[alubis]

   
Ah icic. 
 
Let's let it burn baby. 
 
As of now, it is a details monster. Alot of treble details are getting picked up in comparison to my Hugo. 
 
However, the mids and bass are abit weak in comparison. I was feeling a bit disappointed that I don't get the immersive music experience previously. 

Hi ambrose,
 
I have Hugo too and considering to buy Yggy, if you have time, I would highly appreciate if you could tell more of differences in sound quality between the two.
 
Thanks.

 

[dwest1023]

just received my yggy. 

hmm. 

is it supposed to sound bright and harsh right out of the box ? 

My Yggy certainly did. Now it's nice and wamish. Totally different from out of the box. That was my experience.

 

[ambrose1985]

  Hi ambrose,
 
I have Hugo too and considering to buy Yggy, if you have time, I would highly appreciate if you could tell more of differences in sound quality between the two.
 
Thanks.

 
sure. 
 
Will let you know the differences when the Yggy has burned enough. 

 

[LifeAspect]

GLS didn't deliver my yggy today as "nobody was home" while I was patiently awaiting them today....Kind of annoyed atm.
Called them and now they are gonna deliver it on monday (I hope).
 
Hopefully I'll be part of the club soon. Being one month on wait time was suffering enough.

 

[ambrose1985]

  GLS didn't deliver my yggy today as "nobody was home" while I was patiently awaiting them today....Kind of annoyed atm.
Called them and now they are gonna deliver it on monday (I hope).
 
Hopefully I'll be part of the club soon. Being one month on wait time was suffering enough.

 
Woah. That's painful. 
 
Understand your pain, I waited around 1 month too. 
 
At the 24th hour of the burn in, sound has opened up even more and it's expressing a slight warmth in its tone, which is different from yesterday's bright signature, therefore reducing listening fatigue. 
 
Let's see what tomorrow brings  

 

[Seminarian]

NOTE: The following pertains to my speaker based system which is this: Macbook Pro serving up TIDAL streams via Amarra via USB  into the Yggdrasil followed by Red Wine Signature 70 monoblock battery operated integrateds into VMPS RM-40. All cabling is pedestrian (cheap). 
 
My new Yggdrasil has almost 48 (continuous) hrs on it. My impressions, I now realize, won't be worth much to a lot of folks. For $2300, there may not be all that many buyers who are used to shelling out what I did for the Modi 2 (which the yggy is replacing) who would make a leap of 23X. On the other hand lots of people want to know how the yggy sounds in comparison to other relatively expensive DACs. I can't provide them with any insight there. 
 
So, with that in mind, I can say that out of the box the yggy was NOT worth the 23X leap. It was surely better in a vague sort of way.  But it did have a bit of an edgy etchy upper mid range. There wasn't much of the glorious stuff I have been reading about (and hoping for). The other plusses such as soundstage, holographics, bass wonderment etc. were not particularly noticeable or any better than the $100 Modi. At 48 hours I'm still waiting for these. One concrete and indisputable plus was yggy's handling of acoustic piano. Diana Krall's Live in Paris piano was unlike any recorded piano I have ever heard. It was round, full, robust, rich and theoretically piano-like.
 
On the plus side after 48 hours, I can tell after probably 3 hours of listening that the warm-up burn-in period is making a big difference. The edginess is disappearing. The presence (yes, Living Presence, AKA human palpability) is getting better and better. Also, one of the things you run into all the time is operatic duets (or quartets for that matter). The ability of the reproduction system to allow you to track both parts separately is a good test. The yggy already is showing great promise there. This is a feature that is new ground for me in my hearing. Which means it's a real treat.
 
I believe it's too early to make any proclamations about one of the other big deal attributes of any piece of audio equipment. That attribute would be tone. Can you tell the difference between one solo violin and another? Do you expect your DAC to allow you to hear and understand the characteristics of Gil Shaham's Stradivarius versus that of Anne Akiko Meyers' Strad? Or is that too much to expect of a DAC? Well, this is the sort of thing involved in assessing tone production of your system. A simpler test would be this: Can you tell when the first and second violin sections put their mutes on in some section of some symphony? My guess would be that most DACs just don't have the accuracy to pull that off. I'll find out about the Yggy on these tests later on.

 

[realmassy]

That kind of accuracy that Seminarian is describing is not tone, though, I'd call it timbre

 

[acguitar84]

  NOTE: The following pertains to my speaker based system which is this: Macbook Pro serving up TIDAL streams via Amarra via USB  into the Yggdrasil followed by Red Wine Signature 70 monoblock battery operated integrateds into VMPS RM-40. All cabling is pedestrian (cheap). 
 
My new Yggdrasil has almost 48 (continuous) hrs on it. My impressions, I now realize, won't be worth much to a lot of folks. For $2300, there may not be all that many buyers who are used to shelling out what I did for the Modi 2 (which the yggy is replacing) who would make a leap of 23X. On the other hand lots of people want to know how the yggy sounds in comparison to other relatively expensive DACs. I can't provide them with any insight there. 
 
So, with that in mind, I can say that out of the box the yggy was NOT worth the 23X leap. It was surely better in a vague sort of way.  But it did have a bit of an edgy etchy upper mid range. There wasn't much of the glorious stuff I have been reading about (and hoping for). The other plusses such as soundstage, holographics, bass wonderment etc. were not particularly noticeable or any better than the $100 Modi. At 48 hours I'm still waiting for these. One concrete and indisputable plus was yggy's handling of acoustic piano. Diana Krall's Live in Paris piano was unlike any recorded piano I have ever heard. It was round, full, robust, rich and theoretically piano-like.
 
On the plus side after 48 hours, I can tell after probably 3 hours of listening that the warm-up burn-in period is making a big difference. The edginess is disappearing. The presence (yes, Living Presence, AKA human palpability) is getting better and better. Also, one of the things you run into all the time is operatic duets (or quartets for that matter). The ability of the reproduction system to allow you to track both parts separately is a good test. The yggy already is showing great promise there. This is a feature that is new ground for me in my hearing. Which means it's a real treat.
 
I believe it's too early to make any proclamations about one of the other big deal attributes of any piece of audio equipment. That attribute would be tone. Can you tell the difference between one solo violin and another? Do you expect your DAC to allow you to hear and understand the characteristics of Gil Shaham's Stradivarius versus that of Anne Akiko Meyers' Strad? Or is that too much to expect of a DAC? Well, this is the sort of thing involved in assessing tone production of your system. A simpler test would be this: Can you tell when the first and second violin sections put their mutes on in some section of some symphony? My guess would be that most DACs just don't have the accuracy to pull that off. I'll find out about the Yggy on these tests later on.

Dang, pretty scary stuff. Maybe I should just keep enjoying my concero HD and not worry anymore about DAC "upgrades". Call it a win at this point.

 

[mikoss]

Dang, pretty scary stuff. Maybe I should just keep enjoying my concero HD and not worry anymore about DAC "upgrades". Call it a win at this point.

I wouldn't base your upgrade on a review after 48 hours with the DAC. In my experience, the MB Gungnir takes 4-5 days from cold to sound its best. Based on many, many reviews, Yggy also takes at least 4 days to settle out, and I would personally give it a week. The chips being used become extremely precise as they reach thermal equilibrium, and the sound quality is reflected based on the warm up time, IMO.

I think this has been covered enough for potential buyers to understand. If you haven't had a chance to compare a fully warmed up MB Schiit DAC to the Concero, may I suggest you give it a try? Just a suggestion, from my ears, the difference is well worth the price. The Modi 2 has a precise sound for its price point, but the MB DACs absolutely slaughter it, IMO.

 

[Seminarian]

Yeah. He's right. 48 hours is nothing, according to the many previous impressions. Also, I've only sample a tiny fraction of the possible FLAC files I need to in order to arrive at a comprehensive impression of this DAC. FWIW, the Modi 2 when I first took it out of the box was so bad I was ready to toss it in the trash. 2 hours later I was amazed at the thing. 

 

[acguitar84]

I wouldn't base your upgrade on a review after 48 hours with the DAC. In my experience, the MB Gungnir takes 4-5 days from cold to sound its best. Based on many, many reviews, Yggy also takes at least 4 days to settle out, and I would personally give it a week. The chips being used become extremely precise as they reach thermal equilibrium, and the sound quality is reflected based on the warm up time, IMO.

I think this has been covered enough for potential buyers to understand. If you haven't had a chance to compare a fully warmed up MB Schiit DAC to the Concero, may I suggest you give it a try? Just a suggestion, from my ears, the difference is well worth the price. The Modi 2 has a precise sound for its price point, but the MB DACs absolutely slaughter it, IMO.

Well, anything that would be an improvement on the Concero HD would be really something. I'm a "newbie" when it comes to DAC's, it's really the first stand alone DAC I've worked with. It just blows away the M-Audiophile 24/96 soundcard I've used seemingly forever. Blows it away, as in night and day difference really. I also like it much better than the DAC in the Wa7 Fireflies. Still, I'm sure even better resolution can be had. I work with music for a living, and I do a lot of music transcribing, figuring stuff out all of the time. I'm hoping the Yggi would offer even better overall resolution and instrument separation, making life even easier. The Concero HD has been very helpful so far in my job, and also a lot of fun for recreational listening.
 
Have you compared a Concero HD to some of the MB Schitt products? Such as Bifrost and Gumby, and even Yggi?
 
I understand about the breaking in period of the Yggi, I've read a lot of reviews and posts about it. Still, I'm a little gun shy about spending 2300 bucks on it, to find out it's only a marginal improvement over the Concero HD. It's going to be a "leap of faith" lol.

 

[dwest1023]

My Yggy did not sound it's best until about 3 months. I was at first, very dissappointed in the bright sound out of the box. I run my Yggy to a intergrated tube amp and very neutral speakers. Over the 3 month period the sound seemed very unbalanced. When it finally settled, it turned smooth and warmish through my tube amp. There is now not a hint of fatigue. Before the Yggy, I was running a Guniguir and a Meridian director. Needles to say, after countless A/B test I sold both dacs and keep the Yggy, If you are looking for immediate heaven from the Yggy, it ain't, happening. Give it some time and you will be rewarded.

 

[johnjen]

One last comment.
Don't turn it off.

Leave it on and if you really want to speed up the break in, keep music playing into it the whole time.

Many reported 7 days of continuous playing before it blossomed and showed it's full capabilities.

JJ

 

[Baldr]

 
I believe it's too early to make any proclamations about one of the other big deal attributes of any piece of audio equipment. That attribute would be tone. Can you tell the difference between one solo violin and another? Do you expect your DAC to allow you to hear and understand the characteristics of Gil Shaham's Stradivarius versus that of Anne Akiko Meyers' Strad? Or is that too much to expect of a DAC? Well, this is the sort of thing involved in assessing tone production of your system. A simpler test would be this: Can you tell when the first and second violin sections put their mutes on in some section of some symphony? My guess would be that most DACs just don't have the accuracy to pull that off. I'll find out about the Yggy on these tests later on.

 
I cannot resist this appallingly unscientific quasi-simile:  I suppose that if it takes a Strad centuries to come into its own, that it could take several days for an Yggy to do likewise.

 

[m0nster]

I think at times we are so focussed on those technicalities that we forget how beautiful actually is... Enjoy some listening without only focussing on gear