Life after Yggdrasil?
Jul 15, 2016 at 1:54 PM Post #481 of 1,366
So, before I do my last four write-ups for this first half of this cycle, I wanted to make a couple of observations and share some other thoughts.  This is not because they’re particularly insightful, or even necessarily new – it’s mostly because I’m procrastinating on having to write any more impressions! :wink:
 
One of the takeaways I have from this process is not, so much, that Yggdrasil is a “giant killer” (although, at least for my purposes, it’s certainly doing that) and more that the market, as a whole, has lost the plot.
 
For a start, any DAC, or other component I guess, that’s sold through the traditional distributor/retailer begins life with a huge handicap.  And that’s that, compared to a directly-sold product like Yggdrasil, all other things being equal, it’s going to cost about twice as much.
 
That’s a big differential for most people, especially when it puts you in the $5,000 ballpark.
 
Some products are going to be expensive simply because they’re very low volume, have special facets to their construction (e.g. TotalDAC), and dealers or not, they’d still be expensive.  They may, or may not, justify their price with their performance … but even if they didn’t they’re not something that there’s necessarily an easy way to reduce the cost on.
 
Products like that are interesting … as they at least try new things … typically in areas that more staid and traditional vendors won’t tread.
 
And, in touching, and listing to, many of these components, I get a definite sense of “me too”, particularly when it comes to pricing.  I get the notion of “charge what the market will bear”.  That’s fine.  But when the designs are uninspired, and that’s reflected in the sonic impressions, it makes a mockery of the entire process.
 
Compare something like the Bryston BDA-3, which is about as basic and traditional an “audiophile” approach as you’re going to findin this line up, to the PS Audio DirectStream Junior which is following a newer, more interesting path … and for a price that’s right in the same ballpark.  It’s hard to look at those two and not think that Bryston just “phoned it in”.  For me, not only is the PS Audio unit much more functional, much more creative and interesting and, as it happens, something I find much more engaging to listen to, it’s also USER upgradeable AND includes a very nice network interface.
 
And Yggdrasil, at over $1,000 less than the Bryston (or Gungnir multi-bit at essentially a third the price), also treads ground that is so far off the path that the BDA-3 walks, that it’s really hard to see what was going through the heads of those that set its price point.  Yggdrasil gives you input, DAC and output upgradability, a unique filtering scheme and successfully employs novel converter chips in a way they were not designed to be used.
 
You might compare the BDA-3 to the exaSound e22 Mk2 … in terms of price they’re right at the same level.  Both follow a basic “use good components, engineer a good PSU, keep the chassis functional” approach.  But the exaSound is a much nice listen than the Bryston.  Whether that’s down to the choice of DAC chip is hard to say (I am inclined to think not, as I have tended to prefer AKM over ESS).  And at least exaSound tried to improve all aspects of the design ... up to and including creating a proper driver to make the thing work as well as possible on the platforms they claim to support.
 
My personal and engineering biases are definitely showing here ...
 
I like high-end performance, but I do appreciate novel engineering (as long as it gets results).  I am not very price conscious, but I certainly prefer higher value products.  I care about moving things forward and trying new things.  And then all other things being equal, aesthetics matter to me as well.
 
I don’t have a lot of brand-loyalty.  That tends to do favors only for the manufacturer, and more than once has gone to pot by relying too heavily on their fans and their name and not enough on actually turning out superior and/or interesting products.
 
There’s nothing especially wrong with those products that simply tread the classic audiophile path of “good PSU, quality manufacture, good components”.  But at the price levels they’re starting to show up at, they’re going to have their lunch eaten for them by more disruptive companies that are less-risk averse and/or more creative.
 
Going forward, I’ll be biasing my audio-related spending heavily towards companies that are not just rehashing the same kind of tired design philosophy that’s been the mainstay of the audiophile world since I first got into it 30 years or more ago.
 
Do something new.
 
Be aggressive with how you position it.
 
Take a risk.
 
And let’s see if we can’t move the whole industry forward instead of just trading on a long established name and hoping a high-price tag will drive enough expectation bias that you come out ahead.
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 1:57 PM Post #482 of 1,366
The best part of that Dac and their real differentiator is the software .. and their custom Fpga chips that run it. You wont see much of that in the case or on the BOM .. producing the Fpga-s costs peanuts once you have a final design and installing the software is quite easy too. But developing all that stuff costs serious amounts of money and they gotta recuperate that huge initial investment.
All good in that respect and I think the initial prices are ok if you put it that way. But that also means that the slightly improved v2 should cost half or less and I kinda doubt that. And I also ave a feeling that a large part of Dave's $15k price is also based on the good old pricing-by-sound: my Dac sounds better than the $10k Dac of yesteryear, so it should cost at least 11k. Many hifi designers will serve you such lines and wont care or ever mention that the components are cheaper nowadays, fabrication and distribution are cheaper, etc. And that's an easy, no-limits argument: for almost any new & solid Dac you can easily find an older $10k device that sounds worse and base your price on it.
I find that very customer-unfriendly .. and quite obnoxious too. The digital/tech world doesnt work like that. If Intel used such price 'tactics', the latest Core chips would cost billions each. And your new tablet will be 10x more expensive than your current 2 years old one.
Noone would take that kind of bullsh*t from e.g. Samsung .. but somehow many people are ready to take it from the hifi companies.

/rant

I hope my hifi-prices-venting does not derail the thread .. Torq is doing an excellent job here and fully deserves all the praise he got & more.

 
No worries!  I pretty much was going there myself ... as you'll see from my last post!
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 1:58 PM Post #483 of 1,366
It's all marketing. In my opinion the Dave is unimaginably overpriced but it still looks cool and has some neat proprietary chips and software. If you price something a lot more than the average then people will assume (and their bias brains will even imagine) that it's that much better.

For sure it is all about marketing. That's what drives the world economy. 
 
And I suspect none of us have a bias-free brain. If someone wants to pay $15,000 for a DAC because they assume it is better because of the price, then more power to them. Just hope for them it is pocket change they are spending. 
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:09 PM Post #484 of 1,366
  It's not surprising that the company that made the legendary CD12 is still breaking new ground and up there with the best. I still vividly remember the NY Stereophile show about 15 years ago with the CD12 and Von Schweikert VR9SE speakers and Dartzeel amps in the demo system.
I always loved the CD12 sound whenever I heard it.

 
The CD12 was certainly an interesting product and quite an arresting listen.
 
That said, when that came out I was still very much in the "vinyl is best" camp, and ran a fully-loaded LP12 as my primary source.  My ears be damned ... vinyl was better even when it wasn't!
 
Lots has changed since then.  Linn has been very disruptive, at a technology level, and it's a bit of a shame that they're not better known.  Of course, some of that has to do with their pricing which, while I understand from a small company that does as much as possible in-house, is still very steep in the grand scheme of things. And you really have to go all-in to get the most from their stuff.
 
Their Exakt system is extremely impressive - but it's largely an all-Linn solution and comes at very high price, unless you want to follow the "ease into it" path, which results not in just a source and two Exakt speakers, with just a run of ethernet cable to each speaker but, instead, needs multiple amplifiers, a dedicated Exactbox, and an absolute mess of cabling!
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:10 PM Post #485 of 1,366
This has been a very enjoyable thread to read. I've owned a Yggdrasil for less than a month and love it. It was a stretch for me and pretty much took me about a year to save for it. It's nice to read that it performs at or above products that I would never have been able to afford anyway.
 
All Hail Torq!
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:16 PM Post #486 of 1,366
  Going forward, I’ll be biasing my audio-related spending heavily towards companies that are not just rehashing the same kind of tired design philosophy that’s been the mainstay of the audiophile world since I first got into it 30 years or more ago.
 
Do something new.
 
Be aggressive with how you position it.
 
Take a risk.
 
And let’s see if we can’t move the whole industry forward instead of just trading on a long established name and hoping a high-price tag will drive enough expectation bias that you come out ahead.

How many thumbs up can I give for this?
 
I mean, seriously, charging 10x for a box with the same components and the same design as 80% of the other boxes performing the same function for a lot less?  I don't get it.
 
I can understand the bling factor, sure.  But I am not going to pay for someone's wild excursion into CNC-land.  I even understand where consummate execution can/should cost a bit more.  But 10x seems too far.
 
I want innovators like Janszen/Linn/Meridian/Schiit/Trinnov/ to dominate the market, not the me-too companies.
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:31 PM Post #487 of 1,366
   
The CD12 was certainly an interesting product and quite an arresting listen.
 
That said, when that came out I was still very much in the "vinyl is best" camp, and ran a fully-loaded LP12 as my primary source.  My ears be damned ... vinyl was better even when it wasn't!
 
Lots has changed since then.  Linn has been very disruptive, at a technology level, and it's a bit of a shame that they're not better known.  Of course, some of that has to do with their pricing which, while I understand from a small company that does as much as possible in-house, is still very steep in the grand scheme of things. And you really have to go all-in to get the most from their stuff.
 
Their Exakt system is extremely impressive - but it's largely an all-Linn solution and comes at very high price, unless you want to follow the "ease into it" path, which results not in just a source and two Exakt speakers, with just a run of ethernet cable to each speaker but, instead, needs multiple amplifiers, a dedicated Exactbox, and an absolute mess of cabling!

I remember that before the CD12 came out, Linn was adamantly opposed to digital. They employed the "toe-tapping" test claiming that one listening to a CD would never find themselves involuntarily tapping their toes as they would with the LP12 )))
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:33 PM Post #488 of 1,366
No worries!  I pretty much was going there myself ... as you'll see from my last post!


All good then.
And 100% agreed about the inovative products. If I was to pay $10+k for a Dac, it'll surely be something like Dave. They took a big leap in tech terms and sounds like they got it right too (wont comment about the same as big leap in funky design).
OTOH, the gold feet and the priced-by-sound kind of stuff is seriously offputting. Makes me think about givin up on the whole audio/hifi thing .. in spite of the already large money & time investment .. and in spite of the very rewarding listening pleasure.


Wanted to ask you somethin else, though. After reading about your impressive Linn setup, it's kinda hard to figure out why do you need a new/another Dac .. is it mostly a personal quest-for-the-best or do you have a clear usecase or ... ?
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:50 PM Post #489 of 1,366
Been a while since I found a thread I enjoy as much as the Schiit one by Jason. Keep up the good work, Torq 
beerchug.gif
  
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 2:58 PM Post #490 of 1,366
Where are you at with obtaining MSB products for review? Are you having a difficult time getting them? Having spoken with Larry and Vince directly many times, I think you'll find that MSB carries your same philosophy when it comes to engineering. If you're having a difficult time getting an audition setup, contact MSB directly. http://www.msbtech.com/dealers/northAmerica.php
 
I know that comes off as salesy, but I don't work for MSB nor am I affiliated with them. There has never been any Hi-Fi equipment that has blown me away as much as an MSB DAC, though so I am a big fan. 
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 3:03 PM Post #491 of 1,366

Hegel

[size=17.03px]HD 30 [/size][size=17.03px](-)[/size]

This isn’t a “pure” DAC.  It’s also an Ethernet streamer, supporting DLNA/UPnP, and a digital pre-amp.

 
The design approach is pretty typical in the audiophile world.  Good PSU design, with separate supplies where they make sense, tweaked clock design, and thoughtful layout.  Nothing earth shattering there, but at least most of the fundamentals were hit.  Build is nice – nothing spectacular, and the aesthetics are simple but agreeable.
 
This is another dual-mono AKM 4490 based unit and that largely comes across in the way it renders music.  The sound is clean, fast, detailed, and dynamic, perhaps a tiny bit warm down low, and has a very slight softening at the frequency extremes – but also some nice shimmer (with no fatigue) in the treble (an odd combination, but it is what it is).
 
Instrumental timbre and tone was realistic and believable.  Perhaps not on the same level, again, as I found with the ESS units, but not much in it.  Yggdrasil was more convincing with piano, brass and plucked strings however, and also exhibited better separation and layering, as well as a better sense of micro details.
 
Cymbals lost something for me here … at least compared to the Schiit DAC.  While the shimmer was present, it didn’t do as convincing a job with brush-work, for me.
 
Imaging was … not bad … but nothing special – beaten, for me, by, say, the Chord Mojo or any of the ESS based units, never mind Yggdrasil.
 
Presentation was nicely musical and quite engaging.  None of the, for want of a better word, “sterility” that I got from the Bryston BDA-3.  Music bopped along at a nice pace, with good rhythm and a solid, tuneful foundation.   It wasn’t hard to get lost in the music, though it was never as fully emotive as Yggdrasil or, say, the Hugo TT (which is a similar price).
 
Using the Ethernet interface did not result in any noticeable shift in sound, for better or worse, than simply feeding it via its AES/EBU input.  I think that’s a first … which either says good things about their AES/EBU implementation or just means they couldn’t improve it via the Ethernet feed (which isn’t a negative … it’s just what it is).
 
The HD30 is more along the lines of what I imagined the Bryston BDA-3 would sound like.  Only it didn’t.  For me the HD30 was a quite enjoyable and involving listen, where as the BDA-3 just … well … wasn’t.  Now, the Hegel is about $1300 more expensive than the Bryston, or the comparable ESS DACs in this line-up.  Given that the unit is also a streamer and a pre-amp I can see some justification for that – in fundamental terms at least.
 
However, sonically, this doesn’t better Yggdrasil in any facet of it’s output for me.  And you can turn Yggdrasil into a streamer with any number of products (SonicOrbiterSE, microRendu, Auralic Aries and so on), and do so for barely over half the price of the Hegel unit.
 
And then, for what they’re asking, if I really wanted this functionality, I’d buy a Linn Majik DSM over this without hesitation.  The Linn sounds better, is a lot more flexible, and gives you access to “Space Optimization” (room and speaker placement correction), “Exakt” compatibility, a proper phono stage, headphone output AND a built in 90 WPC power-amp for about $300 LESS than the Hegel. 
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 3:07 PM Post #492 of 1,366
Wanted to ask you somethin else, though. After reading about your impressive Linn setup, it's kinda hard to figure out why do you need a new/another Dac .. is it mostly a personal quest-for-the-best or do you have a clear usecase or ... ?

 
Simple ... I built a second* "high-end" headphone rig and need a DAC for that.
 
Initially I was just going to buy another Yggdrasil - but I figured before I did that I should at least look around and see if there was anything else either better, or at least similarly capable but different.
 
(*I have more than one home, and even in my main home I have a rig in my office and one in my dedicated listening room - which is what this will ultimately drive).
 
Jul 15, 2016 at 3:12 PM Post #493 of 1,366
  Where are you at with obtaining MSB products for review? Are you having a difficult time getting them? Having spoken with Larry and Vince directly many times, I think you'll find that MSB carries your same philosophy when it comes to engineering. If you're having a difficult time getting an audition setup, contact MSB directly. http://www.msbtech.com/dealers/northAmerica.php
 
I know that comes off as salesy, but I don't work for MSB nor am I affiliated with them. There has never been any Hi-Fi equipment that has blown me away as much as an MSB DAC, though so I am a big fan. 

 
Nope, not having any difficulty arranging auditions of the MSB products.  It's really just a function of my time, availability and stamina.  Given how my schedule is laying out, and how much I want to take a break from listening to new stuff/writing it up, it'll likely be several weeks before I'm in a position to even contemplate further auditions.  But, based on the discussions I've had so far, once I'm ready to go for it, it won't be a problem to get the gear to listen to.
 

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