Life after Yggdrasil: Watering the Ash

I just read through the other impressions thread. It could be that there is no better read than Super Best Audio Friends getting their teeth into something horrible!

Good grief, I though this stuff just didn't happen in modern electronics, outside of audiophool imaginations, audiophile 0.0001%s, and differing flavours which some choose to fight over!

Surely there is no excuse? There may be striving for better and achieving small differences, or appealing to the lovers of certain sounds, but surely there is no huge, rocket-science engineering problem still to be solved? Except maybe, "Hey, we thought we'd do it different and it worked out." But what was this box: trying to do it different and failing miserably? Schucks... and no, I don't, in any way, find $800 dollars cheap enough to be an excuse for something not working. To many of us, this is expensive kit, regardless of how many extra zeros are possible in the world out there.

 

Man that's a lot to listen with. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of audiophile dreck that litter most evaluators playlists, most of will go unnanmed. Yolo.

 

Perhaps it's worth noting this is not 'multibit' in the sense of the Yggdrasil, Metrum, Holo Spring (and others). No R2R or resistor ladder, etc. The PCM1794 is a delta-sigma chip. See p24 in the datasheet

 

It's hybrid, the six top bits are multibit, the rest are sigma-delta.

 

Sure, I should have written that. I meant to attach a snippet from the datasheet which makes it clearer, but I'm too new here to be allowed attachments (or too stupid to figure out the post editor. This is SBAF, so feel free to derail the thread by letting me know which )

 

We've already gone through that in another thread.

 

It's not all of it, either ...

The first (well, only right now) listed playlist is sort of a "minimum standard". If a DAC can't get through that list without holding my interest and letting the music stir my emotions, then it tends not to fare very well with anything else. So I can just sit down, set that playing, and listen. The first pass isn't concerned with technicalities so much as it is just seeing how much I enjoy the music.

Typically the sorts of problems that crop up there are if I start letting my attention wander or I get fatigued. The nature of my "day job" and other work is that I get lots of time to sit and listen and consequently I have little time for things that get fatiguing. So a 5-6 hours playlist of stuff that I genuinely enjoy, is emotive, crosses a number of genres is quite useful there. DACs, or any other component really, that cannot make it through a session like that might be academically interesting but they're definitely not something I'd have much use for personally.

You might think that pre-disposes to me to "mellow" or "rolled-off" signatures, but it turns out that it doesn't. The more problems in the rendering, especially with pieces I know so well, the more fatiguing things become. With Yggdrasil or Gungnir MB (or Bifrost MB for that matter), I can fire that playlist up and not worry about a thing for the entire duration of it. Other units ... well ... one of recent infamy was a stretch to stand listening to for more than a few tracks at a time and none of it was what I could describe as "enjoyable".

 

Torq, have you heard the Emotiva Stealth DC1?

 

Can't say I have.

 

That might be an interesting DAC to add to the test since Psalm speaks highly of it.

 

That'll likely require someone here that owns one loaning it out as it's not on the end of the spectrum where getting direct loan units really happens. And I don't know anyone that has one - or even that knows someone that knows someone that has one.

 

Yea, but you don't know, that you don't know someone that has one or knows someone who has one. Sorry mate, in a weird mood.

 

Aren't we all supposed to be within three persons of knowing someone who has the Emotiva DC1?

(And I'd like to read the review too)

 

The Stealth DC-1 is up on their website though.

 

Its out of stock at the moment but I'm fairly certain that its still in production. I seem to remember reading something about a DC-2 being introduced later in the year.

Edit: This was from Keith at Emotiva when asked about a successor to the DC-1:

"We do have some new models in the works, but the earliest you'll see them is late summer (Q3), and the main difference will be some new features. (We're not going off in any really radical new directions here; just a few new features.)"

 

They pulled the Amazon listing. Iwonder if they'll announce somethig at Axpona?

 

Emotiva DC-1 $365 (USD) or Best Offer on Head-Fi.

 

Torq, do you include OOP DAC's in your audition list?

Just a few days ago I managed to acquire a Sonic Frontiers Processor 3 in good condition. It's supposedly the best DAC SF has ever made, tilting toward a slightly less warm and more neutral sound signature than SFD-2 MKII.

Of all the DAC's I've owned, the only DAC that rivals Yggdrasil in my book was the SFD-2 MKII SE+. The stock SFD-2 MKII was already better than 95% of the shit out there, but its was a tad too thick and warm and fell short of Yggdrasil's technicalities. Sending it to pcX significantly changed that, lifted a veil or two, brought the SFD-2 MKII closer to a neutral tonality (while still retaining just the right amount of warmth and euphony), and made the soundstage deeper. Overall, it was more preferable to Yggdrasil when it came to headphone listening.

The Processor 3 I have right now is stock without any upgrades by pcX, yet I think I'm already in love with it. Could be new toy syndrome, but when I brought my Yggdrasil to the audio shop and compared the two side-by-side, the Processor 3 had a slightly more laid back and a wider, deeper presentation of soundstage with a softer treble. It had the unmistakable UltraAnalog D20400 sound.

I will do some more extensive listening with my headphone rig at home (Stratus feeding K1000 and modded HD800), but as of now it looks very promising. I can't imagine how better it would turn out to be with the SE+ mod.

 

The only real issue with things like the Emotiva DC-1 is, as I said, at that end of the market the manufacturers don't tend to send out demo/audition units and, at least around here, there's generally little-to-no-dealer presence for the more budget-friendly brands. So, while I'm happy to put it on the list, short of someone here (or within my local Seattle group) having a unit they can loan me it's not likely to actually get auditioned.

If I was the type to "flip" things, I could see buying some of these units used, doing the audition and then selling them on for as much as I could reasonably get for them. I don't really have the inclination, the time or the space (anymore) to do such things though.

I'm more than happy to, but again it comes down to being able to get one for audition.

For OOP or uncommon units, as I said in one of the first posts, the chances of it getting auditioned are increased dramatically by the person(s) asking for it to also do some of the leg-work in finding, or providing, a unit for audition. I don't mind asking the local group, or here, but that'll only go so far. It is, ironically, often easier to get ears on some of the big-ticket stuff.