’t want to be here but keeps posting anyways

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    My 2¢
    The results of our 'training' is often limited to the very best SQ we have spent a suitable amount of time with, which then becomes a benchmark of sorts from which we can compare other acoustic experiences to.

    This means as we gain, experience and a more refined set of evaluatory tools, we can differentiate the more subtle and difficult to discern nuances of the acoustical presentations we do experience.

    It also means that as we gain more 'training' we can appreciate these subtle yet so revealing nuances with greater degrees of refinement.
    Such aspects as the acoustic environment (the room) or the 'moisture' in a voice to name but 2 aspects, will become treasured sonic aspects ONCE we learn to recognize them and in some cases even know they are there in the recording in the first place.

    IOW as we become trained to recognize yet more of these subtle cues and their meaning, THEN the 'better' gear can be more fully appreciated and understood.

    Of course we all have different levels of training and ability to be trained in such matters as well.
    Which means for some an ODAC is all they will ever need, while others would never even consider it as an adequate piece of gear to begin with.

    I use the term 'calibration' to cover this topic, in the sense that as we become more calibrated as to what IS possible, we will tend to strive for those levels of SQ that we each deem important enough to actually open our wallets and incorporate into our systems.
    Or not.

    JJ
     
  5. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    This becomes really obvious when having bought "better gear", spent some time with it, and going back to listen to ones pre-purchase setup. It's a bit ironic but holds true. The pre-upgrade setup becomes worse with time... :)
     
  6. johnjen

    johnjen Doesn’t want to be here but keeps posting anyways

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    Yeah, sometimes…

    And it's those sometimes not, where that is most telling…:)

    JJ
     
  7. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    As other's have said, small differences in technicalities can, and often do, result in substantial changes in how much immersion, emotion and enjoyment one unit brings over another. And it is, of course, possible that person A will genuinely prefer unit B even when unit B can be measured, not just heard, to be technically inferior to unit C.

    The point isn't that there are no meaningful differences between DACs ... just that once we get to "competent" then improvements in those technicalities tend to become very small, very quickly. Some have a bigger impact than others. Sins of omission are generally more easily overlooked, or simply "not heard" than those of commission - especially if you've never heard your audition tracks on more resolving gear. Detecting tonal anomalies, and especially determining good/bad/broken, is very much more dependent on your overall musical listening experiences - if you don't have exposure to how something is supposed to sound you can't really make a determination as to how good one rendition is over another.

    A recent event in my world provides a very simple, but tacit, example of this last point. This last weekend I was moving my speaker/vinyl rig to my new place. A couple of minutes after I'd got everything hooked up, but before I'd started working on speaker placement*, a friend dropped by to check out the new digs. I had music playing, and his first comment was about "how amazing that sounds, that's the best bass I've ever heard!". Most people around here would, if they were hearing the same thing, have to assume that the guy was tone-deaf and had spent all his time listening to overdriven DJ speakers in not-very-well-setup nightclubs. It was obnoxiously boomy, indistinct, and the spot the sub was sitting in was causing all sorts of nasty reverberation.

    So, my point wasn't to say there was no difference, or even no useful difference ... just that such things tend to get exaggerated, that personal preferences are likely to be a much bigger factor overall, and in particular that phrases like "absolutely creams" or the often-used "night and day" mean different things to different people and, on the face of it, are frequently more hyperbolic than realistic. They also mean different things with different types of gear. Experiment with VTA or tracking force, never mind different cartridges or arms, on a turntable and you'll get differences that really can be "night and day" ... especially in comparison to the subtle, but still important, differences between a competently engineered $100 DAC and a reasonable flagship.

    --

    *I'd just stuck them in the corners of the room, right up against a wall and a window, so they were a) out of the way and b) close to where they'd ideally sit for non-sound purposes, just as a starting point. It would take another hour or two to get things placed where they sounded their best (to me), and then more time working with Linn's "Space Optimization" to replicate that performance, as closely as was possible, with the speakers where they could actually be placed from a practical perspective.
     
  8. Changeling

    Changeling Tube Slut

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    Having arrived to the point of Yggdrasil, and I'm not talking money-wise but perceived level of performance, I've found it quite difficult to change mindset from chasing improvements to be content with smaller tweaks. It's hard to feel that it's enough to just purchase music when there's always been a rather large hardware upgrade coming around the bend.

    When I was younger in hifi it was so much easier to see the road ahead, for example to use Linn CDP's as an example; I bought a Mimik II and then had a Karik in sight, but managed to work extra as a student and bought a Genki instead, then had my eyes on an Ikemi for a long time but instead bought the Unidisk 2.1 followed by a 1.1, and also bought Dynamik PS upgrades along the way. Each step was clearly mapped out and yielded a substantial improvement that in hindsight was so easy to justify.

    I want to try and avoid too many adjectives with Yggdrasil so I'll settle with just saying that useful improvements are difficult to see at this point. I should be happy, but I must admit it's not a one hundred percent comfortable feeling. I wish I had someone to share the feeling with, but my wife shrugs and says "it's just music".

    I'm very impressed with how you put yourself through this process @Torq , I think it saves many of us from insanity :)
     
  9. Kattefjaes

    Kattefjaes Mostly Harmless

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    @Changeling - learn to love it. If you can't see an obvious and compelling upgrade path, enjoy occasional small tweaks and spend the mental energy on getting hold of really good recordings of music that you love. Congrats, you have won the game :)
     
  10. murphythecat

    murphythecat GRU-powered uniformed trumpkin

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    sanity and money and time! what Torq is doing for the entire community is incredible. I just finally bought the Yggdrasil without a shred of remorse or doubt. that rarely happens with high priced items :)
    thanks Torq!

    now trying to figure out whether jumping to auralic aries right away or wait, as you all suggest, for something new coming from schiit...
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2017
  11. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    I appreciate the kind words ... but I'm just one perspective on all this ... just one set of ears, preferences, experience and, of course, biases (we all have them). Thus it should always be remembered that your mileage may vary - significantly. And while it might be flattering to have my ramblings lead to direct purchases without recourse to your own audition, that's not something I'd recommend.

    After all, things I find compelling, you might hate and vice versa - though at least in the case of Yggdrasil it's gotten more than enough well-deserved high-praise from so many quarters at this point that it's as close to a "sure thing" as you can get in this game.
     
  12. landroni

    landroni Friend

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    ...except when you can hear zero cross-over glitches, that is... ;)
     
  13. Merrick

    Merrick A lidless ear

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    We all know this is a plot to help Schiit sell all those obsolete 21-bit chips they purchased too many of. Stereophile is on to you!
     
  14. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    I'm quite quick to flip the bozo-bit on people these days ... and that's definitely what happened there ... and in my case that's a write-once bit ...

    More bits flipped there too ... ;)
     
  15. Torq

    Torq MOT: Headphone.com

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    Back on subject for a minute though ...

    The Audio-GD Singularity 19 is likely to be the next DAC that gets compared, followed by the Ross Martin PCM1794A. And then after that I'll take the time to do all of the Schiit multi-bit DACs.
     
  16. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    The Chord Mojo is a thick, honky piece of FGPA shit. Think an annoying fat, motormouthed woman.
     
  17. winders

    winders boomer

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    I can certainly agree with that!
     
  18. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

    Pyrate Slaytanic Cliff Clavin
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    The Yggdrasil is one of the few mind-blowing DACs to me too. That being said, it still has a sound to it that has its own sonic peculiarities like a grey background, fat punchy bass, in your face staging, overemphasis of tape hiss, and a slightly compressed but forward upper midrange like most CS4398 or ESS Sabre based DAC.
     
  19. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    Still way better than the Hugo though!
     
  20. winders

    winders boomer

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    Grey background? The background I have is very black. The music comes out of a totally silent no where. It does get grey if I go USB direct AND get rid of the Topaz ISO Transformer.

    I can't agree or disagree with the rest....except to say that I love the bass and the staging!!
     

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