[HemiSam]

 
My Ygg arrived yesterday - the FedEx guy blew his horn a few times, pounded on the door and spat sunflower seed shells on the step - hardly stealthy but at least he was polite.
 
Oh yeah, the sound. After 4 hours warm-up, improvements over Gungnir were immediately apparent with familiar material thru Rag/LCD-3s. More and more controlled bass, more space between instruments, just an overall relaxation to the music. We'll see how it goes from here, but so far I'm not disappointed.
 
Oh, and after 8 hours (four playing) case temp was 101.6 F. Come on, wintertime.

 
 
Great info.  thanks for sharing.  That's easy temps to deal with on my end which is a good thing.  I'll need to stack.
 
HS

 

[coli]

The truth can be found in the used market. Just give it time

 

[catspaw]

   
Too many factors. Transducers, recordings, sensitivity to DAC differences which are small to begin with.
 
I test drove a Cayman and BRZ and I thought the BRZ was the overall better car. If it doesn't do anything for you, don't buy it, especially if there is something that does for cheaper.
 
Guy stuff like audio and cars are colossal wastes of money. They are not investments. "I invested in an Yggy", "I invested in an SR-009" ... yeah right. You didn't invest - you dollar averaged to zero.

I like purrin more and more each time I see how cynical he can be . A very refreshing sttitude in a site that many times overhypes things.
Personally, I want a Yggy, but Ill test it first (my local hi-fi store said they are definitly gonna bring a yggy when they can (schiit could not send the any units yet).

 

[hpfalcon]

  Seemed appropriate with so many consonates in Yggdrasil. Yes?

 
 
PM me with an offer. Gungnir w/USB2 in original box and packing. Wyrd included if you want.

Is wyrd unnecessary or redundant with the yggdrasil?

 

[freddy1201]

  Is wyrd unnecessary or redundant with the yggdrasil?

Not really useful except if you have bad usb problem

 

[hpfalcon]

 
Not really useful except if you have bad usb problem

 
Not asking about Wyrd in general, I use it for the Bifrost, and it does make some difference. But I wasn't sure if the internals of the Yggy like the clock regeneration or something else does sort of the same thing.
 
raised the question since he was offering his wyrd w/ the gungnir even though hes getting a new yggy.

 

[Ableza]

Moved my warm (~100F) Yggdrasil from the living room to the office and connected between my PC (running Foobar 2000) and my Schiit Lyr.  Listening with MrSpeakers Alpha Primes.  I also listened to a few of the (very few) high res tracks I own via the PonoWorld player, which is based on JRiver (yes I own a Pono and the Yggdrasil sounds MUCH better than it does in my opinion.) 
 
The first words that came to mind were "accurate" and "clinical" and "revealing."  It's not harsh the way some solid state DACs can be but it is not forgiving at all.  If the source material is not perfect, you will absolutely hear it.  You will also hear details in recordings that other systems can miss, such as very soft finger noises on fret boards and in one live recording a distant cough that might have been from the audience or maybe from the drummer, neither of which had I ever noticed before..  It made some familiar tracks sound different again.  With good source material this thing is a genuine pleasure and brought a smile to my face.  The excellent sounding Primes have never sounded more full, detailed and lush.  But with marginal source material, be ready to skip ahead as it will make shrill highs super shrill and flabby bass unlistenable.  I think I like it better driving amps and speakers where errors are not so inside-your-head as they are with headphones.

 

[drfindley]

It's been about 80 hours since I set up the Yggy. And while I have a decent set of headphones I've been listening primarily on my LS50s (Mac Pro USB -> Yggy -> Rag -> LS50s). While I'm one of those upgrading from a Modi 2 Uber (well, really from a PeachTree MusicBox), I have to say it sounds like nothing I've ever head before digitally. Punchy, clarity and presence. And the bass. Oh that Moffet Bass.
 
Basically, I've found that I've developed a perma-grin, something that only vinyl used to give me. It feels like this is the first time my speakers have been moved to their correct positions to reproduce the sound coming from a digital source. This is also the first time the White Stripes have sounded good digitally as well. Every other DAC I've tried (and I tried a *ton* at canjam) felt like it was just missing that gritty bite you expect from Jack & Meg.
 
I've had roommates and friends try their mid-range headphones and just come listen and they've all said they've been impressed by the same things: Punch, clarity, separation and bass. And none of them have read this thread or subscribed to the hype train that I've been riding for the last several months. 
 
Isn't it great when the hype train actually arrives at the station? The Yggy delivers.

 

[yage]

... such as very soft finger noises on fret boards and in one live recording a distant cough that might have been from the audience or maybe from the drummer, neither of which had I ever noticed before.. 

 
Interesting. I've had this same experience when listening to a new piece of kit. However, if I do a comparison between new vs. old on the same track back to back, I usually find that those little details were present in the old setup after all. Most likely I simply didn't pay much attention to that particular aspect before.

 

[negura]

  It feels like this is the first time my speakers have been moved to their correct positions to reproduce the sound coming from a digital source.

 
I have noticed this on speakers too. The imaging focus is really stand-out on speakers. 

 

[Jones Bob]

  Is wyrd unnecessary or redundant with the yggdrasil?

 
Have not tried the Wyrd with the Yggy. The Yggy"s SQ still evolving... or my opinion of it's strengths.  
 
I just would not like to get rid of the Gungnir without it. IMO it make a subtle but a valuable addition there.

 

[prot]

Interesting. I've had this same experience when listening to a new piece of kit. However, if I do a comparison between new vs. old on the same track back to back, I usually find that those little details were present in the old setup after all. Most likely I simply didn't pay much attention to that particular aspect before.

Hapens quite often. After you hear the "new" detail once, you'll find it there on almost any playback chain. Could be that you did listen more carefully to the new toy .. could be that the new toy indeed does accentuate some stuff better ... but it doesnt necessarily highlight everything else better, just diff things... which is normal and nothing special.
Long story short, I simply discard those type of findings cause they just dont mean the new component is better .. only different at best.

 

[thegunner100]

#837 has shipped!

 

[bearFNF]

Guy stuff like audio and cars are colossal wastes of money. They are not investments. "I invested in an Yggy", "I invested in an SR-009" ... yeah right. You didn't invest - you dollar averaged to zero.

Yep, like some people think of buying a house as an investment. It is only an investment if you have a plan to buy and SELL at a profit.

 

[skeptic]

   
That's all that matters to me.
 
My Yggy cold out of the box, was such a top to bottom an obvious SQ refinement over my Gungnir with Wyrd and have no desire to plug it back in my system. And either the Yggy  keeps getting more refined, or I am appreciating the nuance more and more as the hours powered on, I do not care to quibble about.
 
Bottom line, I like the Yggy A LOT.
 
The posters that are logging hours here are passing on their experience using Head-Fi as a journal. Take their posts for what they are -data points only- not TRVTH.  

 
Well said and consistent with my experience as well!  I worked from home yesterday to be sure I wouldn't miss the FedEx guy and then spent the next 5 or so hours listening to my yggy.  Straight out of the box, yggy is a clear level above all my other sources.  What I am talking about here are not huge sonic changes that slap you in the face, like some dramatic shift in EQ.  That would suggest that something was dramatically wrong with one source or the other, and that isn't the case.  Rather, the beauty of the yggy and the immediate perceptible differences, for me, are in the natural timbre, resolution, finesse and overall clarity of the playback of acoustic instruments and voices in good quality recordings with which I am familiar.  Modern music sounds great.  Don't get me wrong.  But for those who are having trouble hearing the differences between good mid or entry level dacs and their new yggy's, I would suggest A'B'ing with some classical, bluegrass or jazz.  A couple of examples and comments:
 
-I have always thought my Keces dac did pretty well with stringed instruments, compared to many alternatives, generally avoiding what I hear in some other sources as obvious digital playback of strings.  By this, I mean that a lot of the texture and nuance of each note are missing, particularly apparent in sustained notes, and what you end up hearing is like a computer's flattened approximation of what a violin might sound like - nothing at all like listening to a violin player in a room with good acoustics. Firing up Arthur Grumiaux's recording of Bach's Violin Sonotas and Partidas on the yggy yesterday illustrated a fine and beautiful layer of detail on this recording that I had never heard before.  By contrast, I would almost say that my Keces, Arcam, Marantz, Pico, Odac etc. ever so slightly smear the timbre of the violin.  Maybe this is what Purrin and others mean when they refer to the outstanding resolution of this and the earlier Theta dacs?  
 
-I really like melodic upbeat bluegrass, and the Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch duet "I'll fly away" on the O Brother soundtrack is a favorite that seems to test the capabilities of dacs and amps I've tried over the years.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27ll_Fly_Away#Alison_Krauss_and_Gillian_Welch )  It is fast paced, with complex mandolin and guitar lines underscoring Welch's lead and Krauss' harmony.  The yggy embarrassed my other sources in its seemingly effortless clarity and separation of these various voices, instruments and the percussive strumming and picking, which have always sounded just slightly muddled to me in the past, despite how much I enjoy the song.  Timbre is also outstanding across the board.
 
-Ella and Louis MFSL and Billie Holiday's Songs for Distingue Lovers (two LFF recommendations in the 50's jazz thread) were also seemingly better than I had ever heard them.  Yggy's presentation has such finesse and clarity, my other sources sound a little heavy-handed by comparison.  For whatever reason, I would also say that yggy seemed to mitigate against extreme left right separation in certain jazz recordings which I sometimes find distracting for this reason.  Need to listen more on this.   
 
-Yggy certainly does not make badly recorded music into something transcendent, although it may improve on some of it.  The strokes and killers, for example, still sound like the strokes and killers, and the double bass in "We get requests" (even the k2hd version) still sometimes sounds a bit "farty" on certain tracks.  If 7 days of warm up fixes this sort of thing, I will be pleasantly astounded.
 
My preliminary verdict is that Yggy is a mighty fine piece of gear, provided you already have top shelf headphones and an amp that will allow these sorts of subtleties to come through.  I think many of my observations above would have potentially passed me by if I had been listening on alpha dogs, hd650's or even hd800's, if they were driven by my hotrodded bottlehead crack instead of my mainline.  I'll have to test this theory with my other equipment as time allows, but my current recommendation would be for listeners to tick those boxes first, so that they can really hear what a dac like this has to offer.  In any event, looking forward to more listening tonight!