[johnjen]

thank you, i will.. could you link me to your Schiit Yggdrasil/JggyB (light mods).. mods description? what is it?

Those 'light mods' are all reversible but do require opening up the dac, which carry's with it certain liabilities, so if you are willing to take responsibility for these, then there are, or can be benefits, depending upon your setup.

I use a tweaked ac mains cable and other suitable cables, and I replaced the fuse, and use WA-Qy xfmr chips on the 3 xfmrs, which together tends to open up the soundstage and add inner definition and focus, all of which I highly value.
There are other tweaks that are possible as well, but some of these require the experience of an owner who is technically proficient.

JJ

 

[johnjen]

One week was absolutely not enough in my case.
Give it at least three to four weeks of continuous warm up before you judge Yggy.

I agree, and ofttimes, again depending upon the rest of the system and how it's setup, it can take well over 1khrs before it fully stabilizes.
My record thus far was over 1600hrs after fussing with the setup.

It took me over 800hrs after all I did was turn off the JggyB for ≈45minutes and it cooled down, before it resumed at or near it's former degree of SQ excellence.

The front panel phase reversal switch is a subtle change, until you become sensitive to what it can do.
Then it still is subtle but for me the very bottom end becomes more visceral, delivers more impact, but only on tracks that actually still have this very low freq information.
Only about 1/3 of my CD's are phase reversed.
And many are hard to determine one way or the other.

And on speaker systems being able to deliver acoustic power from 30 down to 15hz (or less) is 'rare' and that is where I notice the biggest differences when the absolute phase is 'correct'.
An example is being able to hear the thrubbing of the air conditioning system, just after the gain comes up for that track, and just before the orchestra starts up.
And this is the kicker, being able to recognize and identify that it IS the air-con that is making that weird thrubbing noise.

This extended freq response, when coupled with the added definition and focus that playback in the correct absolute phase accords, can also add greater 'impact' (literally and figuratively speaking) all the way up the audio bandwidth.

JJ

 

[johnjen]

Thank you all for the comments and suggestions, just other thing i want to put in discussion is how Yggy is correct regarding total phase polarity.
It has switch for this, but at the moment i have suspect regarding how correct it correspond to input power plug. There is three pin in plug - ground, live (phase) and neutral.
Seems its wrong in Yggy (Neutral and Hot is displaced..) . Need to be measured (and i will) and proved. Hope some of you know what i am talking about and how it influence what you hear..
And please, if you don't hear difference when phase inversion button in Yggy on or off, just ignore my post..

I'm not entirely sure what you are saying so this may be off base so to speak.

Those IEC connectors are designed to maintain the hot and neutral connection so they can't be reversed.
And unless the power cable, or wall duplex receptacle, are reversed, then hot—>hot and neutral—>neutral.

And yes swapping ac mains hot/neutral is not going to change the analog output phase.

BUT swapping the hot/neutral ac leads that feeds this dac will, and can (with a few exceptions), yield 'less than optimal' results.

IOW unless you are running a special ac power distribution system of some sort, (there are several to choose from) then hot—>hot and neutral—>neutral is what is needed.

JJ

 

[Baldr]

One characteristic of an Yggy is there is no "constant bass" being played along with the music. In fact, you should hear no "deep bass" until something really deep comes along. No constant 5 or 6 note bass like an inexpensive speaker.

 

[US Blues]

One characteristic of an Yggy is there is no "constant bass" being played along with the music. In fact, you should hear no "deep bass" until something really deep comes along. No constant 5 or 6 note bass like an inexpensive speaker.

Truth.

 

[odessamarin]

@johnjen
thank you for comment regarding phase reversal. Seems it is not really bother many ppl, but it some tracks you really hear that something wrong.
Your example with air conditioning system is exactly what i was teeling how sometimes i hear it.. In some case I can say that phase wrong just from how background stage noise sounds just before music starts.

As for AC plug, yes, I was not say to invert pins, but if yuo invert plug then you can yeasly have then hot—>neutral and neutral—>hot connection.
At least in europ there is no polarity in AC plug socket.. can be easly put both ways.What i am now really puzzel is why i hear this difference.
I thought that it inverts global phase.. apparently not. And i want to understand how, by what means inversion in AC connection influence what i hear.
Hope somebody could help. and suggest what could it be.

@Baldr
thank you for this comment. I do find bass representation of Yggy special, and first impression was it less presented. But as you describe it also fits very well.
As i understand you correct, means many DACs represent bass by the way to pull it up evrytime when low freq presented, giving impression that bass is allays there and deep.
While yaggy do it in more natural way..? representing also gradation (dinamic range) also in bass domain.. means strong bass will be not always but only when it is really strong in recording.. If i get your point correctly.

 

[zachgraz]

As for AC plug, yes, I was not say to invert pins, but if yuo invert plug then you can yeasly have then hot—>neutral and neutral—>hot connection.
At least in europ there is no polarity in AC plug socket.. can be easly put both ways.What i am noe really puzzel is whu i hear this differance.
I thought that it inverts global phase.. apperantly not. And i want to understand how, by what means invertion in AC connection influance what i hear.
Hope somebody could help. and suggest what could it be.

Phasing out hifi components makes sense and in many cases changes in AC polarity are audible. In some components I can hear the difference, in others not. Btw I am in the EU 230 V AC.
You can measure the voltage between device ground (the case or the minus pole of a connector) and AC ground when no cables are connected AND the ground wire is disconnected (do not do that if you are no pro). In one position of the plug the voltage is higher than in the other position. The theory is that the higher the voltage the more compensating currents will flow via different connections and lessen the sound quality. For example in my power amp I measure 160V AC in the wrong position, and about 80V in the right position. So that is quite a difference.
The plug position with the lower voltage between device ground and AC ground is the correct position - in other words the setting then is hot->hot and neutral->neutral. Everybody who can handle a multimeter can measure the "right" plug position - but you really have to know what you are doing because disconnecting the ground wire, which is needed for measuring grounded devices, can potentially kill you.
There are devices that can measure the right plug position, for example the "Oehlbach Phaser". No special knowledge and no other tools are needed to specify right polarity with it. I have never tried this one so I cannot say if it is as reliable as using a multimeter and the Phaser is expensive too.

 

[michkhol]

You are measuring essentially stray currents causing voltage drop in your multimeter. The result is an arbitrary number. You have to have a complete circuit for the measurements to make sense. And yes, it may kill you.

 

[johnjen]

In the US the ac power is based upon 'Hot' and 'Neutral' ac power carrying wires.
And then there is the ground wire.

I assume it is the same in Europe.

This means that one of the 2 power carrying wires is at ground potential, while the other wire is where the 'power' comes from, so to speak.
This in turn means that if a component 'expects' to see this, (one hot wire and one not) and is wired with this in mind, and if the Hot and Neutral are reversed, the power input circuit is wired 'backwards' which can cause the circuit to operate 'non-optimally'.
But if the circuit is wired to 'expect' 2 power carrying wires, they can be reversed with little to no change in operation.

My BIG 45 amp is wired expecting to see 2 power carrying wires, so swapping the hot/neutral wires has no effect on it's operation.
But many devices aren't quite so 'flexible'.

And to add complexity to all of this, the neutral and ground wires are at ground potential, so they are 'safe' if you should happen to touch them or short them together.
This is a safety feature, by design, as it means only 1 wire is 'dangerous' instead of having 2 power carrying wires be 'dangerous'.

But if the device is designed and expects the power to come from the hot wire while the neutral wire is the 'return' path for the ac power, reversing them can alter the way the circuit operates, which isn't how the unit is meant to be used.

And that 3rd wire, the ground wire, adds yet even more complexity to my simplified explanation in that it IS the 'safety' ground and has a 'direct' relationship to the neutral wire.
And this is where the 1 hot vs 2 hot wires and reversing them yields differences (or not) in the operation of the device.
Because of this expectation (or not) that the neutral wire IS at ground potential vs. treating both power wires as being hot (even if only one is hot) this is where the 'difficulty' (to whatever extent) comes in.

And as mentioned previously there are power distribution systems where there are 2 hot wires and there is no actual neutral wire, as in neither wire is at ground potential.
This is how I'm feeding my BIG 45 amp, with 2) 60vac power wires and the ground wire provides THE ground for this setup.

JJ

 

[odessamarin]

@johnjen

thank you JJ.. very didactic!
in Europe is the same. And in my headphone amp bryston BHA-1 and yggy I do here in which AC direction sound is more appropriate. My issue is in case of bryston all correspond L-L and N-N.. as its indicated in socket and I tested it with sensore test screwdriver which show exactly where Live wire is.. by led light. Now in case of yggy to have better sound I need to invert AC. this is my pazzle. And I will test with voltmeter as suggested, just to check if my sound preference position correspond to correct AC connection. At the end could be that yggy just not payed attention to keep L-L and N-N rools. Becouse they design maybe not sensitive to this as you say.. but the thing seems at least in my case there is a difference and i want to understand. will back with measurment results. Thank you for help me to learn basic of this.
I attached scheme of Bryston amp.. maybe its possibile to say why It has AC sensitive design..
https://www.dropbox.com/s/memgyyshw6ye63l/BHA1_SCHEMATICS.pdf?dl=0

 

[odessamarin]

Ok, here i am )

I did test (with voltmeter) if all my gears has correct AC blug design.. as zachgraz suggested here. Thank you.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...d-the-first-post.881737/page-29#post-14840059

As expected they all have different voltage reading in different AC plug direction. I measured 60 - 80V when it's correct and 120-180V when AC inverted as zachgraz
explained. All my devices including yggy has "Live" pin in AC plug as it have to be... in this position all gears shows less AC potential measured between unit ground and AC ground:


The story should finish here, but not for me )) because in my case, inverted AC yggy sounds better! It goes against measurement and theory but this how it is.
For some reason for me yggy sounds better in Live-Neutral, Neutral-Live AC connection. I have no idea why. The main difference is imaging, stage representation..
But at the end what is important it sounds really really good! Love it.

 

[johnjen]

The only downside that I can see and may or may not be important to you is…
There is only 1 fuse in the Jggy and it is wired into the 'hot' (or 'L') marked power wire.
If you are bringing in the power on the neutral ('N') marked power wire, then the fuse is effectively ineffectual.

And are you running on 120± or 230± vac?

But I know what you mean when you find a setup that sounds 'Better', it's hard to go back…

JJ

 

[odessamarin]

@johnjen

I am 220 AC. Good idea about fuse. I may short it (cooper foil mod, seen it also as yggy mod around here...) and see if it's the reason of my sound issue. Thank you for advice.

http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/Schiit_mod/IMAG003.JPG

 

[michkhol]

 

[odessamarin]

DENAFRIPS Terminator: the King of R2R dac