[BIG POPPA]

Yeah we had another one. But this time we had a hot transported Yggi and a cold transported Yggi. We Blind tested a ton of cables, rolled tubes, and just the topic's of interest was enough to blow your mind or put you to sleep. 50/50 either way. Miceblue did take pic's and the company was great. Just a few thoughts                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Pizza came hot, definitely a fan of the artichoke chicken but flavor of the sausage pepperoni with the garlic butter and washing it down with some NW brewed hef was very very satisfying.

Of course the sound was fantastic out of the different rigs! Yggy backed the hype, the 1964 Adele V12 blew me away (way more than the noble kaiser or other totl iems ever did), and last but not least several new artists to check out.

 

[miceblue]

That was a pretty amazing meet. A big thank you to ericr for being such an awesome host! I got to the pizza late, but cheese pizza is one of my favourites. : D

Thanks to xtreme4099 for bringing the Atlas blackberry cider too. That was a pretty interesting drink, sweeter than I thought it would be. There were a lot bottles at this meet, hahaha.






Anyway, the big thing people were probably itching to try was the Schiit Yggdrasil. We were fortunate to have two last night.




The top one was transported cold, so it needed some time to warm up, and was connected to a Schiit Ragnarok amplifier driving a modified Sennheiser HD800.


The bottom one was transported hot, so it was pre-warmed, transported warm, and was all set to go by the time of the meet. It was also connected to the Ragnarok for comparisons, as well as the STAX SRM-1 MK2 and SR-407. There was a Schiit Wyrd in the chain between the Yggy and computer transport.












I didn't get a chance to listen to the "cold" one, so I can't say how much of a difference warm-up affects the sound unfortunately.





What I did get to test though is a Supra brand USB cable Made in Sweden. I had a demo Light Harmonic LightSpeed [10G] split cable with me too so bimmer100 and I were curious about any differences between the two cables. bimmer didn't hear any differences between the two in the setup, but I thought I heard a difference somewhere. bimmer then setup a 10-trial blind test........and I failed pretty bad (I think I got 5/10 correct), hahaha. It was an interesting test but I'd be curious to do it again with more time and to have it be strictly an A/B/X test instead of a "guess which cable¹ you're currently listening to" test.





Setup:
iPad Mini + Neutron music player
Lightning Apple Camera Connection Kit
LightSpeed 10G Split (power leg coming from LPS4) or Supra ¹with a USB regenerator added-in sometimes
Pulse X Infinity
HE-560 [modded grille] with 4-PIN XLR balanced cable





And thank you BIG POPPA for setting up the power cable blind tests. I missed the ones last time so it was pretty cool to be able to do it this time around.





^ getting the cable roster tests laid out; we chose to test 3 cables at a time: two fancy ones and a generic lamp shade cable for a "booby trap" cable


^ amplifier of choice (I used the HD650 for my tests)


bimmer brought a pretty substantially thick cable from PS Audio, codename "Python"





Doing the blind tests:














And switching power cables





The results were pretty interesting. We all used the same 3 power cables, same amp, same transport, and the same song (I don't remember what it was other than "Maple Shade"). We chose any headphone/headphone cable of our liking. Between the 3 power cables with the HD650, I actually liked the lamp shade "booby trap" cable the best (seemed to have a decent soundstage, frequency response, and instrument separation), rubidium the second most (wide soundstage and good dynamics), and gold the least (seemed congested and up-front). I was actually going to guess the gold one was the lamp shade one because I didn't like it very much....

Actually, johnjen brought a meter used to measure the power performance of cables (or something like that) and the lamp shade cable measured surprisingly well for a "generic" cable.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8udc_M5QpN8[/video]





Last, but not least, thank you to gefski for staying late to let me try the Yggy vs LH Labs Pulse X Infinity A/B comparisons. Chick Corea's "The Hilltop" song sounded sublime on your setup with the SRM-1 MK2.




Setup:
MacBook + Audirvana Plus (no upsampling, hog mode, integer mode) + CD rips
LightSpeed 1G cable
Pulse X Infinity (powered by LPS4; warmed up for at least 4 hours; Femto Time Mode) or Yggdrasil (not sure what the power cable was; already warmed up and hot-transported to the meet via uninterruptible power supply)
KabelDirekt Pro Series RCA cable
STAX SRS-2170 (powered by LPS4)

For me, (warmed up) Yggdrasil > X Infinity with the 1G cable, but only slightly. I still hold my opinion that the X Infinity is one of the finest Delta-Sigma DAC implementations I've ever heard. My MacBook wasn't recognising the Yggy with the 10G Split cable, so I ditched that and used a single 1G cable instead, in which the Yggy was instantly recognised.

From what I heard, the Yggy has a narrower soundstage, but a soundstage that's deeper and offers better instrument separation and layering than the X Infinity. In terms of dynamics, the Yggy also sounds slightly more dynamic, offering a deeper, more pronounced bass with some warmth, and treble that sounds smoother and not as grainy. Switching from the Yggy to the X Infinity, the soundstage and layering seems to get flattened in terms of depth, but seems wider and slightly taller. The bass also becomes slightly less present and the highs have a kind of etchy sound that many describe for Delta-Sigma DACs.

Still, after these tests, I'm not complaining about the X Infinity's sound at all and I'm quite happy with it. Comparing the two side-by-side was a fortuitous experience for me since not everyone gets to compare a, in my opinion, very high-quality Delta-Sigma DAC to an equally, in my opinion, high-quality R-2R DAC. Both DACs are excellent. It will be interesting to put the Multibit Gungnir in the mix for future comparisons.

 

[gefski]

Great Saturday evening!

Gear talk, listening and discovery!

Music talk listening and discovery!

Even off-topic waterskiing/boarding/JetSkiing talk with Barra!

Thanks to atomicbob for the inverter loan for hot Yggy transport!

Thanks to Big Poppa for the invite and to ericr for the super hospitality!

Some of my favorites: johnjen's Rok/HD800 had my toes tapping, curbfeeler's rig has me loving it's presentation at every meet. I need to listen to miceblue's Pulse X next time.

But my favorite listen Saturday? atomicbob's Gumby/Sunrise/HD650. Could have just sat at his breakfast bar for a few hours. It has no business sounding that good. Hmm, am I a Yggy owner telling people not to buy a Yggy, LOL.

Absolutely a thumbs-up evening!!!

 

[johnjen]

This was a great meet.
Great tunes, good folks, a welcomed sharing of interests…

AND…
I got to listen, for the first time, to a Jggy, thru my Rok and my 800's along with HE1000's (sergio?) and a tweako set of LCD's (curbfeeler).

While I wasn't blown away by the Jggy it was delivering nuances and subtleties and 'flavors' to instruments I've never heard before.
This lack of being blown away is a double edged sword, which works in my favor, in that the compulsion and it’s addictiveness weren't so over powering that I can't even enjoy my own system anymore.
Thank doG for small favors… :atsmile:

There was a 'correctness' and completeness to instruments and voices that was way more than satisfying.
It had the ability to present separate nuances, which were very close in character and tonality to each other, such as 2 voices, to the extent that either could be focused upon and followed independent of the other.
This ability to resolve to this level of detail is a remarkable achievement, at least in my opinion.

There were elements and nuances to every voice and instrument that previously were only 'hinted' at in my and other systems I'm familiar with.

I did get a chance to listen to the 'cold' Jggy as it was warming up and what I noticed was a lack of depth, as in it all sounded like a 2d soundstage.
And the inner detail and 'richness' of each instrument and voice was much thinner/lacking by comparison to the warm Jggy.

I must thank gefski for making the effort and dealing with the accompanying hassle of bringing the 'portable' UPS rig in order to keep the Jggy 'hot' during the transit from home to the meet and back.
This is the rig that AtomicBob had come up with in order to accomplish the ability to 'hot' transport dacs that need this level of care and feeding in order to deliver their best at meets such as this. The Jggy and also the Mousai MSD192 both were able to benefit, or perhaps we all benefitted because we were able to hear them at or very near their very best.

It does take 2 people to transport 'the rig' from car to meeting room and back and one must be careful to stay within the maximum gap allowed by the power cable. :atsmile:

The rest of the meet was equally as satisfying, on multiple levels, as well.
The conversations and level of experience was a delight, as experiences and cherished perspectives were shared and contrasted, which is a rare treat.
There was even the chance to share experiences while listening to the same music, yet another rare treat on headphones.

The testing of power cables and sharing of results was most eye opening in terms of who noticed what, and mostly for me, that differences and subtle changes were noticed within the structure of the test, which was a testament to the collective abilities to hear subtle differences and nuances given the very limited time to evaluate and the range of different cables available.
And I did my best to further befuddle the tests due to just finishing cooking BigPoppa’s cables and distribution plugin strip.
As in the very first words out of his mouth were, ‘my cables sounded like ASS’ when he fired them up for the first time. :atsmile:
I figure Big Poppa will fill in the details in due course. :thumb

So a BIG thank you to Big Poppa, ericr, gefski, curbfeeler, Barra, 7ryder and well, everybody, for showing up and contributing a wonderful evening of shared audiophoolery! :atsmile:

And lastly I want to invite one and all to a thread I’ll soon be starting here on HeadFi.
It is my intention to start a thread for us to share our experiences and the wisdom we have gained based upon our experiments and trials in learning what and how to improve our playback systems.
But be able to do so in a smack down free zone.

I see this as an opportunity to share what we have learned during our attempts to improve our systems and so be able to share these results with others so that they may hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes we have made in order to find out just what does (and doesn’t) help.

Coming soon to a DIY thread near you! :atsmile:


JJ

 

[gefski]

Just a comment about hot transport, now that I've reassembled my system at home.

I had Yggy & Wyrd into the UPS for about a week before the meet, during the meet, and after returning home. Now I've done a quick shutdown and have re-plugged both into my Cullen box. IMO it's better.

So in the future both will be plugged into the charged UPS for travel, the whole works will be walked into the meet and UPS plugged in to the wall. Then after everything is set up, we can do a 5 second shutdown and re-plug Ygg & Wyrd into the Cullen box. The UPS can remain empty, plugged & charged for the reverse procedure & trip home.

We can even have JJ test the current from these different devices. And the UPS will test best of all, perfect sine wave, etc., LOL.

 

[johnjen]

Just a comment about hot transport, now that I've reassembled my system at home.

I had Yggy & Wyrd into the UPS for about a week before the meet, during the meet, and after returning home. Now I've done a quick shutdown and have re-plugged both into my Cullen box. IMO it's better.
snip

I suspected as much but figured that this meet wasn't the time to go all out and fuss with all the added complexity.

And I figured that if there were a power amp being hot transported, the differences between being plugged into the UPS vs. the wall socket would be quite noticable as well, probably even more so than the dac.

We kind of lucked out in that there were 2 sets of receptacles to choose from for the gear in that room.
After I discovered the differences between the single vs dual duplex wall plugin setup, I moved the audio gear to the better ac power source.
This suggests yet another level of fussing, if we should want to go there in the future.

JJ

 

[bimmer100]

Thank you Eric and Bill for putting this together and thank you Gil for putting together the cable testing. Next time I would have liked to hear my ps audio lab cable and also another cable I picked up that is a synergistic research tesla t1 5ft cable.
I'm most interested to take the lab cable and Pangea ac14se cables to that cryo guy in puyallup. I would love to test those cables before and after. I may leave one of the three Pangea cables untreated for reference. I also picked up some new cryo connectors for the ps audio lab cable. They are silver and red copper with aluminum bodies. Anyhow, I am learning more about power cables how hey can subtlety make a nice refinement to a system. Albeit I'm most interested still in getting my hands on a Yggdrasil to experience next to my m11.
I'm glad to have met many people that night and hope I was accepted company by most people there. I would hope to be able to attend more events in the future like this. I'm happy to bring my equipment as well if there is interest for it.

Thank you JJ, for being so kind as to explain many of the more technical aspects of cables and being patient with everyone that evening. You're most helpful and kind. I did enjoy have conversations with you and would like to get that information from you at some point for he cryo guy in puyallup. or if there is enough interest that we can get a group buy to treat many cables at once. I have at least 3 cables I would like done


Mike, I really enjoyed talking with you and wanted to say that your lhlabs pulse xfi was really something special. I wanted to be able to hear more of it. But time was an issue. For a ds Dac, I agree it sounds sublime. It's also so darn compact compared to most setups! I'm very happy to have tried the 10G cable and know what I'm missing, or not missing. It's an excellent USB cable no matter how you look at it, but wow is it ever expensive! I hope to get my 1g cable sometime whenever that darned geek wave xdf256 is done and shipped. Maybe a couple more years? Haha

I need to make a point of listening to more gear and talk less at the next meet.

erics's 1964 ears IEM's were most impressive! I really enjoyed how musical your Dac is and it was truly special. I could imagine those IEM's sounding even better with custom tips made from Westone or something. They sounded good even with silicone tips. And honestly I have never hear any IEM's that sound good with silicon tips as they make such a poor seal in my ears. I would have loved to own a pair of those IEM's. I'll have to settle for my basic IEM's though! 12drivers sounds most expensive! Haha impressive! Thank you for sharing Eric.

 

[johnjen]

snip
Thank you JJ, for being so kind as to explain many of the more technical aspects of cables and being patient with everyone that evening. You're most helpful and kind. I did enjoy have conversations with you and would like to get that information from you at some point for he cryo guy in puyallup. or if there is enough interest that we can get a group buy to treat many cables at once. I have at least 3 cables I would like done

snip

It was good to meet and talk to you as well. :thumb
Your 'big' cable tested really well, in fact it delivered the best set of readings from all of the cables I tested that night. And the mods you are considering should really help it take a 'mother may I' step up a notch or 3 or 4…

We need to hear from Big Poppa about the results of having his cables cooked as well.
I mean if we're going to spend the time to cryo the cables, cooking them, which I see as a 'complimentary' process, seems like a good thing to do as well.

And the ability to cryo locally is a time and $$ saver.

Yeah it takes time to drive down and back, twice, but that is much faster than shipping down to Aridzona…
And I hear tell that multiple cryo treatments, back to back is the tweako icing on the cake so to speak.
Which makes sense, that is if my understand of what is going on is close to the 'truth'…

Anyway when you're ready to take the next step let me know and we'll figure… :atsmile:

JJ

 

[bimmer100]

Just a comment about hot transport, now that I've reassembled my system at home.

I had Yggy & Wyrd into the UPS for about a week before the meet, during the meet, and after returning home. Now I've done a quick shutdown and have re-plugged both into my Cullen box. IMO it's better.

So in the future both will be plugged into the charged UPS for travel, the whole works will be walked into the meet and UPS plugged in to the wall. Then after everything is set up, we can do a 5 second shutdown and re-plug Ygg & Wyrd into the Cullen box. The UPS can remain empty, plugged & charged for the reverse procedure & trip home.

We can even have JJ test the current from these different devices. And the UPS will test best of all, perfect sine wave, etc., LOL.

 which UPS are you using?

 

[gefski]

 which UPS are you using?

I'm out of town now so am not looking at it, but I believe it's CyberPower 1000, about $160ish from Amazon. AtomicBob steered me to it.

Yggy only draws 35w.

 

[BIG POPPA]

A few thoughts...
The Yggi is a awesome piece of equipment. Having one hot transported and another cold transported gave me a great perspective....
It is just fine cold transported. there is not that much difference really. I can tell easily, but it is me. We are nitpicking that last 1%. The Yggi sounds great either way. Haters are idiots. The Yggi is a home run and it deserves more love for what it can do. The shortcomings are a short list.
The one thing we did is blind test power cables... And you know what? Peeps were excited to do it. And one thing it did show? Everyone had a there own favorites. They could tell when the cables were different and when they were the same. So when peeps say cables don't make a difference, I just roll my eyes. I do the comparisons frequently, I make the cables, I learn the sound signatures to all the different components to the cable.
We do have these secrets meets wired tight to the purpose. What we do in this venue, we really can't do in a regular meet. We get our geek on. Seriously...lol
We let our hair down and enjoy everyone's company and learn from what they contribute to the meet. And it is a lot and can't wait for the next one.

 

[bimmer100]

I was intrigued that a tesla treated cable does test much better than others. So I bought tesla treated outlets for my ps300 and tesla T1 cable all from synergistic research. They were cheap enough to give them a go. Either way, will try to cryo some cables to further make some comparison. I don't have much else to tweak in my system and the cables seem to refine the sound, not redefine it. It was easy to spot the pos or lamp shade cable. But most of the higher end cables all sound pretty good, just tweaked ever so slight. I personally notice a bigger difference with my own master11 being warmed up for 24hours as opposed to cold start. It's definitely more than swapping a power cable out and more than 1% difference found worth the Yggdrasil being cold or warm. I never claim to know much about cables, only general knowledge enough to know my money goes farther with upgrading an amp or transducer. My opinion of course. Noob or not, idiot or not. Not trying to hate. Only express my experience. And by no means is anyone "right" in this hobby as it's purely subjective in most cases. I did enjoy the meet and would love to have heard more gear. The cable test was fun yet I didn't get to try the second part, nor did I have headphones that could be properly powered. So it would be fun to try the test with different gear that would allow everyone to choose any headphones of their choice. I find this important as we are most accustomed to our own headphones and their own sound signature. My he560's sound like tin cans as they didn't get the ideal power required. Usually around 2-2.5mw according to inner fidelitys charts.
Most everyone was really nice and had a lot of informative things to say. I was happy to attend albeit I understand I may be a noob, and hope I didn't upset anyone by being there. I'm happy to have actually have sat down and talked with some of you and appreciate learning what I can from those humble enough to share their knowledge while reserving judgment.
I still consider myself very new to this hobby at a semi serious level. I know we all share one thing in common, and that's the love for music. I am grateful that there are small meetings like this so that we can focus on some of the more detailed subjects in the audio world. I like how JJ refers to us as audiofools. It's a bit extreme, yet fun since it seems everyone is trying to squeeze ever last drop of performance out of their gear. Fortunately we can probably save each other some money by putting s lot of things to the test... Example? 1000usd USB cables

I would like to attend more meetings if I'm invited. I know little compared to some.

 

[bimmer100]

I'm out of town now so am not looking at it, but I believe it's CyberPower 1000, about $160ish from Amazon. AtomicBob steered me to it.

Yggy only draws 35w.

Awesome, , I have three ups from cyber power but not sure too much about them. Would like to compare what you were using with success. I know the YGG is a mere 35w and my m11 is 45w. Should be easy to power, I just didn't know how clean the power is from those ups'
I do know they are heavy as hell! Just moved a couple all in one bin.
If I decide to bring my m11 to a meet sometime I will consider hot transporting it as I believe it makes a big enough difference for the effort. IMHO

 

[Soundsgoodtome]

Hmm... my Paradisea 3 and Sunrise 3 can probably use one of the 500va models and still be able to get to anywhere in WA without powering down. I'll consider this as well.

So this UPS with clean power graphs... is it also while plugged into the wall or just strictly on battery power?