[gefski]

So one final check with you guys.

Ditch my Jitterbugs and Wyrd for the Gen 5 board? (Installing it tomorrow)

In the product descriptions and faq for Gen 5 and Eitr, Schiit has a great explanation of how this USB interface works. It covers in detail that additional black boxes are not necessary or desirable. Check it out.

 

[rgs9200m]

I wish the Yggy could add an option for native DSD processing.

 

[ToTo Man]

I wish the Yggy could add an option for native DSD processing.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in @Baldr's office right now... or maybe not!

 

[alpovs]

FWIW - I had to pay $40.25 CAD to my company's brokerage firm last week for the Yggy Gen 5 upgrade board.
Pretty sure I saw duty on it + brokerage fees + taxes. kind of expensive on a $100 USD item - was taken aback by it actually, was expecting maybe $20 - $30 CAD at the most.

Unfortunately Schiit doesn't mark their products as being "MADE IN THE U.S.A", (at least not that I've seen) so I find NAFTA benefits can be hit and miss with them.

You don't seem to know what you are talking about. EVERY customs form HAS to have country of origin, otherwise, the package will be sent back. I checked the three boxes from Schiit I could find. All of them list the country of origin as "US".

If you saw duty on your form, file a request for refund and fire your brokerage firm as incompetent. But more likely they just charged you an outrageous brokerage processing fee like UPS does. You could have shipped your board by USPS and not charged any fees as they (Canada Post on this end) often don't bother to deal with small packages marked below $100-200. In other cases they charge only $9.95 brokerage fee (in addition to taxes and duties if any).

 

[Tassie Devil]

At the risk of castigation here I must confess I'm seriously considering purchase of an LKS MH-DA004 DAC to replace the YOGGY.
No, I've no intention of selling the lovely YOGGY but it will go into headphone system 2 here in the office.
This audiophilia is a really bad (and expensive) affliction

 

[winders]

That's a nice step down in performance.....

 

[Tassie Devil]

That's a nice step down in performance.....

LOL. We shall see. If you are right, YOGGY stays where it is.

Bottom line is I'm not expecting a night and day difference but ........

And, as posted previously, I'll NOT be using USB input where a lot of time, effort and money has gone into "improvement". Connection will be via balanced AES/EBU fed from an Auralic Aries bridge controlled by Roon.

 

[draytonklammer]

Initial performance impression of Gen 5 is positive.

 

[earnmyturns]

What I do not understand is why or how that process would wind up making everything sound the same, regardless of what comes before the two units in a given chain. If that were true, wouldn't that mean that the USB 5 and Eitr were stamping their own uniform coloration on the sound during the filtering/cleaning up process, instead of simply allowing what is pure in the sound to filter through in a transparent way from the components and cables on the downstream side of the DAC?

This has been explained elsewhere, but let me try again. The only information you want to transmit from a digital source file to the DAC are the bits in the file. If that transmission is bit-perfect, as it is for any half-decent USB audio mechanism in use these days, the transmission medium should not matter. However, all transmission media encode bits on a physical support, an electrical signal in the case of USB. That electrical signal will in general carry some analog noise that is not enough to corrupt the bits, but may be enough to affect the analog side of the DAC. That change from electrical noise leakage and its transformation by the highly nonlinear DAC circuitry may be perceived as a change in sound quality relative to was was encoded in the digital bit stream. What Gen 5/Eitr do is to block much of that analog noise, thus bringing the analog output of the DAC closer to what it would be if it was driven by the incoming digital stream without an overlay of analog noise. To the extent that those devices are successful in their purpose, it should not matter what transmission medium is used to bring the digital signal to them.

 

[vvar10ck]

I have installed Gen5 a few days ago. From the box it is sounds worse than my Audiobyte Hydra Converter + AES cable. There's no miracle happend!

 

[theveterans]

I have installed Gen5 a few days ago. From the box it is sounds worse than my Audiobyte Hydra Converter + AES cable. There's no miracle happend!

Probably means your transport is already excellent that it's pointless to get another transport. I didn't even bother to get the Gen 5 for my Bimby as my transport is already very good: PC -> SPDIF coax -> Bimby

 

[Bones10]

My first post here. I'm a speaker guy...

I ordered the Yggy a couple of weeks ago. Had been on back order till the week of "Oct 6" so hoping it will get shipped soon.

I will be comparing it to a Bel Canto DAC, the DAC in the McCormack UDP-1 CD player (which is excellent but older technology), and my analog rig with tube phono stage .

Im creating a new digital front end for the Yggy which will be Roon/Tidal -> ultrarendu (with uptone power supply) -> YGGY.

Pre-amp is Marantz, amp is VTL s-400 (high power tube amp), speakers are Wilson MAXX 2.

looking forward to the new gear.

 

[axle_69]

It does not surprise me that you heard a difference. There is a claim going around in the community according to which nothing coming before the Gen 5 USB or the Eitr makes any difference or should make any difference. I have to say that I personally don't fully understand that claim, and also don't know why that is supposed to be a good thing. At best I understand the function of the Gen 5 and Eitr as that of cleaning up the sound and ridding it computer noise, as well as other forms of electrical noise and isolating the signal from the source from all such impurities, which is nice. What I do not understand is why or how that process would wind up making everything sound the same, regardless of what comes before the two units in a given chain. If that were true, wouldn't that mean that the USB 5 and Eitr were stamping their own uniform coloration on the sound during the filtering/cleaning up process, instead of simply allowing what is pure in the sound to filter through in a transparent way from the components and cables on the downstream side of the DAC?

An "analogue cable" transmits a continuous signal with a frequency content and by letting electromagnetic noise in and/or by acting as a filter changes the signal. A "digital cable" transmits just a change in status as rises and drops from almost zero to the maximum voltage. As earnmyturns said the Gen5 USB is isolating the DAC from the source so its power doesn't get contaminated by noise traveling in the rises and drops of the voltage. The change in status is easy to recognise, the noise that may travel in that signal doesn't pass, but with those bits goes the clock as well, and slightly distorted rising and falling voltages may induce some jitter and this affects the sound. However, the signal is reclocked in the Gen5 USB and that's why cables and other stuff in the middle shouldn't make any difference unless they were so bad or long that were "dropping bits".

 

[draytonklammer]

Continued Gen 5 impressions -- I can't detect any noise floor anymore. More detail because of this -- money well spent -- good job Schiit!

 

[sahmen]

This has been explained elsewhere, but let me try again. The only information you want to transmit from a digital source file to the DAC are the bits in the file. If that transmission is bit-perfect, as it is for any half-decent USB audio mechanism in use these days, the transmission medium should not matter. However, all transmission media encode bits on a physical support, an electrical signal in the case of USB. That electrical signal will in general carry some analog noise that is not enough to corrupt the bits, but may be enough to affect the analog side of the DAC. That change from electrical noise leakage and its transformation by the highly nonlinear DAC circuitry may be perceived as a change in sound quality relative to was was encoded in the digital bit stream. What Gen 5/Eitr do is to block much of that analog noise, thus bringing the analog output of the DAC closer to what it would be if it was driven by the incoming digital stream without an overlay of analog noise. To the extent that those devices are successful in their purpose, it should not matter what transmission medium is used to bring the digital signal to them.

Well, I have read some of those explanations, and can understand them somewhat in the abstract, but there are parts that still don't make too much sense to me, but maybe it is because I have no electric engineering expertise. Thanks for making the effort, though. I really appreciate it.

An "analogue cable" transmits a continuous signal with a frequency content and by letting electromagnetic noise in and/or by acting as a filter changes the signal. A "digital cable" transmits just a change in status as rises and drops from almost zero to the maximum voltage. As earnmyturns said the Gen5 USB is isolating the DAC from the source so its power doesn't get contaminated by noise traveling in the rises and drops of the voltage. The change in status is easy to recognise, the noise that may travel in that signal doesn't pass, but with those bits goes the clock as well, and slightly distorted rising and falling voltages may induce some jitter and this affects the sound. However, the signal is reclocked in the Gen5 USB and that's why cables and other stuff in the middle shouldn't make any difference unless they were so bad or long that were "dropping bits".

Okay, to prevent us from talking past each other, let's temporarily shelf the technical jargon about analogue signals, ones and zeros, perfect bits, electrical noises, and other such technicalities, and let's get to what is really getting my goat now, in plain lay man's jargon:

First the good, the bright, and the beautiful : I am enjoying the sonic impact of the Gen 5 usb on my yggy a lot--much, much, more than the Eitr with the Yggy, because the Eitr was making my Yggy click erratically and sometimes frequently--to almost distracting and annoying levels, during music playback, but also--more annoyingly--even when no music was playing... The USB 5 has no such "clicking" effect on the Yggy, so I can savor all its sonic blessings without any interferences, and those sonic blessings are far from negligible. The Yggy has been on for about 5 days now since it returned from the update service, and I like a lot of what I have heard so far...

Now for the confusing part... Both you and @earnmyturns seem to explain the main advantage of the Gen 5 USB as that of blocking electrical/analogue noises, providing "isolation" and allowing perfects bits/digitial ones and zeroes to pass through, or to be be converted by the Yggy to analogue signals... What I am not sure about is how that explains the idea according to which "nothing" which comes before Eitr/USB Gen 5 matters to the overall sound quality (that is if that, is indeed, what the claim means)... It is precisely that supposedly indifferent "nothing", which remains murky to me , and is getting my goat...

Incidentally, today, I made one small modification on the down stream side of the Yggy, and the difference in the overall sq was immediately noticeable, and palpable : I just replaced the energizing Meanwell SMPS power supply feeding the LPS-1 which in turn powers my ultrarendu with a Teradak 30W 9v power supply, and BOOM!, what do I get in the sound coming out of my Yggy and 2-channel system : better detail retrieval, better definition, better decay, blacker background (even though the ultrarendu's background sounded already black with the LPS-1, to the point where I didn't suspect it could possibly get any blacker)... In fact the music is sounding even better resolved than before, with finer details which sounded relatively recessed previously coming to the fore, better dynamics, and the entire frequency spectrum sounding more "holographic" and 3d... Mind you, this is a sonic difference one can reproduce simply by alternating the power supply units energizing the LPS-1 between the stock Meanwell SMPS and the Teradak 30W 9V linear power supply.... Without having tried it, I am sure one can detect another difference, were one to replace the LPS-1 itself feeding the Ultrarendu with the Meanwell SMPS, or the Oyaide Belden Starquad DC cable connecting the LPS-1 to the Ultrarendu with the stock DC cable that came with the LPS-1... These are not mere placebo delusional impressions, they can be demoed and repeated by simply swapping cables and or power supply units, and those demonstrable differences are what is not clear to me in the claim that nothing coming before the USB 5 or Eitr matters, in terms of the overall SQ results... That clalim may be about "perfect bits," ones and zeros, and the blocking of electrical noise, and isolation, but maybe those are not enough to explain everything about sound quality and its changes? Or maybe the USB 5/Eitr are coming up short and the claim "USB solved" was a bit premature? I do not know... I am not an expert, I I just know that there are still changes on the downstream side of the Eitr/Gen 5 usb that make noticeable differences in what one hears...

With all that said, I appreciate the effort you have made to explain things to me... Thanks.