I'm late to this party (was in disconnected powder skiing heaven for the last 10 days), but I wanted to confirm this. I own an original Yggy (speaker system), a Holo Spring KTE 3 (home headphone system), and a Soekris dac1541 (work headphone system). While I have not been patient enough to compare the DACs against each other on a single source-analog chain, my subjective impressions confirm what you and others say. Overall, the Spring and dac1541 sound blacker, with instruments popping out from the background as in a recording studio, while the Yggy sounds more like being in a live performance, where there's always a slight background sound level. OTOH, the Yggy's sound stage feels more open, spacious, layered. I'll be sending my Yggy for a full update and use my Spring in the meanwhile for my speaker system, it should be a fun experience.