[landroni]

  This "24 bit" silliness is getting old. AFAIK, no recording studio can capture those low-order bits accurately. 24- (let alone 32-) bit encoding is just a design and marketing convenience, not a real reflection of what what can be recorded and reproduced by realistic transducers. One of these days, if we are not careful, people will be arguing for the importance of going below the noise floor of the Big Bang.

Well, to be fair, 32 bits can always come in handy if you're trying to record and play back an exploding stun grenade, which is operating at 170 dB. Not quite sure what it does to the transducers though...

 

[landroni]

  A DAC with 100% accuracy: whatever you give it digitally, it gives you a perfect representation of in analogue. This would by definition gives you zero distortion.

Perfect? Forget perfect. That ship sailed away with the unavoidable quantization noise. And there is MUCH more to D/A conversion than just "distortion", and you should really choose which kind of distortion you wish to focus on. There isn't really a useful headline figure or anything like that.
 
You may find these two reads interesting (by @Jason Stoddard).
No Sample Left Unchanged: Digital Today*

“But how can those old DACs possibly perform better than the best of today? They’re only 20/48. We have 32/768.”
 
Going from 16/44 to 20/44 actually makes more difference than anything else, when it comes to digital. Why? Although the Nyquist theorem says you can perfectly reconstruct a waveform from digital with 2X the sample rate, it assumes an infinite-bit ADC with no quantization error. The more levels, the less the quantization error. 16 bit = 65536 levels, 20 bit = 1048576 levels. 24 bits is 16 million+ levels, but nobody has ever achieved 24 bit linearity, period. The best DACs are about 19.5-20 bits, even after 20 years of “progress.” (Hence, “the lost decades.”) Higher sample rates are nice for analog filtering, but limit the amount of horsepower a digital filter can bring to bear…and it takes up more storage space. So that’s a tradeoff. And “32 bit?” LOLOLROFLCOPTER. There will never be any 32 bit music. Because physics.

 
* Come to think of it, didn't John Atkinson read this before his "obsolete" cursing?
 
Schiit Goes Vinyl

It’s Missing Lots of Pieces
 
When I finally went up to Mike’s house to hear what would become Mani, Rina came along. This is important because there are some times I think she knows it all…and this was going to be one of them.

 
Now, I have to preface this by saying that this was the first time I’d heard analog since the Sumo and Theta days. I was only too happy to leave vacuum-platter turntables, record washing machines, VTA alignment gauges, ground wires, and all those other neuroses in the 20th century, where I thought they belonged.

 
But eventually, Mike had it cued up (using one of his Ariston turntables, I believe, and probably a Nagaoka cartridge) and handed me the headphones. I put them on, trying not to roll my eyes. I guess I expected old-style, rolled-off, fluttery, distorted sound—perhaps I’d been partially assimilated by the objectivist Borg.

 
And yeah, the first thing I heard was the subtle crackle and pop of groove noise. Yeah, just like I remembered, I thought…

 
And then the music started. My eyes opened up. Because this wasn’t mushy, rolled, distorted, or otherwise clearly inferior to digital. It sounded very good, clean, and dynamic. And…it had a real sense of weight and space, something I hadn’t heard with a DAC and the same headphones. Something, something almost indefinable, was more real, more alive, more right.

 
Mike laughed as I shook my head and handed the headphones over to Rina. “You have to hear this,” I told her.

 
“I don’t need to,” she said. “I know what vinyl sounds like.”

 
“Just listen,” I said, pushing the headphones at her.

 
Rina sighed, took the headphones, and put them on. She closed her eyes for a while, then opened them and shrugged. “Yep. Analog.”

 
“But doesn’t it sound great?” I asked.

 
Rina laughed. “Of course. It’s analog. Did you guys forget what analog sounds like? Or did you forget I used to do live sound? Analog always sounds better. Digital has all those pieces missing.”

 
Mike and I looked at each other. I swear, in that moment, I could pretty much hear his thoughts, because I was thinking the same thing.

 
Well, it’s not quite accurate that there are pieces missing, because Nyquist…Mike and I were thinking.

 
And our jaws both dropped open at the same point, because we both had the same epiphany at the same time: …but Nyquist relies on an ideal brickwall filter, and it doesn’t take into account quantization error…so saying “It’s missing a bunch of pieces” wasn’t so inaccurate after all.

 
And of course the Measurements chapter:
On Measurements (With a Side Order of Sanity)

 

[Leigh]

I find the 50 Hz sine wave harmonic image interesting, with dominant second and third harmonics, and odd ordered above that with no even ordered harmonics beyond the second. It's very similar to the harmonic output of the Decware ZMA amplifier (I own one), which sounds fantastic. I wonder whether it's a coincidence or perhaps hints at similar underlying topologies.

 

[Noldir]

This "24 bit" silliness is getting old. AFAIK, no recording studio can capture those low-order bits accurately. 24- (let alone 32-) bit encoding is just a design and marketing convenience, not a real reflection of what what can be recorded and reproduced by realistic transducers. One of these days, if we are not careful, people will be arguing for the importance of going below the noise floor of the Big Bang.

Yup. Good explanation of that here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/415361/24bit-vs-16bit-the-myth-exploded

 

[traehekat]

Just received my Yggy. I plugged it into my Auralic Aries via optical and Valhalla 2 and ... nothing. I don't hear any sound coming out of my headphones. It didn't even seem like the Yggy was reconciling the optical input, and I think the buy better gear light was going on. I switched to USB but no sound still. It did seem to recognize the USB input now, though. I tried USB from my MacBook to the Yggy and it worked. Any ideas why the Aries won't work? Thanks!


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[Torq]

Just received my Yggy. I plugged it into my Auralic Aries via optical and Valhalla 2 and ... nothing. I don't hear any sound coming out of my headphones. It didn't even seem like the Yggy was reconciling the optical input, and I think the buy better gear light was going on. I switched to USB but no sound still. It did seem to recognize the USB input now, though. I tried USB from my MacBook to the Yggy and it worked. Any ideas why the Aries won't work? Thanks!


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You will need to switch the Aries to use it's "Digital Outputs", using the app on your phone or tablet. It will only drive EITHER USB output OR AES/COAX/TOSLINK ... not both together.

 

[traehekat]

Just received my Yggy. I plugged it into my Auralic Aries via optical and Valhalla 2 and ... nothing. I don't hear any sound coming out of my headphones. It didn't even seem like the Yggy was reconciling the optical input, and I think the buy better gear light was going on. I switched to USB but no sound still. It did seem to recognize the USB input now, though. I tried USB from my MacBook to the Yggy and it worked. Any ideas why the Aries won't work? Thanks!


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You will need to switch the Aries to use it's "Digital Outputs", using the app on your phone or tablet. It will only drive EITHER USB output OR AES/COAX/TOSLINK ... not both together.

Bingo, worked like a charm. Thanks! Now the burn in begins...


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[Limniscate]

I tried a Curious USB cable versus my Oyaide Neo d+ cable, and the difference was very noticeable. The Oyaide sounded grainy in comparison to the Curious. The Curious didn't seem to make a difference when connected to my Singxer SU-1 DDC to AES via a Transparent Reference AES cable to the Yggdrasil.

 

[Jamiee]

I decided to mess around a little this weekend and go a direction I haven't given much thought to in a few years...
 
- Toslink -  Yup good'ole optical.   Am I nuts?  Probably, but it's a free experiment so what the heck!
 
 
I initially hooked up an inexpensive Monster THX100 (plastic fiber) 1.5M cable between my motherboards on-board (yes I said on-board...) sound card and the Mutec MC-3+ USB re-clocker. 
 
The result....  Well to be honest... Not bad, not bad at all!  The sound was surprisingly more dense (solid) with bass packing more of a punch and vocals sounding a bit more life like when compared to USB.  The overall presentation just sounded weighted and more crisp - in a good way of course.
 
The downside...  I would say their seemed to be a bit less air,  a bit less sound stage width and perhaps a touch less depth. 
 
BUT -  then I remembered I had a nicer toslink cable laying around... a Wireworld Super Nova 6 (glass fiber) 2.0M.
So I dug it up and plugged it in.  Yeah, Houston we have lift-off!  It did everything the the Monster cable did and then some!
Nice solid bass, very well defined mids, and plenty of air to boot.
 
At this point it was becoming pretty clear (almost frustratingly so) to me that as good as USB is, it just isn't quite there yet for the very best in audio reproduction.
 
To be fair, I also wanted to see (hear) what the Mutec was or wasn't doing in the signal path so I bypassed it and went direct to the Yggdrasil via toslink.  The result - interesting....  There was an immediate sense of transparency.  My speakers disappeared in a way they haven't done in quite some time.  The soundscape seemed to take a couple of steps backward.  it was deep and wide and it sounded quite lovely... very relaxing, but after a little while I found that I was yearning for a bit more of a visceral experience - you know, more of a live presentation.
 
Back in went the Mutec... and I can wholeheartedly say it's going to stay. 
 
I'll admit, it hurts to think about how much I have spent in the past 4-5 years or so trying to get USB to sound "right"
I got close... really damned close!   However it just goes to show that sometimes the good'ole way is still the better way.
 
I mean if optical out from a PC motherboard sounds better... well nuf said.
- Granted it is a very high end (TOTL) ASUS board that has above average audio components on it, but still...
 
So yeah, colour me surprised.  I guess it's Proof that you can teach an old dog some new (or is that old) tricks

 
 
 
 
 
{EDIT}
 
I should mention that my current chain is:
 
PC >>> Wireworld Super Nova 6 >>> Mutec MC-3+ USB >>> MIT Proline AES/EBU >>> Schiit Yggdrasil.
 
 
 
I also tried the following configuration but found the Monster THX100 to be a limiting factor (maybe another Wireworld toslink would do the trick, who knows?)
PC >>> Wireworld Super Nova 6 >>> Mutec MC-3+ USB >>> Monster THX100 >>> Schiit Yggdrasil.

 

[Ags2]

Really enjoyed reading your post. Last year I introduced the ifi micro USB 3.0 into my system (Yggy) and found that it made a noteable improvement in overall performance. I use a laptop with 1tb SSD and oftened question if there would be even a greater performance improvement if I could figure how to use a coax or AES out of the laptop into Yggy. Is there some way to do this, or has anyone tried this? Is it worthwhile? Thx!

 

[theveterans]

Really enjoyed reading your post. Last year I introduced the ifi micro USB 3.0 into my system (Yggy) and found that it made a noteable improvement in overall performance. I use a laptop with 1tb SSD and oftened question if there would be even a greater performance improvement if I could figure how to use a coax or AES out of the laptop into Yggy. Is there some way to do this, or has anyone tried this? Is it worthwhile? Thx!

 
iUSB -> Singxer SU1 (AES Out) -> Yggy

 

[Ags2]

Thx! I will check it out..

 

[Jamiee]

I think the problem with USB is that once it's in your chain you're stuck with its limitations regardless.
That's not to say it's bad.  If anything USB can be quite good if you're willing to invest into it both financially and with a bit of time in order to wring the best out of it.
 
The kicker of course being what I know now in that you're almost for sure going to get better sonics by going direct COAX, Optical, or AES if you have the option available from your source.
A good converter or re-clocking device placed in-between the source and DAC is of course optional, but some might find to be beneficial.  I would say it's almost a must for USB.

 

[traehekat]

Is there any reason why I couldn't use AES to connect the Auralic Aries to the Yggy and then connect the Yggy to an amp via RCA?


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[franzdom]

Is there any reason why I couldn't use AES to connect the Auralic Aries to the Yggy and then connect the Yggy to an amp via RCA?


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 No that should work.