I paid for mine. Dunno about others.
Why? I don't care what Robert Harley or Michael Fremer think. When Stereophile says the Benchmark DAC1 is a Class "A" Digital component, I have doubts about their ears or honesty. 80% of the gear that has a TAS super award , I think is crap.
I'm not. I haven't really said much about it on HF for a while. The only thing I did recently was correct your assertion that discrete resistors provided more relative accuracy than the AD5751.
Why would I want to get folks from the Los Angeles Astronomical society? All kidding aside, I get audiophiles in my house all the time to compare stuff. Most I know well, and many times every time new people. I also organize a lot of small semi-public meets. Lots of new people every time.
I agree that the MSB is a fuller warmer sounding DAC with mellower treble if that is what you are looking for. This is why I've suggested, as a personal project, taking the outputs from the pins of the chips and running a tube buffer in place of the FETs.
However, I still maintain Yggy is more resolving with better microdynamics. My priority for DACs rests on resolution and the micro-stuff more than tonal coloring. I already have another DAC which gives me more ease and fluidity, however I find it a tad too forgiving and artificially smooth. Heck, even the 20 year old Spectral SDR2000 sounds better than the MSB if you want that kind of sound. If your are not hearing the Yggy as being much more resolving than the MSB Analog DAC (I believe we've already been through this), you need to look elsewhere in your chain. It could be your active preamp, or 15 piece x-over in your speakers, or maybe your cables are getting in the way.
Keep the chain simple. Limit the number of gain and buffer stages in each device. You are probably running two stages in your preamp and three stages in your speaker amp. Get rid of crap that doesn't need to be there like your preamp. The Yggy's outputs should be hot enough to drive an passive pre or autoformer. Minimize reactive components (caps + coils) in passive speaker x-overs.
Also, consider that you are running a setup that tends to be very different from most people here on HF. One of the secret advantages to headphones is that the signal chains are extremely simple (typically two stage amps, no pre, and no x-over). I don't think a lot of HF'ers realize how resolving their setups are compared to most speaker systems, even expensive ones. Finally, as we say, YMMV. Your personal truth may very well be different from my truth, which may be different from others' truths.
Stupid argument, but lets continue on it. What's the rate of sale or return? Schiit was sold hundreds already and I bet they will sell 50-100 per month. How many DACs does MSB sell per year? 24? 29? In ten to fifteen years, there won't be enough rich old audiophiles to keep companies like MSB afloat. Keep in mind that I turned down several opportunities to purchase MSB DACs.
Again, this is just a stupid argument because we can always turn things around and say Schiit is more popular.
Last time I checked when I was interested in an MSB DAC about a year ago, there were three on the 'gon.
ABSOLUTELY! I agree wholeheartedly that a simple system is WAY more resolving and more engaging, in my opinion according to my experience, than a complicated system.....in terms of gain stages and passive crossover parts and preamps.
Before I got into open-baffle, active-crossover speaker setups, I modified a two-way speaker, which had complicated 4th order passive crossovers, with expensive caps , resistors, and coils. My simple, two-way
open baffle high efficiency speaker setup BLEW away that boxed, low-efficiency, super-complicated passive crossover speaker. Now with active crossovers, in the digital domain, there is no phase shift anymore with analog crossovers in the analog domain.
I am a NO PREAMP person! When I heard a simple passive pot-box blow away my Audio Research tube linestage I became a believer. When I say to "keep things simple" I am referring, as Purrin is, to the gain stages. I have zero preamps, zero passive crossover parts, EXCEPT the single 1uf cap on the super-tweeters which are in parallel with the air-motion transformer tweeters. this was simply to augment frequencies above 20kHz.
My Yggy is now on day 5 1/2. It opened up CONSIDERABLY on day 3. BTW, I leave ALL my gear on except my modified Behringer EP2500 power amp which does not have a standby mode, like the Crown K2s do. Day 3 gave me a much more open soundstage, but it wasn't that it was just more "open" but that the palpability and space around the instruments took on a whole new level of dimensionality. Much more holographic, 3D sound. There was increased dimensionality to the performers and instruments portrayed on the soundstage.
Yggy compared to gungnir multibit, I can't say that Yggy is 100% and Gumby is 90% of Yggy. YMMV in your sytem with your setup, and whether listenign to headphones or speakers, HOWEVER in my oinion, to my ears, in my system, Yggy is just simply in a whole new league and to say Gumby is 90% of Yggy is not a fair comparison. Compared to Gumby, Yggy has an additional transformer, and an additional DSP board, AND USB generation 3, however all my listening is via RCA coax input from a USB/SPDIF converter.
If you are happy with Gumby, DO NOT listen to Yggy. Gumby is amazing, but I warn you, DO NOT listen to Yggy if you are happy with Gumby. Yggy is worth EVERY cent more the cost than Gumby.
