[Don Quichotte]

  Great impressions, Barra, thank you! Would you and your gracious host (whose impressions are eagerly awaited for, too

) please dwelve a bit into details on the following topics?
 
1. I don't quite get what you describe with respect to the soundstage: is the Holo "much wider and deeper" that Yggy, or...? I know a good source is supposed to provide a soundstage that faithfully varies with the recording, but no dac is perfect, so sometimes one dac will gave the impression of a wider soundstage than another. I cannot for the life of me make any sense of what I'm reading with respect to the Yggy's (and the other Schiit multibit dacs') soundstage, one guy describes it as rather narrow, intimate, generally speaking narrower that the D/S dacs, while the next guy is amazed by the "huge, immersive soundstage". I have little experience with dacs, but I had an Apogee Mini-dac many years ago and the SE outputs made the soundstage narrower, less spacious than the balanced outputs, and I didn't like it one bit!
 
2. What about the tone, timbre and what I would describe as "chromatic dynamics" (meaning the ability to make the "colors" of the various instruments saturated and very contrasting as opposed to everything sounding more "bleached out", more grayish, like a TV with the contrast set too low - I hope I did manage to make myself understood...)? Some guys said Yggy has a "grayish background", while others swear they cannot hear anything like that. How does the Holo dac compare to the Yggy from this point of view? What dac would you say is better at reproducing the timbre of the acoustics instruments (especially piano) and why?
 
3. So, Yggy smoothes out the treble a bit compared to the Holo dac, you say. What about the bass weight, punch, extension...?
 
4. OK, yggy is not clinical and sterile as some would claim, but it could sound a bit like that in a badly matched system. At least this is my understanding. How's Holo, more or less prone to this problem?
 
Also, can you say a few words (from memory, if you have heard it) about the Gumby and how it compares to the Holo dac? Besides merely saying that the Holo is better, which is a logical conclusion...

 

[hifimckinney]

1. I don't quite get what you describe with respect to the soundstage: is the Holo "much wider and deeper" that Yggy, or...? I know a good source is supposed to provide a soundstage that faithfully varies with the recording, but no dac is perfect, so sometimes one dac will gave the impression of a wider soundstage than another. I cannot for the life of me make any sense of what I'm reading with respect to the Yggy's (and the other Schiit multibit dacs') soundstage, one guy describes it as rather narrow, intimate, generally speaking narrower that the D/S dacs, while the next guy is amazed by the "huge, immersive soundstage". 

 
What a coincidence!! I was typing the same thing that with my experience with Yggy, I can confidently say that it is soundstage agnostic and it presents it in a way it was recorded. My listening is across old India (hindi) music to latest from Paul Taylor etc. Once can check this in Pandora. If one closely follows, one will realize that every artist appears to be going to same recording studio/hire same master engineer. Sting's recording had kind of arrangements that makes music somewhat hazy compared to what Eric Clapton has. The station that I most love listening to is Stan Getz.

 

[Torq]

  Went to Torq's house on Friday to hear a new DAC arrival vs. the Ygg. This is the HoloAudio KitsuneTuned Edition Spring Dac that I heard at RMAF in Colorado that knocked my socks off paired to the GSX/HEK and Blue Hawaii/009. Needed to see if it did the same in a better home environment. BTW, both the Spring and the Ygg are priced the same so this is actually a fair fight.
 
https://kitsunehifi.com/product/springdacgreen/
 
Short answer is yes it did - I personally liked the Spring DAC better than the Ygg. Both are top notch, but I felt that the Spring had better resolution and a better sound stage. The Ygg sounds a bit smoothed in the treble in comparison and at the back of the first section with the Spring on stage. I really like the up close and personal sound stage. Don't get me wrong and think this means it is congested - far from that feeling much wider and deeper than the Ygg, it just means that I get more 3d instrument placement with instruments around me rather than out in front. This way I can hear the finger work and string pluck better, and have a more emotional connection to the music. The tradeoff is that the Spring is transparent to sibilance while the Ygg will smooth it over. Not an issue with well recorded music, but long term high pitch droning will buzz the ear drums. There is also variance by HP where surprisingly, the LCD4 picked up more sibilance than the Abyss or my HEX. I say surprisingly because the LCD4 is my favorite HP that caused the most foot tapping and longer listening before hitting the forward button.
 
Playing with the oversampling, I found that the quickness that provided more resolution was smeared to sound more like the Ygg and any sibilance went away, but my preferred sound stage remained as did the better pluck and dynamics that I was hearing on the Spring. But the black space between the noted diminished. Looking at design, the Spring has a warmer in standby mode that allows the circuits to be turned off and SQ to remain high on a cold start where the Ygg needs to remain on. I also appreciated the Spring's more compact footprint as well as the display that removes some of the guesswork.
 
The listening was done with Torq's Abyss which turned out to be the most transparent test option making the Spring difference obvious. I also listened to Torq's LCD4 and my own HEX which I have been spending the most ear time. The LCD4 and HEX both sounded better with Spring as well, but it felt like the Abyss scaled better. We were using Torq's Woo W22 tube amp with Princess tubes. The Spring output was hotter so I purposely played the Ygg louder much of the time to make sure that there was no volume issues in my results. At all volumes, the results remained the same, but I felt that the extra dynamics in the Spring allowed the volume to be played the lowest without losing fidelity. Music was fed by Tidal through Roon listening to Torq's test playlist which contained both vary familiar tracks as well as great tracks for testing the various capabilities. The music list fit all genres.
 
I am very interested to get Torq's final feedback as he tries the various connection options that may or may not change the SQ differential. As for now, if I was going to buy one or the other, I would go with the Spring.

 
It was good to have you over - it had been entirely too long since the last time - and I'm glad you go to hear the two units side by side!
 
A few comments/clarifications, ahead of my own impressions (which I will write up properly, and say nothing more about until I do):
 
The amp in use was actually my Woo Audio WA5-LE Mk2 w/ all parts upgrades. Normally I run Takatsuki 274B and 300B w/ Sylvania 6SN7GT tubes; I'd swapped those back out and have Sophia Electric Princess 274B and 300B w/ RCA signal tubes installed while I am showing the house (too many excited children/adults with sticky/over-zealous paws).
 
It's also worth noting that I still had things in warm-up/basic listening configuration, since I didn't start my "serious" listening until late Friday (which then carried on through most of the weekend).  This means that Yggdrasil was connected to the WA5-LE from it's single-ended outputs (WA5-LE is a single-ended design), and the Spring DAC was feeding it via balanced connections.  This is mostly a result of that being my normal configuration for Yggdrasil - as I usually have it's balanced outputs feeding my Ragnarok.  And the rationale for that is that the difference between the balanced and singled-ended outputs of Yggdrasil is a lot smaller than between the singled-ended and balanced inputs with Ragnarok.
 
For my subsequent formal auditioning I ran them both in the same configuration, i.e. both balanced into either amp (using a special box I have to switch the single XLR input on the Woo).
 
In this case Yggdrasil was being fed from my Auralic Aries via AES (I'm trading my normal usual RedNet 3 for a D16 AES) and the Spring DAC was coming off a microRendu, both fed a synchronized (grouped) stream from Roon.  My formal impressions (which might well wind up as a proper review in this case, since I got more time with the Spring DAC than I have with most of the other DACs I've auditioned), will include driving both units from a common source, and comparing the various input options for the Spring DAC, since it supports I2S in addition to the usual AES/SPDIF COAX/TOSLINK/USB.
 
My impressions to follow in a little bit (maybe tomorrow), but wanted to make sure the replay chain was completely identified ahead of that.

 

[Benny-x]

This will be a very valuable piece to read on top of Barra's. The Spring DAC is the new FotM and a value leader often compared in passing to the Yggdrasil. It'll be nice to get some more real words on it.

 

[Barra]

 

  Went to Torq's house on Friday to hear a new DAC arrival vs. the Ygg. This is the HoloAudio KitsuneTuned Edition Spring Dac that I heard at RMAF in Colorado that knocked my socks off paired to the GSX/HEK and Blue Hawaii/009. Needed to see if it did the same in a better home environment. BTW, both the Spring and the Ygg are priced the same so this is actually a fair fight.
 
https://kitsunehifi.com/product/springdacgreen/
 
Short answer is yes it did - I personally liked the Spring DAC better than the Ygg. Both are top notch, but I felt that the Spring had better resolution and a better sound stage. The Ygg sounds a bit smoothed in the treble in comparison and at the back of the first section with the Spring on stage. I really like the up close and personal sound stage. Don't get me wrong and think this means it is congested - far from that feeling much wider and deeper than the Ygg, it just means that I get more 3d instrument placement with instruments around me rather than out in front. This way I can hear the finger work and string pluck better, and have a more emotional connection to the music. The tradeoff is that the Spring is transparent to sibilance while the Ygg will smooth it over. Not an issue with well recorded music, but long term high pitch droning will buzz the ear drums. There is also variance by HP where surprisingly, the LCD4 picked up more sibilance than the Abyss or my HEX. I say surprisingly because the LCD4 is my favorite HP that caused the most foot tapping and longer listening before hitting the forward button.
 
Playing with the oversampling, I found that the quickness that provided more resolution was smeared to sound more like the Ygg and any sibilance went away, but my preferred sound stage remained as did the better pluck and dynamics that I was hearing on the Spring. But the black space between the noted diminished. Looking at design, the Spring has a warmer in standby mode that allows the circuits to be turned off and SQ to remain high on a cold start where the Ygg needs to remain on. I also appreciated the Spring's more compact footprint as well as the display that removes some of the guesswork.
 
The listening was done with Torq's Abyss which turned out to be the most transparent test option making the Spring difference obvious. I also listened to Torq's LCD4 and my own HEX which I have been spending the most ear time. The LCD4 and HEX both sounded better with Spring as well, but it felt like the Abyss scaled better. We were using Torq's Woo W22 tube amp with Princess tubes. The Spring output was hotter so I purposely played the Ygg louder much of the time to make sure that there was no volume issues in my results. At all volumes, the results remained the same, but I felt that the extra dynamics in the Spring allowed the volume to be played the lowest without losing fidelity. Music was fed by Tidal through Roon listening to Torq's test playlist which contained both vary familiar tracks as well as great tracks for testing the various capabilities. The music list fit all genres.
 
I am very interested to get Torq's final feedback as he tries the various connection options that may or may not change the SQ differential. As for now, if I was going to buy one or the other, I would go with the Spring.

 
It was good to have you over - it had been entirely too long since the last time - and I'm glad you go to hear the two units side by side!
 
A few comments/clarifications, ahead of my own impressions (which I will write up properly, and say nothing more about until I do):
 
The amp in use was actually my Woo Audio WA5-LE Mk2 w/ all parts upgrades. Normally I run Takatsuki 274B and 300B w/ Sylvania 6SN7GT tubes; I'd swapped those back out and have Sophia Electric Princess 274B and 300B w/ RCA signal tubes installed while I am showing the house (too many excited children/adults with sticky/over-zealous paws).
 
It's also worth noting that I still had things in warm-up/basic listening configuration, since I didn't start my "serious" listening until late Friday (which then carried on through most of the weekend).  This means that Yggdrasil was connected to the WA5-LE from it's single-ended outputs (WA5-LE is a single-ended design), and the Spring DAC was feeding it via balanced connections.  This is mostly a result of that being my normal configuration for Yggdrasil - as I usually have it's balanced outputs feeding my Ragnarok.  And the rationale for that is that the difference between the balanced and singled-ended outputs of Yggdrasil is a lot smaller than between the singled-ended and balanced inputs with Ragnarok.
 
For my subsequent formal auditioning I ran them both in the same configuration, i.e. both balanced into either amp (using a special box I have to switch the single XLR input on the Woo).
 
In this case Yggdrasil was being fed from my Auralic Aries via AES (I'm trading my normal usual RedNet 3 for a D16 AES) and the Spring DAC was coming off a microRendu, both fed a synchronized (grouped) stream from Roon.  My formal impressions (which might well wind up as a proper review in this case, since I got more time with the Spring DAC than I have with most of the other DACs I've auditioned), will include driving both units from a common source, and comparing the various input options for the Spring DAC, since it supports I2S in addition to the usual AES/SPDIF COAX/TOSLINK/USB.
 
My impressions to follow in a little bit (maybe tomorrow), but wanted to make sure the replay chain was completely identified ahead of that.

Ops, corrected for the WA5-LE Mk2. Excited to hear your thoughts after a weekend of re-configurations and listening.

 

[Barra]

    Great impressions, Barra, thank you! Would you and your gracious host (whose impressions are eagerly awaited for, too

) please dwelve a bit into details on the following topics?
 
1. I don't quite get what you describe with respect to the soundstage: is the Holo "much wider and deeper" that Yggy, or...? I know a good source is supposed to provide a soundstage that faithfully varies with the recording, but no dac is perfect, so sometimes one dac will gave the impression of a wider soundstage than another. I cannot for the life of me make any sense of what I'm reading with respect to the Yggy's (and the other Schiit multibit dacs') soundstage, one guy describes it as rather narrow, intimate, generally speaking narrower that the D/S dacs, while the next guy is amazed by the "huge, immersive soundstage". I have little experience with dacs, but I had an Apogee Mini-dac many years ago and the SE outputs made the soundstage narrower, less spacious than the balanced outputs, and I didn't like it one bit!
 
2. What about the tone, timbre and what I would describe as "chromatic dynamics" (meaning the ability to make the "colors" of the various instruments saturated and very contrasting as opposed to everything sounding more "bleached out", more grayish, like a TV with the contrast set too low - I hope I did manage to make myself understood...)? Some guys said Yggy has a "grayish background", while others swear they cannot hear anything like that. How does the Holo dac compare to the Yggy from this point of view? What dac would you say is better at reproducing the timbre of the acoustics instruments (especially piano) and why?
 
3. So, Yggy smoothes out the treble a bit compared to the Holo dac, you say. What about the bass weight, punch, extension...?
 
4. OK, yggy is not clinical and sterile as some would claim, but it could sound a bit like that in a badly matched system. At least this is my understanding. How's Holo, more or less prone to this problem?
 
Also, can you say a few words (from memory, if you have heard it) about the Gumby and how it compares to the Holo dac? Besides merely saying that the Holo is better, which is a logical conclusion...

Corrected my sound stage write up to be more specific in the original post. Also, I corrected not say the Spring is much wider and deeper, but noticeably based on the presentation. They both have nice sound stage paired with the WA5-LE Mk2. What is mostly noticeable is that the Spring is more layered being centered in the music rather than set back. Also the space between the notes add a 3d aspect that I don't get with the Ygg in comparison. However, those that want the voices always to be forward may like the Ygg better as that seems to be consistent with the Ygg. The SQ is TOTL on both, so it really comes down to preferences in sound stage if you are basing on sound stage alone. However, in resolution, the Spring has that quickness and dynamic aspect that trumps the Ygg IMO. 
 
Tone is reasonably equivalent as at first blush, you can easily confuse the two. The WA5-LE Mk2 has a source switch that allows an easy AB for quick back and forth impressions while the music plays. On longer listening, the Spring dynamics provide more realism with better pluck and polish - front and finish of each note. The richness of the tone in the middle of the note seems the same with equivalent natural hang time. The Spring is not too fast like a Sabre implementation which I have always considered Sabre on the harsh side of being fast. Overall, both are natural sounding with fantastic tones, but the Spring is more resolving of that tone with better blackness between the notes. Should point out that the tone is probably more to do with the AMP where these DACs do get out of the way of the music. The WA5-LE Mk2 with the princess tubes is not a typical warm tube sound. It is very natural and clean with great dynamics which plays well with the Springs dynamics and speed. I did not test different AMP pairings to say more about the Springs role in the overall sound. My hope is to be able to eventually try the Spring with my EC BW which is a warmer sounding AMP to see how well it pairs. My gut tells me that it will be a fantastic pairing.
 
Never heard the Ygg sound clinical and sterile, but I wouldn't pair it with a clinical and sterile amp or you will get that as a result. My preference has been for a somewhat warm or a tube amp that can expose the weight and dynamics in a note. The Ygg is a great team player feeding the AMP for an easy layup - what ever the AMPs goal might be. Clinical and sterile to me sounds like you are describing thin - think poorly paired HD800.

 

[Barra]

 

1. I don't quite get what you describe with respect to the soundstage: is the Holo "much wider and deeper" that Yggy, or...? I know a good source is supposed to provide a soundstage that faithfully varies with the recording, but no dac is perfect, so sometimes one dac will gave the impression of a wider soundstage than another. I cannot for the life of me make any sense of what I'm reading with respect to the Yggy's (and the other Schiit multibit dacs') soundstage, one guy describes it as rather narrow, intimate, generally speaking narrower that the D/S dacs, while the next guy is amazed by the "huge, immersive soundstage". 

 
What a coincidence!! I was typing the same thing that with my experience with Yggy, I can confidently say that it is soundstage agnostic and it presents it in a way it was recorded. My listening is across old India (hindi) music to latest from Paul Taylor etc. Once can check this in Pandora. If one closely follows, one will realize that every artist appears to be going to same recording studio/hire same master engineer. Sting's recording had kind of arrangements that makes music somewhat hazy compared to what Eric Clapton has. The station that I most love listening to is Stan Getz.

Again, the Ygg sound stage is fantastic. With the WA5-LE Mk2 source AB capabilities I was able to go back and forth quickly to hear the differences in the sound stage layout. The result sounded as if the mike was located on the back of the first section with the Ygg vs. center stage for the Spring. Neither is better, just different unless you have a preference like I do for center stage. The biggest difference in sound stage was the added 3d layering provided by the Springs blackness between the notes. I felt like I could place the instruments better and separate the crowd noise in live recordings. That separation gave me the impression of a bigger sound stage that went beyond the stage.

 

[Don Quichotte]

Thank you!

 

[artur9]

  ... I was able to go back and forth quickly to hear the differences in the sound stage layout. ...

Any idea as to what, technologically speaking, would account for the soundstage differences?   Or do you think that the DACs are just voiced differently?

 

[yage]

  Talking sound stage in terms of the traditional three blobs - Ygg places the singer forward in the center and the bass/strings back a ways in a v. 

 
Nice observation. I had the same experience with a Modi Multibit in my speaker system (details in my profile). I think it's the Schiit filter at work here - when I bypassed the oversampling filter by feeding it 24/192 material, the 'v' shaped soundstage went away. My take is that the filter 'spatializes' the presentation much like a DSP effect.

 

[Argo Duck]

^ As I understand it, Schiit's filter preserves as accurately as possible the phase information encoded in the material - assuming it hasn't been distorted during mixing and mastering. Under this 'well recorded' condition, the soundstage is an accurate (potentially 'holographic') one.

If I've got this right, I suspect Mike would be disappointed to hear his filter compared to a DSP effect

 

[yage]

^ As I understand it, Schiit's filter preserves as accurately as possible the phase information encoded in the material - assuming it hasn't been distorted during mixing and mastering. Under this 'well recorded' condition, the soundstage is an accurate (potentially 'holographic') one.

If I've got this right, I suspect Mike would be disappointed to hear his filter compared to a DSP effect

 
Yeah, I know I'll catch hell for that comment. As I understand it, most digital filters are linear phase, which means the delay is a constant for each frequency component that is part of the original signal. So even if there is a phase shift, all frequency components are shifted together by the same amount. The way I see it, if a filter is transparent there should be no difference when the filter is bypassed vs. with the filter in the chain. However, that was not my experience.

 

[XVampireX]

 
Finally, I am removing Chord's DAVE from my shortlist.  This is not based on any sonic attribute or shortfall, I've simply decided that I won't be buying one for myself (for several reasons, which, again, have nothing to do with how it sounds) and consequently there is no reason for me to burden a dealer with providing a demo unit for a more protracted period.  This does not change my impressions of the unit at all, and the existing write-up will remain as-is.

 
Hi, can you please give the reason why?
Is it because it is too expensive? Or are there different reasons? Please clarify, I'm looking to get the best DAC money can buy in the near future and Chord DAVE just about sounds like it atm.
 
Thanks

 

[johnjen]

Not to speak for torq but he has already given his reasons, earlier in this thread.
And from what I remember it has to do, in part, with their business functionality and he didn't care much for the design, especially the look of it.
 
And lastly, it isn't his aim to find the "the best DAC money can buy", which will help in understanding his choices as well.
 
JJ

 

[artur9]

   
Hi, can you please give the reason why?

You know that Torq links all his impressions in the first posting?
 
If you want to see his take on this or any other DAC he's tried, hit the first page button then scroll through the list of DACs until you see the one you're curious about.
 
Pls, people, read the first post, skim the thread to stop suggesting DACs Torq has either already described or already rejected.
 
That way, it's less annoying for him and he can spend his valuable time trying out and giving impressions on the remaining DACs on his list (and the Spring DAC which I don't think is on his list but he got to hear anyway).
 
Apologies if I sound like the thread police but it's exhausting to keep reading requests for the same DACs over and over, not discussing DACs but lobbying Torq to change his mind, and/or not taking advantage of the first post accumulation of knowledge.