@Jason Stoddard
No A3. No innovation. No Gungnir 2. And Gungnir is still not available in black. Maybe it's time to start looking elsewhere for a DAC.
Who said there wasn't an "A3" AD5791 board—that turned out to be one you
don't want?
FWIW, the standard Yggdrasil AD5791 boards are "2.01." The DAC8812 boards are "3.02". The DAC11001 boards are "7.03." I have boards sitting on the prototype shelf up to "10.1." There have been a ton of prototypes, including what you might consider to be "Analog 3." And the "improved" AD5791 board turned out to be, ah, not so "improved."
Proof of 10 Yggdrasil variants:
Excuse us for only producing the best-measuring multibit DAC, like,
ever, as one of the options (More is Less).
Excuse us for reducing the cost of what most consider to be the best Yggdrasil option with 16-bit DACs (Less is More).
Excuse us for passing along a price increase for the OG, which is caused by significantly higher AD5791 and PCB prices, and is less than inflation since the Yggdrasil's inception, while also including Unison USB and Analog 2.
Excuse us for planning a true double-blind listening test with multiple reviewers, to help you choose the Yggdrasil that's best for your system (we're doing that next week.)
And finally, excuse us for changing up the
You-Must-Upgrade-Every-Time-At-All-Cost-To-The-Universe-Shaking-New-Thing! narrative and saying what we really believe, based on lots of experimentation, "Once you're at this level of performance, there are flavors, and some flavors go better with certain preferences and systems."
Bottom line: could we do an "Analog 3" board and pimp it out as the best thing since sliced bread? Sure. But DACs don't need to change for the sake of change. Also, when you get to this level of performance, the changes are very rarely night and day. They're more flavors. So, out of a bunch of variations of Yggdrasil, we found a couple of flavors we felt were interesting. It's very possible most people will like Less is More, or More is Less, far better than Yggdrasil OG. But other people will still think OG is the best. Perhaps for the same reason "classic" components are rediscovered periodically. (Anyone out there hanging on to a Theta DAC, and still think it sounds better than the modern stuff? How about an ancient Class A amp? Tubes?)
Of course, perhaps we are incompetent. Perhaps every other manufacturer on the planet always has a clear win every time they decide to do an improved product, and the product is clearly better every time, and worth a significant price increase. That's entirely possible. I know I'm fallible. So maybe that's it.