[drez]

As good as the Yggdrasil's native USB input appears to be compared to the bulk of the competition, it sounds consistently worse to me than any of the other input options.  In order I've found I like the AES/EBU XLR input (via an Auralic Aries) the best, followed by the TOSLINK connection (Lifatec glass cable from a new Mac Pro) and finally the COAX input.

I still can't get my head around the idea of using a USB output, and one or more often quite expensive devices to fix up it's issues, rather than just skipping USB all together.  I get it when it's the only option, but I've yet to hear a DAC driven by USB, no matter what reclockers, power isolation or whatever is involved, that sounded better than when driven by it's other inputs (assuming good quality interconnects all around).

USB gets a bad rep but when done right it works very well. There are lots of pitfalls, not least the USB receiver, cabling, the computer. The problem is expecting USB to magically fix everything and make the source, implementation and cabling irrelevant. If any one of these is a bottleneck gg.

 

[Torq]

USB gets a bad rep but when done right it works very well. There are lots of pitfalls, not least the USB receiver, cabling, the computer. The problem is expecting USB to magically fix everything and make the source, implementation and cabling irrelevant. If any one of these is a bottleneck gg.

I don't expect it to magically fix anything.
 
And what seems to be lacking is much in the way of "USB done right" in any product I've seen or heard (which isn't everything, obviously).
 
It always seem to entail a bunch of extra cables and boxes to fix issues that are easily avoided using other interfaces ... which, invariably, all the fiddly and expensive USB "fixes" wind up converting to anyway.  Now, for sure, other interfaces have issues too ... but not nearly so many as USB and they're much easier to deal with from an engineering perspective (and moot when the USB interface is being converted to one of those anyway).
 
I've yet to hear a USB connection sound better than, well, ANY other option on the DAC at hand.

 

[TokenGesture]

Agree. I've moved off USB on my humble set up and do not miss it one bit

 

[drez]

I don't expect it to magically fix anything.

And what seems to be lacking is much in the way of "USB done right" in any product I've seen or heard (which isn't everything, obviously).

It always seem to entail a bunch of extra cables and boxes to fix issues that are easily avoided using other interfaces ... which, invariably, all the fiddly and expensive USB "fixes" wind up converting to anyway.  Now, for sure, other interfaces have issues too ... but not nearly so many as USB and they're much easier to deal with from an engineering perspective (and moot when the USB interface is being converted to one of those anyway).

I've yet to hear a USB connection sound better than, well, ANY other option on the DAC at hand.

Yes if the USB input is limiting factor on a DAC (and not the computer or cable) then trying to "fix" it won't help. I have found though that there are many ways in which a computer or cabling can be holding things back. I know many who have given up and gone to CD transport. For me I am stuck with either a computer or an SD card transport.

 

[rgs9200m]

  isnt that caused by the sacd cd transport vs how you play the hd tracks?

I don't know the cause, but nothing sounds as great as my EMM cdp with SACD discs. I had hoped the HD tracks with a good DAC would sound as good, but it is not so. 
Redbook is another story, and is very good with either method. I can't really hear a consistent superiority of HD tracks to regular redbook computer files I have ripped.
 
SACD classical, classic rock like Carole King, Carly Simon (just released! Awesome!), the Doors, the Stones, Dylan, CCR, Chicago, Petula Clark, Buddy Holly, Bread, the Guess Who,
the Doobies, the Who (Tommy, the Singles collection), the Carpenters. It's all great on SACD.
 
With SACD, that digital chill is gone in vocals and such when the music soars, but not at the expense of cloaking or transparency or soft bass.
SACD is really nice with Stax phones, which can accentuate digital chill when it's there. Revealing phones can be a plus with SACD, revealing all natural reality of things.
 
I feel the hype of 15 years ago when SACD was introduced has proven true. It's too bad it never became universal and widespread. It's like we dropped HDTV and kept SD.
 
I say all this because the OP seems to be searching for the absolute best sound, and in my mind SACD is often at the pinnacle. If you like the music that available on SACD, 
you are in luck. And you don't need to spend megabucks for this level of quality.
 
A used SACD player from places like EMM or Playback Designs or Esoteric would be fine. 

 

[deuter]

Even the Oppo plays the SACD, no need to spend mega dollars on a DAC.

 

[kazsud]

Has anyone tried tried using the "F1" spdif converter on the yggy?

I have found it to be superior in Soundstage over the yggy USB input.
Giving a more effortless presentation with more space between instruments and more overall realism.
Stock USB was more aggressive and a bit less resolving.

It was hard to imagine more sonic gains were possible, but there was.
Yet is is system dependant whether your coming from a computer or a streamer which is much cleaner USB.

Who makes it?

 

[Torq]

  Interesting issue this week ...
 
In preparation for auditioning a rash of DSD-capable DACs, I figured I'd get my system setup ahead of time so I could evaluate them both for PCM replay and for native DSD playback.  This has involved buying DSD copies of a number of albums that I also have in PCM format as well as getting my only, current, DSD-capable DAC working in DSD mode.
 
So far it all seems like a lot more trouble than it's worth.
 
With very high-end computing hardware (think 12 cores, 64 to 128 GB of RAM, SSD etc.) such that there is no way the computer is a bottleneck), playing native DSD via DoP I get frequent, random, dropouts in replay.  Switch playback to 32/384 KHz PCM and everything is entirely fine.  Anything involving DoP ... I get dropouts.  Happens regardless of the player (Audirvana, JRiver, Roon), no matter which cable or port I use, and it's consistent across three different machines (one of which has only the raw OS and the music player on it)
 
Not sure if this is an issue specific to the DAC I am using to get setup with (my Chord Mojo), or if this is a broader issue with DoP and some other configuration issue.
 
I'm going to grab another Mojo, as well as another DSD-capable DAC, to trouble shoot with, as the DAC is the only thing left that can be an issue (and other people are reporting they have no issues with the same configuration and a lot less powerful computing hardware).
 
Three takeaways so far though: 1. USB for audio is still more trouble than its worth.  2. When DSD is playing without dropouts, it doesn't sound any different in native DSD vs. converted to PCM format, on the very same DAC, to me.  3. Some of the native DSD masters are really very good ... even when converted/played as PCM.

 
Quoting for reference.
 
After several days experimentation I have yet to be able to get the Chord Mojo to play DSD files above single-rate from any OS X source, or from streaming bridges like the Auralic Aries or SonicOrbiterSE.  Single-rate works fine, double or quad (DSD128 or DSD256 respectively) experience dropouts on playback.
 
This occurs with every Mac I've tried it with, now ranging from the latest top-of-the-line new Mac Pro, a brand new, fully loaded, Mac Book Pro with nothing installed or running except the player, an iMac, a Mac Mini, an old 12-core Mac Pro, a Retina MacBook and so on.  All exhibit the exact same dropout issue with the Mojo.
 
Similar issues have been reported in the Chord "DAVE" thread.
 
Some other DACs work fine in this configuration (e.g. I had no problems at DSD128 to an Auralic Vega from any of the test machines), other's have drop-outs.
 
I've escalated the issue to Chord, but until there's a resolution (that doesn't invovle running a Windows machine) the Chord DACs are off my audition list.

 

[sheldaze]

   
Quoting for reference.
 
After several days experimentation I have yet to be able to get the Chord Mojo to play DSD files above single-rate from any OS X source, or from streaming bridges like the Auralic Aries or SonicOrbiterSE.  Single-rate works fine, double or quad (DSD128 or DSD256 respectively) experience dropouts on playback.
 
This occurs with every Mac I've tried it with, now ranging from the latest top-of-the-line new Mac Pro, a brand new, fully loaded, Mac Book Pro with nothing installed or running except the player, an iMac, a Mac Mini, an old 12-core Mac Pro, a Retina MacBook and so on.  All exhibit the exact same dropout issue with the Mojo.
 
Similar issues have been reported in the Chord "DAVE" thread.
 
Some other DACs work fine in this configuration (e.g. I had no problems at DSD128 to an Auralic Vega from any of the test machines), other's have drop-outs.
 
I've escalated the issue to Chord, but until there's a resolution (that doesn't invovle running a Windows machine) the Chord DACs are off my audition list.

I'm not big on DSD, but would love to help if possible. I'm a Mac user, who owns a Mojo and recently acquired a Hugo. I also love my Yggdrasil, and am curious what you find through your endeavors.
 
I was able to play a sample track of DSD 2X only by quitting every single application except Audirvana+. I also changed the Native DSD Capability pull-down menu from Automatic Detection to DSD over PCM standard 1.1. Only then was I able to play beyond DSD 1X without drop-outs. I assumed this was because my Mac is several years old. However one or more of these steps may help?

 

[Torq]

  I'm not big on DSD, but would love to help if possible. I'm a Mac user, who owns a Mojo and recently acquired a Hugo. I also love my Yggdrasil, and am curious what you find through your endeavors.
 
I was able to play a sample track of DSD 2X only by quitting every single application except Audirvana+. I also changed the Native DSD Capability pull-down menu from Automatic Detection to DSD over PCM standard 1.1. Only then was I able to play beyond DSD 1X without drop-outs. I assumed this was because my Mac is several years old. However one or more of these steps may help?

 
I certainly appreciate the input!
 
On the very latest, absolutely maxed-put Mac Pro, even with nothing else running and an array of other system services shutdown (including things like disabling WiFi, Bluetooth and so on ... that are not viable to turn off in general usage), and removing every other USB device from the system, even in explicit DoP 1.1. mode, I still get dropouts for 2x DSD ... less frequently than for 4x, but still its not usable.
 
I'm 100% sure the issue isn't down to processing power (you can't buy faster OS X hardware than that I'm testing with).  But, to verify that, I created a file that has already been converted from DSD to a DoP file.  In otherwords, its PCM frames actually contain the already-converted DoP format sample data.  This eliminates any play-time processing overheard.  The file is simply streamed directly just as it if was a PCM file - at much lower bit-rates than I can otherwise send data to the Mojo.
 
Incidentally, the processing required to create that file was something that an average SmartPhone could do at several dozen times the speed necessary for real-time playback.
 
I couldn't get the thing to dropout at all playing to an Auralic Vega using DoP 1.1 and there were no audible artifacts or other indications that it wasn't working perfectly.  I even fired up multiple video rendering paths and ran a heavy VM-dependent, code build while the Vega was playing, and that was 100% solid with DSD128 (i.e. 2x).
 
I've tried multiple machines, all more than powerful enough to do this work in real-time, with multiple USB cables (all of which test to, or above, spec), DSD files from multiple sources and so on.
 
I truly do appreciate the suggestions though!
 
...
 
I'm not particularly a DSD fan myself.  I've yet to hear it beat PCM in any demo I've sat in.  It's telling that my first experiences attempting to play with it properly at home have met with issues.  And it's not like I'm a dummy when it comes to hardware or software (I do pretty serious engineering in both spaces).  But I did want to see if DSD could, on appropriately equipped DACs, offer something that isn't available with PCM.
 
So far, it seems like the answer is "no" ... but it's too early to realistically tell ... just the hassle in finding out is rapidly turning me off the whole notion.l
 
Certainly none of the single-rate DSD files I've purchased sound any different to me, through the same DAC, when played either natively or after conversion to PCM.  And where I already had PCM versions of albums for which I've since bought DSD versions (again, to test with) the DSD versions haven't yielded any benefit over even their simple Redbook versions.  Maybe that changes at DSD128 or DSD256, but I can't get the music to play without dropouts for long enough to make a useful determination.
 
I had high hopes that the Chord DACs were going to give Yggdrasil a run for the money.  The Mojo certainly punches well above it's price range.  But I'm highly disinclined to buy any product that I cannot utilize to it's full extent and even less so if I don't understand why there are issues when things work fine elsewhere.  Maybe Chord will come up with either a solution or a suitably coherent explanation ... if so I will gladly keep the Hugo TT and the DAVE on my audition list.  If not, I've no reason to bother.
 
I've had a PM or two suggesting I just run Windows instead ... but that's not going to happen - much easier for me to just choose a DAC that works completely with OS X and doesn't have unreasaonble configuration requirements beyond that (not that I've found a configuration that works yet).

 

[sheldaze]

My old Macbook from 2008 seems to be able to play DSD at 1x, 2x, and 4x - once apps are closed. My modern Mac Mini running the latest version of OS X, with more memory, faster CPU, etc. pauses at 2x. I'll post back when I know more rather than clutter this thread. But this seems to me a dark art.

 

[artur9]

   
I'm not particularly a DSD fan myself.  I've yet to hear it beat PCM in any demo I've sat in.  

I bought 1 DSD file because it seemed the best version of a work I love the sound of (Concierto de Aranjuez).  Main thing I noticed is that the volume is really really low.  To play on my non-DSD DAC I converted to PCM and I had to increase the volume like 8x but then it clipped...

 

[Torq]

My old Macbook from 2008 seems to be able to play DSD at 1x, 2x, and 4x - once apps are closed. My modern Mac Mini running the latest version of OS X, with more memory, faster CPU, etc. pauses at 2x. I'll post back when I know more rather than clutter this thread. But this seems to me a dark art.

Would love to know what version of OS X your older MacBook is running.

My machines are all on 10.11.5.

 

[sheldaze]

Would love to know what version of OS X your older MacBook is running.

My machines are all on 10.11.5.

MacBook hardware is too old to keep up - 10.7.5. And the same with Audirvana+ - they stopped supporting my system after 2.2.5. I'll definitely plug away again with my new Mac Mini desktop, running the latest OS and player software. That machine starts to drop out after just a few minutes, so it is easy to spot the issue.

 

[drez]

It sounds like an USB firmware issue. Computer hardware alone, though, doesnt necessarily guarantee dropout free performance. I get more dropouts on my 6 core Intel workstation for example than on my purpose built music server running a 4 core 3770k. Dropouts seem more affected by thing like the operating system, software, IRQs, power saving features and USB firmware.