Auralic Taurus + Schiit Yggdrasil -> ???????
Jul 8, 2017 at 10:31 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 3

Tassie Devil

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The first reaction to the header is that this combination should give a good dose of the old fashioned bullxxxx. Well, in the audio world, not quite.


This 81yo audio nutter keeps announcing he has finished with upgrades, something which reflects how deranged he has become and not learned very much over 7 decades of messing around with audio toys since soldering together his first crystal set back in the 1950s.


This journey has been one of travelling from old Edison cylinders (still have the player) to 78rpm shellac to Decca FFRR mono LPs, then stereo, to CDs (horrible first encounter) to finally getting all the mostly classical music into a server. The LPs and CDs have long gone.


The first server was a Meridian Sooloos setup and this finally yielded quite decent sounding audio, particularly using headphones. The more recent cans have been mostly from Sennheiser – a 598, 650s, 800, finishing with an 800S but flirting with a HiFiMan 400S along the way. But temptation came to the fore with Focal Utopias and they lifted yet another audio veil.


And earlier this year there was a move away from Meridian over to the far less expensive Roon system, now operated on this PC and feeding an Auralic Aries via LAN cabling. A balanced digital feed from the Auralic feeds a DAC and headamp for listening on the Focals. At one stage the DAC was an M2Tech Vaughan but. was recently replaced by a used Primare DAC30 feeding into a HeadRoom Balanced Blockhead amplifier. The sound quality was superb and a music lover visited the other week and proclaimed it the absolute best sound he had ever heard on headphones.


But temptation spread its tentacles yet again upon reading reports about just how good the Schiit Yggdrasil was. That hit a receptive chord with me as I have been of the opinion for some time now that the DAC has been the Achilles heel of digital audio and was the reason, along with many others, I hated the harsh sound it produced in its early days. So the Yggdrasil was a must have and was ordered direct from the USA. [And that was a BIG mistake as the DAC is available from Addicted to Audio and buying there would have cost less and avoided Customs hassles and delays – I naively thought all purchases HAD to be direct from Schiit and had not checked out availability here carefully]. So the Primare DAC30, excellent DAC that it is, will soon be for sale.


Ahah, but many reports of the Schiit Yggdrasil were equally enthusiastic about the mating Ragnorok amplifier so I flirted with the idea of purchasing it also. But the reports were not all positive and the clincher for rejection was the heat the amp generated. It would not have enough ventilation in the spot taken by the Headroom Balanced amp. But the idea of a replacement head amp had taken hold so I ended up with an Auralic Taurus MkII from Addicted to Audio.


One common comment of both these units is that it can take many hours to bed them in for the best audio quality. So the Auralic was left on for about 4 days but impatience set in so the Yggdrasil had only two days before being plugged into the headphone system earlier today. Maybe too early to make relevant comment on the audio quality yet, but so far so good. I find harpsichord recordings are a real test of a system as, if those massive harmonics are not handled nicely, the result can be an jangled mess. Well, even only partially run in, the Yggdrasil/Taurus combo is sounding very nicely thank you and it has been easy to sample a wide variety of fare from the near 16,000 albums in Roon. I do not trust auditory memory but have the impression that even at this early stage the AQ at least levels with the Pimare DAC30/ HeadRoom Blockhead combo it has replaced. It can only be expected to improve.

Man Cave A-V System.jpg

So there you have it, The ramblings of a senior who has taken the advice of a friend (“You cannot take it with you”) and has again been guilty of changing gear, even though the earlier setup had proven itself to be without any fault. Such is audio idiocy and some other lucky player will end up with a bargain Primare DAC30 and HeadRoom Blockhead amp.
 
Jul 25, 2017 at 12:31 AM Post #3 of 3
Sigh, please don't mock. As a presumed sufferer yourself you should show sympathy.

But no, there will be no "upgrade" in a few months. I do usually sit on items for a year or so, but then again I did not have the Primare DAC30 in the system for long. :L3000:

While I'm at it I should report on the Taurus/Yggdraril progress. A few days after posting I was horrified to notice almost no bass. Ye Gods - mistake?? :triportsad: But then next day it was back!! What the hell was going on? Well it does seem that "bedding in" is no myth and some items, these at least, do need time to settle down to produce their best. As I've frequently posted, I mistrust auditory memory but can honestly say that the AQ top to bottom is now superb. Mind you, it was not bad before but I would not stake money on it being vastly improved.

Such is life suffering audiophilia.
 

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