Haha, just reading over those again is awesome. Sorrodje is one of the smoothest trolls I've seen. I hope estreeter comes back in with some more fun.
How does the older Gungnir compare to newer DACs that are 2-3x as expensive and classified as being in Schiit's Yggsdrail tier? That's a very good question.
Sorrodje does take a lot of this very, very seriously - he's not just here to keep idle minds amused while you wait for yggdrasil
Let's ignore Hugo and every other d-s design out there for a moment - given what purrin has written
this is Yggdrasil's natural competition regardless of the price differential:
http://www.audiostream.com/content/totaldac-d1-dual-dac
12K USD might as well be 120K for many of us, but sections of that review are eerily similar to the impressions given here and in the Yggy thread re the Schiit DAC's sonic prowess:
The thing I'd like most to convey about the D1-Dual DAC is what may seem like a contradictory set of values. It is at once fluid, very fully voiced in terms of a lovely and rich timbral palette, while also delivering a truly amazing level of detail. Even though I almost hate to say it, I heard things, important musical things, from recordings I thought I knew all too well that I've never heard before. Things like drum sticks hitting cymbals and the resultant rush of sound where the distinction between these events was conveyed with an uncanny exactness that I've heard get completely lost with other DACs. It's as if the Totaldac is able to pull more musical information from the sound file and deliver it in a more exacting manner while also sounding completely natural and without stripping away one ounce of tonal character. And that's pretty special in my experience.
It's worth noting that, up to this point, Lavorgna was convinced that DSD was the only way to fly - the totaldac re-aligned his thinking about Redbook. It's a similar beast to Yggy in that any repairs will require shipping back to the point of origin - in this case, France - making ownership a serious investment, albeit not as serious as the monobloc D1 server also reviewed on Audiostream, but that takes us even further from the Yggy's 2300USD sticker. I believe the MSB offerings - particularly their Analog DAC - have already been discussed here, but atm this is the R2R wildcard for mine:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/phasure-nos1a-digital-analogue-converter-review-or-experience-22305/
Another one-man operation, another return-to-Europe repair proposition, but the people who've heard it seem every bit as evangelical as purrin is about Yggdrasil. The stumbling block for me - purchase price and RTB issues aside - is that this DAC seems tied to PeterSt's playback software for best results and that's the kind of lock-in that most of us wont be happy with. The designer's thinking on digital audio seems to line up brilliantly with some of the hardcore fanatics on the CA site and those guys live to tweak everything from the hardware to the OS :
if Mike's DAC offers us one thing, its the prospect of being able to plug the thing into the transport of our choice and just start listening to music. For $2300 plus shipping and taxes. With a warranty honored by an established company in the US. And a designer who has an extraordinary grasp of the English language.
I didnt start this as an attempt to write an endorsement for a DAC I've never even heard, but Benny-x's query does contain some interesting wording:
classified as being in Schiit's Yggsdrail tier
Unless I'm missing something, that would be
the vintage R2R DACs and the two European offerings discussed above. '
2-3 times the price' immediately excludes the ultra high-end stuff from people like MSB, Light Harmonic and dCS - I'd love to hear all of them but I'm not too fussed about comparisons between statement audio and something which will cost less than the top Macbook Pro which - as luck would have it - is what I'm currently using to type this overly long post whilst listening to some music via the - shock, horror - Chord Hugo. That sort of dedication will not go unpunished.
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro
In summary, unless purrin and Mike have done a very effective snow job,
the vast majority of DACs on the market are built around a fundamentally flawed design principle, delta-sigma modulation. Rule a line through those and you're left with either the seriously expensive and/or the seriously quirky. I'm all for comparisons - flawed designs or no - but if what has been typed here re
highly-regarded DACs like the Auralic Vega is even vaguely accurate, the comparisons should focus on the other R2R offerings. Apologies for the length of this post - just my two cents worth and others may have a completely different take on it. I'm confident that the usual suspects on CA will want comparisons with the totaldac and phasure offerings - fine and dandy, but there is more to buying specialist audio than opening the box and plugging it in.
