Schiit Yggdrasil Stereophile Review + Measurements

JA used to be the editor for Hi-Fi News back in its heyday - he certainly is not incompetent but may be selective with his commentary.

 

That's what I'm betting. Integrity and consumer interest be damned - let's get the knee pads out and chug some vendor trouser snake - because that is where the money is.

 

A much larger difference than I expected. The background is blacker, there is another layer of detail that is not fuzzed out, and while the Bifrost Multibit does have a very pleasant spacious sound, the Yggdrasil comes across as more natural. I listen to a wide variety of music, and some instruments just seem to be tough to reproduce. Bells, cymbals, violins, much more like music and less like a DAC. Bass is tighter but also better separated from the mids and treble sounds.

 

As much as I agree with it (and it irks me too), I just can't.

At the end of the day, the market will bare what it can. If the economics weren't there for a Utopia to exist, it wouldn't.

Schiit's return policy is pretty decent for Americans but in Canada, we're fucked for trying their gear. There's something to be said about being able to try gear before you buy it at the store and unfortunately to do that, the whole chain needs to be in place. It's the very reason I went for a PS Audio DAC instead of Yggdrasil - it's just too much risk because I can't audition it short of spending at least a couple hundred dollars in shipping plus being at the mercy of customs returning tax/duty already paid plus 5% fee on a $3,100 CAD item.

 

Mrspeakers happily led the way of the current trend, with his overpriced T50 mods.

 

Perhaps some ground can be won back with the Aeon release for a very reasonable $800?

 

If it can compete with a modded hd800 and/or a modded he6, maybe. Until then I think a lot of us will cautiously stay away.

 

I think we, and most stereophile readers, are familiar with the law of dismissing [oops, diminishing] returns on audio equipment. Trying to justify spending thousands when hundreds would be 80-90% as good is crazy to most people. As the price goes up, so does the craziness.

As for how stereophile recommends the Yggdrasil, the end of the review is about as high praise as herb can heap. He says the Schiit stack is end game; as in no more need to buy anything. That is high praise indeed.

I believe this so strongly that I recommend a simple, high-value, music system that I know I could live with forever: the Schiit Yggdrasil DAC ($2299), feeding a Schiit Ragnarok integrated amplifier ($1699) driving a pair of KEF LS50 speakers ($1499). For a total cost of $5497, this system will play headphones and speakers with equal perspicacity. Cross my heart, it will deliver sky-high musicality as well as oceans of myth and Norse magic. I've listened to this exact setup for almost a year, and if I weren't an audio reporter, I'd keep it and use it until the Fate of the Gods is nigh.
Read more at https://www.stereophile.com/content/schiit-audio-yggdrasil-da-processor-page-2#z7r6AXYh6WlIWJGv.99

 

Main thing about Herb is that every review I read any device sounds like the-best-damn-thing-ever TM.

 

Those are some really unreasonable expectations... They are a closed headphone first of all, second of all the HE6 needs a shit ton more juice to drive them.
AEON is more "portable" scaled down version of the Ethers AFAIK. They won't compete with those headphones but they do have their own place in the market IMO.

 

"Scaled down version of the Ethers"

We'll done sir, you just squashed any interest I might have in something like this. It's a really sad sight for old timers, when 800$ is now buying you the cut down version of an 1500$ headphone which could already not compete with 1200$ MSRP headphones.

Nothing personal here, but you will need a lot of convincing arguments before I believe the market is not walking on its head.

 

No problem lol and I do agree that their pricings are way out there, but It's working for them... Might still want to give them a try since some people are actually preferring them to the Ether Cs. Anyway sorry for derail.

 

"Psychological egoism is the view that humans are always motivated by self-interest, even in what seem to be acts of altruism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism

Corruption is rife because humans are eminently corruptible. Even Schiit have their own motivations. Personal or commercial, conscious or unconcious, for being so customer oriented.

Publicly traded companies or those with external investors will always skew toward commercial interest because they're beholden to the share holders and investors. Who will always be in it for the financial returns alone. By contrast the core values of privately owned, often small, companies will be a reflection of the personal values held by the owner(s). Whether that is purely monetary gain or for example, because they care more about them, the industry, hobby, community, fairness, or the products themselves.

How any given CEO will pursue monetary goals will differ, and whether the board or share holders agree will also. With efforts directed toward financial gain first and foremost everything else is going to suffer to varying degrees, depending upon how much it is believed it can support the first goal. In most cases what seems to suffer is the consumer, staff members, build quality, honesty, and ethics.

Unfortunately given the way human psychology mixes with capitalism it's a matter of how much these things suffer, rather than if.

 

I'm definitely a big believer in Psychological egoism or at least taking a look at things from that point of view, and agree about our inherent tendency to be corrupted. That written...

I've enjoyed Stereophile on and off, but take the opinions with plenty of skepticism too. I do appreciate the hobby and industry benefits from publications like Stereophile (overall, of course some products and companies may not).

Forums like this one, and others, add something more. I think Netflix had the right idea, at least at one point in time. When you rated movies and TV shows, the analytics software swings the needle toward matches with people with similar likes/dislikes. It's not about whether or not a movie or TV show is good, it's that we have our own likes and dislikes, and there are increasing odds that by matching with like-minded people, Netflix will provide me suggestions that will match my preferences. So when I read other's posts, I'm actually less interested in the absolute analysis of is this piece of equipment good or not, and more interested in finding suggestions from others who find what I do to be enjoyable.

The biggest problem with Stereophile then for me is just that reading one person's opinion, well, I may not enjoy the same. Especially when it comes to speakers and headphones where there is significant coloration, but even other gear, what grates on my nerves or sounds pleasant isn't necessarily the same as one person's preferences, no matter if they write for a magazine.

 

This thread has been lots of fun to read over the past 24 hours! Stereophile has acted as a gate keeper of high end audio for many years. They are certainly loosing this grip with all we have access to on the internet. I still enjoy some of the Stereophile articles and considering the power they had as gate keepers they could have been much worse. I will say the class rating system is pretty poorly handled probably because it was a poor concept to begin with. Who in good conscience would recommend a class B component that cost twice as much as a class A component? I have seen this very thing in Stereophile many times which really weakens their credibility. They basically killed the venerable Dunlavy speaker company by taking one of their flagship mega speakers and giving it a class B rating because of a measurement anomaly. If that ubber expensive Dunlavy speaker is not class A quality then why should it be recommended at all! Such a contradiction and insult to injury. I actually like the Absolute Sound much better and so does my Dad. The Absolute Sound review of the Yggdrasil really hurts the credibility of Stereophile's class B rating of the Yggdrasil. Clearly based on reading all the reviews including the Stereophile review! the Yggdrasil is one of the best DACs you can buy regardless of the price.

And we all know that the Yggdrasil and Schiit will not have the same fate as Dunlavy. Stereophile simply does not have the power it used to. There was a time that I did not want to buy anything that Stereophile did not rate class A. But if I currently had they money I would buy the Yggdrasil in a heartbeat.