That's an exstream comparison not that relevant to selecting
say the best dac between $2,300 and $5,000.
When designing a bridge no one would question the value
of measurements. When dealing with the theatre of the
mind discerning what measurments are relevant is a
dilemma that won't be solved on this thread.
In chemistry there are two families of analysis. Qualitative and quantitative. The Yggy has been recently been taken to task for its quantitative performance in this thread. I have been told just how it is not true that the Yggy is my best shot. I am not quoting the entire post here, because it is very graphically long, with many uncredited graphs, but the poster is @Rotijon, a page or so back. It seems that it is timely on this thread to address the Yggy's design goals.
I have stated that the Yggy is the best I can do. My bad. The Yggy is the best I can do which matters as a music reproduction device. I am interested in just that, as senior to the best possible specs. You see, I want to make this available to as many as possible, and the best possible specs are costly. That is much of the reason that the other units cost at least 5x Yggy's price. Do you want to obsess over 0.001% vs. 0.0001% distortion or whatever bad artifact? Do you want a car which goes 300MPH with no roads suitable upon which to drive it? Do you want a ten ton air conditioner for your home which can bring the temperature down to below freezing in less than 20 minutes?
This is not to say that specs and objectivity are not important. There are others on this forum with serious creds as measurers who seem to be happy with the Yggy. You buy an Yggy for the burrito filter. The Yggy filter has unique time domain qualities which convey compelling information and detail that many, many people have found essential to their enjoyment of music. There are some unwilling or incapable of hearing this. There are those who are either genuinely tone deaf or those who will not train themselves to hear scales. They are like the color blind who lack the ability to appreciate such things as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, or the differing qualities of color film. Does this mean I am a straw hat wearing huckster selling euphones? Hell, no. I am selling a device to reproduce emotionally involving music. And, no, I do not have all of the answers after all of these years. I still work very hard at learning more. That is the best I can do. Hobbies, whether they be stamp collecting, audio, or model car racing are inherently emotional. That is why I do this.
I have been enjoying the sound even if windows has been in the way! I tried hooking up a raspberry pi running moode to Yggy and I got a lot of 'ticking'. Odd, since the same raspberry played fine through an iFi micro DSD dac. I guess YGGY renders the slightest abnormalities. After Yggy, the iFi is now sounds flat and uninviting.
I have been enjoying the sound even if windows has been in the way! I tried hooking up a raspberry pi running moode to Yggy and I got a lot of 'ticking'. Odd, since the same raspberry played fine through an iFi micro DSD dac. I guess YGGY renders the slightest abnormalities. After Yggy, the iFi is now sounds flat and uninviting.
If you want to stay with a relatively cheap source, you might want to play with a CuBox-i2 (around $100 USD) running Volumio (free Linux-based software). I've not used the CuBox with the Yggy, as I've given it to my tech-y daughter for her own system, but I've used it successfully with a Bifrost and with other DACs. These days I use microRendus with UpTone LPS-1 power supplies for my DACs (Yggy and Bifrost), but the improvements over the CuBox, while audible to me and my wife (who pays all attention to the music and zero to the geari are not huge.
The minutiae of graphs, measurements and questions about specific mathematical technicalities belong in the sound science forum. That's probably why axle_69 was taken to task.
In chemistry there are two families of analysis. Qualitative and quantitative. The Yggy has been recently been taken to task for its quantitative performance in this thread. I have been told just how it is not true that the Yggy is my best shot. I am not quoting the entire post here, because it is very graphically long, with many uncredited graphs, but the poster is @Rotijon, a page or so back. It seems that it is timely on this thread to address the Yggy's design goals.
I have stated that the Yggy is the best I can do. My bad. The Yggy is the best I can do which matters as a music reproduction device. I am interested in just that, as senior to the best possible specs. You see, I want to make this available to as many as possible, and the best possible specs are costly. That is much of the reason that the other units cost at least 5x Yggy's price. Do you want to obsess over 0.001% vs. 0.0001% distortion or whatever bad artifact? Do you want a car which goes 300MPH with no roads suitable upon which to drive it? Do you want a ten ton air conditioner for your home which can bring the temperature down to below freezing in less than 20 minutes?
This is not to say that specs and objectivity are not important. There are others on this forum with serious creds as measurers who seem to be happy with the Yggy. You buy an Yggy for the burrito filter. The Yggy filter has unique time domain qualities which convey compelling information and detail that many, many people have found essential to their enjoyment of music. There are some unwilling or incapable of hearing this. There are those who are either genuinely tone deaf or those who will not train themselves to hear scales. They are like the color blind who lack the ability to appreciate such things as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, or the differing qualities of color film. Does this mean I am a straw hat wearing huckster selling euphones? Hell, no. I am selling a device to reproduce emotionally involving music. And, no, I do not have all of the answers after all of these years. I still work very hard at learning more. That is the best I can do. Hobbies, whether they be stamp collecting, audio, or model car racing are inherently emotional. That is why I do this.
I have stated that the Yggy is the best I can do. My bad. The Yggy is the best I can do which matters as a music reproduction device. I am interested in just that, as senior to the best possible specs. You see, I want to make this available to as many as possible, and the best possible specs are costly. That is much of the reason that the other units cost at least 5x Yggy's price. Do you want to obsess over 0.001% vs. 0.0001% distortion or whatever bad artifact?
If @Baldr can accept the support of a tech guy who has no specialized expertise in audio or signal processing, but who has used a lot of related math for many years and used to hang out with the top audio and DSP people at Bell Labs: reproducible measurements are based on synthetic signals that attempt to tease out properties of a system but that are very far from capturing the actual audible attributes of the system with musical signals. For one thing, the statistics of musical signals are way different from those of the synthetic signals used in measurement. That's why some lossy low-bitrate coders like AAC can sound surprisingly good for the bitrate, but that's also why synthetic low-complexity signals are only useful to catch glaringly bad system properties, not to tease out subtle differences that only show up with high-complexity signals like actual music.
In my first job while still working on my math major, I helped civil engineers with their structural modeling programs. I learned soon enough that while the modeling programs helped check major design constraints, the actual behavior of structures (for instance, in seismic plastic deformation) was much subtler than what the simplified linear models in the code I helped debug. That came glaringly obvious when modeled-safe designs were tested in physical models on a shaking table and failed due to un-modeled nonlinearities. Or when theoretically "wrong" bold designs by creative engineers stood the test of time (this legendary bridge engineer from my youth was notorious for breaking the rules with beautiful concrete arch bridge designs that still stun the onlooker).
The Yggdrasil has allowed me to enjoy music on a level I never thought possible. I cherish my magical Yggdrasil so much, that I have really thought about getting another one. Right now I have my Yggy hooked up to the Ragnarok, which is driving my Fritz Speakers. Although earlier I had the Yggdrasil hooked to my Liquid Glass, which drove my Focal Utopia to god like performance. Thanks for creating such a magnificent Dac Baldr. Please have a great night sir.
The Yggdrasil has allowed me to enjoy music on a level I never thought possible. I cherish my magical Yggdrasil so much, that I have really thought about getting another one. Right now I have my Yggy hooked up to the Ragnarok, which is driving my Fritz Speakers. Although earlier I had the Yggdrasil hooked to my Liquid Glass, which drove my Focal Utopia to god like performance. Thanks for creating such a magnificent Dac Baldr. Please have a great night sir.
My situation forces me to go to USB from AES for some music sources and USB sounds somewhat glassy (sharp) to me compared to AES and I prefer AES to USB.
Is USB meant to sound like that or some cable can resolve this? My setup is iPhone -> Powered USB hub -> Yggy.
My situation forces me to go to USB from AES for some music sources and USB sounds somewhat glassy (sharp) to me compared to AES and I prefer AES to USB.
Is USB meant to sound like that or some cable can resolve this? My setup is iPhone -> Powered USB hub -> Yggy.
The minutiae of graphs, measurements and questions about specific mathematical technicalities belong in the sound science forum. That's probably why axle_69 was taken to task.
The advantage of USB is its ubiquity and its convenience. Whereas there are people here who like the sound of USB, the majority are with me, perhaps not to my extreme dislike. It has been a major project of mine to elevate the sonic standards of USB, and I may be on the threshold of fixing it to my liking. Until then, I find it functional but sounding less than wonderful. As I have said elsewhere, it is like eating fast food - not delicious but it will form a stool.
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