[US Blues]

Running Yggy with monitors + subs. My gf came over the other day after Yggy had been powered up for 6 days (144 hours), she had not heard my system since I swapped out the Gungnir. She immediately heard significant differences, but summed it up by saying "Jewel is in the room." The bottom line beyond the fancy words is the sense of reality, each recording I listen to is being presented as itself, the grandeur and the limits being audible without bias. The best analogy I can offer is that I am sitting in the control room listening to the final mix, to the extent the rest of my system can resolve what Yggy is presenting.
 
I believe there is a Ragnarok in my not-too-distant future...

 

[olor1n]

 

  Two things to address: 1) Polarity and its Inversions  2) Warm-Up vs. Burn-In and the Yggy  (a question addressed to @baldr himself)
 
1) Polarity
 
... The number of rebook recordings which benefit from this astound. ...The difference can be subtle, but with certain recordings boy can it make a difference. ... But even with headphones the change to the sounds – specifically certain attacks – is sometimes shocking on some recordings. By inverting polarity a hi-hat can sound like a completely different instrument!
 
D

 
^This. For some tracks, I am pretty certain it's my imagination and am actually tempted to log a record of the results and see if I really am consistent across multiple listens.
 
However, for some recordings / some tracks, it's exactly as you said: hi-hat sounds more like the real thing (inverse polarity sounds diffuse comparatively) and all percussion instruments in general for me.
 
I leave it aside when doing "casual" / background listening (what of waste of fine gear for this you might say ) but actually have been checking this out most times when doing "critical" / focused listening.
 
Last: about the DAC no longer sounding like anything when the warm up journey is achieved, I can relate to that with the Total Dac, except I felt there after 4 hours, not 160. There must be some pretty tough cookies in the Iggy that resist heat .
 
arnaud

 
 

  I too have played with absolute polarity in my system. The PWD has a s/w switch on the front panel and when my system is operating at full potential it is VERY easy to determine which polarity is 'correct'.
 
And the easiest, most pronounced change is in the extreme low end, near the subsonic range of frequencies.
 
This asumes that the entire system is capable of delivering this range of responses in the first place, which may or may not be realistic in some systems.
 
What I notice is the leading edge, especially of percussive instruments, deliver a smack or plosive impact, or not.
And once you train yourself to listen for this 'effect' you can hear it in non-percussive instruments as well.
It sounds like the leading edge of any quick responsive sound source takes on an additional degree of immediacy and 'presence'.
 
Once you are familiar with this aspect of the acoustic presentation it becomes much easier to notice when it's missing.
And when it is present, the net effect is enticing, to say the least.
 
JJ

 
 

 

  And the easiest, most pronounced change is in the extreme low end, near the subsonic range of frequencies.
 
What I notice is the leading edge, especially of percussive instruments, deliver a smack or plosive impact, or not.
And once you train yourself to listen for this 'effect' you can hear it in non-percussive instruments as well.
It sounds like the leading edge of any quick responsive sound source takes on an additional degree of immediacy and 'presence'.
 
JJ

 
I am not able to describe how I feel about the change in bass if not just "tighter" but the leading edge explanation is spot on. That's what I mean by "more lively".
 
Also, bad news but polarity does not appear consistent across 1 record and I find myself more often selecting the reverse polarity than not...
 
I agree that it probably takes some resolving chain and some "ears training" to perceive those subtleties easily, which is probably why most would laugh if off it was in another than Schist's product...
 
arnaud.

This prompted me to toy with the NAD M51's polarity selector. You guys are spot on. Certain recordings really benefit from reversing the polarity. Some can sound worse. It's rather convenient to be able to use the M51's remote to change the polarity on the fly though.

 

[wahsmoh]

I have a phase inversion button on my Progeny. I tried it with a few songs and I don't know if I could tell the difference. Some songs I thought I may have heard something but going back and forth didn't give me any impressions that it sounded any different.

 

[7ryder]

  @prot: Radiohead's Hail to the Thief benefits well from inversion; very apparent in the grinding guitar that opens Myxomatosis, for example.
 
@arnaud: thanks for your thoughts on polarity.
 
@jacal01: Schiit does post the Yggy's manual on their website, which includes the instructions to leave it powered-on.
 
@Exidrion and 7ryder: thank you for the links to Baldr's other posts. I had read them all. They had not fully addressed the questions I asked, which is why I asked them.
 
@Baldr: thank you for sharing your thoughts. It sounds like you don't normally run signal to 'break-in' a DAC, and that leaving the Yggy powered-up will be sufficient. I still wish to know how much powered-on time you recommend for a Yggy to approach optimal temperature/operation. Thanks.

If you go over to the other website that shall not be named, Mike made a comment that, after about a week, the DAC (Yggy) just disappears which appears to be confirmed by every owner (including myself) that has commented on HF.  

 

[maeveth]

   
Nice write-up, but there's one nit-pick which may surprise you: audio data delivery over USB is not guaranteed. Like SPDIF, the data streams continuously and even if an error is detected, the receiver cannot request a re-send of that packet. Some details here.
 
Horrifying, right? It's not as bad as it sounds – er, I mean, if you're listening it won't sound bad. Whatever, because the odds of a single transmission error, given a 44.1kHz signal playing continuously 24/7, is around once per month. More here. 

Actually if you read the whole post I never said audio was guaranteed - I commented directly on this on the fact that data transmission errors are rare and that its better because if there is an error is more significant than with S/PDIF so that I can do something about if it it occurs at higher rates than it should.
 
But *high five* SF buddy!
 

Yup, a 50 dollar music server that plays from NAS, USB storage, Spotify etc like the Aries. No fans, no spinning parts. No idea how it compares to the Aries, but it's much better than a desktop computer/notebook. I prefer Runeaudio over Volumio here

Yep, I use a RPi2 as well.  Its great - I'm a huge fan of PMS(Plex Media Server) however so I switch between an Intel NUC running Windows and PHT(Plex Home Theatre) connected via USB using WASAPI and a RPi2 using S/PDIF.  There is a tiny tiny difference between the two however for my girlfriend Plex is a lot easier than Rune Audio.  In both cases the data comes off my huge ZFS File Server sitting under my desk.  I do notice that Yggy sometimes looses sample rate lock at the end of tracks when using WASAPI but I havent had time to investigate further.
 
I am also experimenting with another NUC running Linux to see how the driver implementation really is vs Schiit Gen 3 in windows - but time is not my friend right now.
 
That being said any solution as long as your not doing something completely insane will be 99.999999% the same, see my post a few pages back on USB vs S/PDIF
 
For those that are interested in the RPi Setup take a look at http://www.head-fi.org/t/762336/raspberry-pi2-as-music-server where we discussed it further.

 

[pedalhead]

So I see that fella who posted 24hrs in he couldn't hear a difference between his modi2u and Yggy has been banned & had his posts deleted.  Hoping there's more to it than simply a less than glowing opinion not being tolerated.

 

[noshortcuts]

13 days and no shipping notice - darn.

 

[jfoxvol]

14 days here. This is intolerable. Le sigh. Patience is a virtue.

 

[Yoga]

  So I see that fella who posted 24hrs in he couldn't hear a difference between his modi2u and Yggy has been banned & had his posts deleted.  Hoping there's more to it than simply a less than glowing opinion not being tolerated.

Very much doubt that, more likely a previously identified troll. 

 

[7ryder]

  So I see that fella who posted 24hrs in he couldn't hear a difference between his modi2u and Yggy has been banned & had his posts deleted.  Hoping there's more to it than simply a less than glowing opinion not being tolerated.

well, if you take a look at bolos profile, he seems to have a history of making up different profiles http://www.head-fi.org/u/424619/bolos and the names that he's used for his profiles seem to imply that he doesn't hear differences in audio equipment.  That may explain his original posts.
 
coincidentally, all three of his profiles have been banned.

 

[pedalhead]

 

  So I see that fella who posted 24hrs in he couldn't hear a difference between his modi2u and Yggy has been banned & had his posts deleted.  Hoping there's more to it than simply a less than glowing opinion not being tolerated.

well, if you take a look at bolos profile, he seems to have a history of making up different profiles http://www.head-fi.org/u/424619/bolos and the names that he's used for his profiles seem to imply that he doesn't hear differences in audio equipment.  That may explain his original posts.
 
coincidentally, all three of his profiles have been banned.

 
Hmm fair point, those names do rather suggest an agenda 

 

[dglow]

  If you go over to the other website that shall not be named, Mike made a comment that, after about a week, the DAC (Yggy) just disappears which appears to be confirmed by every owner (including myself) that has commented on HF.  

 
Heheh... oh yes, is it voldemortstar.com?
 
And thank you. I have read Mike's impressions there. My Yggy took far less than a week to achieve 80-90% of its 'bloom'. IMO, of course.
I'm curious if Mike has any objective data. "After X hours I've measured these components delivering Y improvement over cold operation."
 
More importantly, we now have an important opinion on the matter of break-in. 

 

[7ryder]

I have a feeling that since he hasn't made any more comments on this that we prolly can't expect any; but you never know!

 

[dglow]

May I ask: why all the fuss over my posting some questions to a public forum?

 

[EraserXIV]

The vocals on that would be so good.... I've tried the HD800 with an AK240 and it sounded like a live performance, but that must blow the roof off.

Vocals are sublime. I am a sucker for great sounding mids, call me a mid-head if you will. If mids are off I'm pretty sensitive to it, this has me grinning ear to ear every time.

Another thing of note, many would call the HD800 a cold and clinical sounding headphone. It wasn't until I got the Yggy when I truly understood all the talk about upstream transparency with the HD800. HD800 really highlights the strengths of the Yggy, other headphones seem to bottleneck the "magic". Other more "natural" headphones still can't sound as natural as the "bright" HD800 + Yggy. It's hard to listen to anything else anymore.