New Schiit! Ragnarok and Yggdrasil

[valiant66]

 

Here locally (Seattle) BigPoppa uses the free 'conference' rooms at the public librarys.

It is a simple solution and works rather well.  :thumb

JJ

+1 I shall check out the local libraries for conference rooms.

 
Locally they hold the meets at the University. What good's having an A/V department if you don't give it some exercise?...

 

[Synergist969]

  Dear Reddog:
 
    Please let me know the name of your headphone meet/sign-up(?) thread...oh, and I would be very interested in attending...the variety of equipment I own is limited, but I would be willing to bring along that which I have, (and can reasonably transport...lol...).  Going to the B.A.R.F. this Saturday...(Bay Area Renaissance Festival), so, I will jog my memory regarding the best route/travel time from Orlando...
 
Peace/Namaste,
T.A.Kogstrom

 

[reddog]

  Dear Reddog:

    Please let me know the name of your headphone meet/sign-up(?) thread...oh, and I would be very interested in attending...the variety of equipment I own is limited, but I would be willing to bring along that which I have, (and can reasonably transport...lol...).  Going to the B.A.R.F. this Saturday...(Bay Area Renaissance Festival), so, I will jog my memory regarding the best route/travel time from Orlando...

Peace/Namaste,
T.A.Kogstrom

Hi, hope you have a fun time at the festival. The name of my thread is" organizing a mini meet for the Bradenton/ Sarasota area".
Glad to have you. I plan on going to the library next week and hammer out the details.

 

[reddog]

Locally they hold the meets at the University. What good's having an A/V department if you don't give it some exercise?...

I would love to use the local college, but I need a facility sponsor and trying to find one. I will keep my fingers crossed.

 

[reddog]

I have been busy and I have not used to Ragnarok, till tonight, and in balanced mode it's just never fails to bring out the best ( or worst) of the recording. And tonight I listened to Zappa's " Broken Hearts Are For ********" and the control of the bass and the rapid pace of the smooth mids, had me in awe. I can not wait to pair the mighty Ragnarok to the the so called dac of the gods( thanks purin), the mythical Yggdrasil. Oh well hope everyone has a good one jamming out.
Reddog.

 

[Baldr]

The update on Yggy status as of Friday, Mar 6. The Yggy is in production – here is a brief description of Yggy production:
 
1. Kits consisting of a circuitboard and all parts are dispatched to our PCB assembly house. For an Yggy, that means 5 different kits, with one of the kits being double sized, with two boards per Yggy.  Since there are nearly 1000 parts per Yggy, this is a big job.
 
2. The assy house inventories the kits, and when complete, sends them off to be built.
 
3. The assembly house builds first articles of all new boards for us to approve. Since the Yggy boards are new, all will have this first article step.
 
4. I approve the first articles, thus setting in motion the production build.
 
5. The production build boards are delivered to Schiit, kit by kit.
 
6. Schiit tests the arriving boards.
 
7. When all board kits have returned from the assy house, Schiit assembles them into finished Yggys.
 
8. We burn the Yggys in for a couple of days.
 
9. We final test, box, and ship them.
 
We are now on step 2 of production.
 
In another column I revealed formally the DAC chip used in the Yggy:
 
Analog Devices AD5791BRUZ - Headline specs are: 1 ppm 20-Bit, ±1 LSB INL. I use 2 per channel (1 per phase) to get an honest 20 bit level of performance. That is four per Yggy. The BRUZ version is the higher specced model. Those four DAC chips sell for just under A hun apiece – that's $400 bucks per Yggy. No Schiit – Check it out – go to Mouser or Digi-Key and price it out. The Field Application Engineer at Analog Devices mentioned these were too precise for just an audio application before he told me I shouldn't use them for a non-industrial or medical application. Forty years of designing stuff - I still don't listen.
Virtually all of our competition use delta sigma audio parts. One of the highest-regarded of these is the Burr-Brown PCM1794A is sold as a 24 bit audio part and costs 10ish bucks. Spend 5 more bucks and you get the DSD1794A which adds -you guessed it- DSD. The parts come with data sheets and reference cookbook designs which make it possible for almost anyone to design a D/A converter using them. I have seen these used in at least two very highly regarded D/A converters over $5000.00.
I have detailed in other areas the mathematical problems with any delta sigma chip. Their only advantage is their low cost.
 
But I digress. I will keep you all posted on Yggy production!
 

 

[MoatsArt]

Prediction:  I see one of these in my future

 

[lukeap69]

Saving all my pennies now...

 

[daerron]

Mighty impressive looking! I am looking so forward to this DAC. Happy to see some innovative solutions out of the myriad of same same offerings the past couple of years. This one spends the money where it counts!

 

[estreeter]

  ..
 
Virtually all of our competition use delta sigma audio parts. One of the highest-regarded of these is the Burr-Brown PCM1794A is sold as a 24 bit audio part and costs 10ish bucks. Spend 5 more bucks and you get the DSD1794A which adds -you guessed it- DSD. The parts come with data sheets and reference cookbook designs which make it possible for almost anyone to design a D/A converter using them. I have seen these used in at least two very highly regarded D/A converters over $5000.00.
I have detailed in other areas the mathematical problems with any delta sigma chip. Their only advantage is their low cost.
 
..
 

 
Damn - my SACD player uses the DSD1792A - here I was thinking I had a $2500 product based on a $15 chip when its probably no more than $12. Of course, if they were produced in small quantities to exacting tolerances, it might be a $50 chip - I guess there is a silver lining on my cloud after all. 
 
Thanks for the update Mike - glad to hear things are coming along with Yggy. 

 

[sagittarius1273]

:
 
Analog Devices AD5791BRUZ - Headline specs ....."
 

 
I appreciate  openness.. Others would remove all the marking on the chip before soldering it to the board. Probably even avoid using it altogether or keeping its specs a mystery to avoid saying it is not 24 or 32 bits. And that thing seems to have such high level output (as you hinted before) it looks like it only needs a buffer to drive a moderate sensitivity speaker decently.
 
I have a side question. For a DAC with a sophisticated upsampling filter like the Yiggy, would it be a proper arrangement to put such a filter downstream of a digital crossover ( I am thinking Yiggy feeding a a 150hz-20khz wide-band electrostat and a cheaper Schiit DAC feeding a  magnetic-driver woofer)? Intuitively, it seems to me it is better to have such a sophisticated filter before the signal is manipulated by the crossover but I do not fully understand how DSP works. 

 

[atomicbob]

  The Field Application Engineer at Analog Devices mentioned these were too precise for just an audio application.
 

May I point out that FAEs and plenty of other EEs don't fully appreciate what they don't know, especially about audio. I spend a lot of my professional life explaining even basics such as signal crest factor effect on power vs. voltage rails and power supply sag. I can't tell you the number of times I have heard "it's only audio" as careless PCB layouts are auto-routed. Grrrrrr.

 

[Khragon]

Exciting news...would you share some tech with us regarding the USB side, the clock and the power supply?
 
Thanks.

 

[jcx]

some have probably been scared off by the dynamic spec included in the AD5791 datasheet:
 

Spurious Free Dynamic Range	100	dB	1 kHz tone, 10 kHz sample rate
Total Harmonic Distortion	97	dB	1 kHz tone, 10 kHz sample rate

 
which anit too good for audio
 
its possible ADI's engineers were doing something wrong in the test circuit or measurement but  it would be good to have the evidence before touting this part as a "true 20 bit" Audio DAC
 
the "10 kHz sample rate" may be the problem - certainly not how most would test a 1 us settling DAC's dynamic performance

 

[Ableza]

Specs are just the starting point.  Then there's how you implement them...  And "cookbook designs" are for people who need cook books.  Real chefs know...