Thoughts on a bunch of DACs (and why delta-sigma kinda sucks, just to get you to think about stuff)

[wahsmoh]

Schiit Yggdrasil?

People started talking about the Yggdrasil because it just came out... The hype train never stopped rolling after it left the station in January. Maybe you should go join the Auralic Vega thread 

 since all overpriced DACs sound the same hehe

 

[JohnnyCanuck]

 

I've read this thread since its inception and I've never had that impression.

Schiit Yggdrasil?

 
See http://www.head-fi.org/t/667711/new-schiit-ragnarok-and-yggdrasil 

 

[prot]

Once upon a time, in the US there existed a monopoly called Bell Telophone Company.  They created Bell Telephone Labs as a "think tank" subsidiary.  This entity developed virtually all valuable audio technology in the early 20th century, manufacturing much of it by another subsidiary called Western Electric.  What is lesser known, particularly among those of limited or glib knowledge of audio technical history, is that Bell Labs developed and patented what later became known as sampling theory and the fundamentals of what became digital audio some 70 years before the fact of realized equipment; this in the era of World War One.  Bell labs published a forgotten time domain multirate digital filter in 1917 at a time when  no hardware existed to implement it.  I spent five years of my life figuring out how to combine this with modern frequency domain filters.  The resultant filter is the DSP cornerstone of all Theta and now Schiit filters. One has only to peruse the footnotes in modern DSP grad school level textbooks to verify this.

Many thx for the history update ... thought the whole digital thing started after ww2 with theoretical inceptions around 1930.

 

[pldelisle]

I noticed that the Yggy comes with USB Gen 3 board. Any indication that BiFrost and Gungnir will get this update soon ?

 

[Tuco1965]

I noticed that the Yggy comes with USB Gen 3 board. Any indication that BiFrost and Gungnir will get this update soon ?

It's been asked and answered with a not any time soon. Who knows though.

 

[pldelisle]

Sorry. Thanks for your answer. I didn't notice it has been asked.

 

[Stillhart]

Deleted. I didn't read the topic title enough...lol

What's wrong with Delta-Sigma DACs again?

 
There's a lot of thread to go through to get this answer.  First thing to realize is that the thread title is the opinion of one man (Purrin), not everyone on Head-fi or even in this thread.  The short version is that some folks think that D-S DAC's don't sound as good as analogue R2R DAC's.  They sound more "digital" and "grainy" and "artifical", while the R2R sounds more "natural" and "realistic" and "smooth".
 
As someone who recently picked up a pair of vintage R2R DAC's, I'd have to agree that they do sound better IMO.  But I don't think this makes D-S DAC's sound bad, I just don't really like that sound anymore.  
 

Didn't realize immediately this is just a marketing thread.

 
The Yggy just came out; it's a hype train thing.  Eventually talk will return to the differences between high-end DAC's.  You just popped in at an interesting time.
 
Also, it just so happens that the designer of some of the best R2R DAC's from the 90's now works for Schiit Audio.  He comes in here and educates us occasionally and I find that pretty awesome.  If it happens to help sell some units as a corollary, well I'd say he earned it by doing what most companies won't.  Just my $0.02.

 

[Chris J]

FWIW, both. The differences are barely audible and they are night and day. Once you hear a difference between two DACs, it's hard to un-hear it. It then seems large and one might - if unlucky - be forced to pay a lot for that difference! Yet, in real terms, it might only matter for 0.1% of your material...

Completely agree with prot's excellent advice btw. Listen for yourself.

Btw, until I sat down and did a series of A/Bs (level-matched, conducted with careful attention to psychometric principles and with good awareness of cognition and memory-based principles bla bla), I thought "all dacs sounded the same". Or rather, I thought there were differences but too subtle for me to hear. I was wrong...
 

 
I would argue with you, but you are crazier than me.

 

[ciphercomplete]

Didn't realize immediately this is just a marketing thread.

The original post predates Purrin hearing the Yggy for the first time.  The Yggy is the first dac by Schiit to top the list.  The Master 7 ruled the roost for quite some time before Purrin got his hands on a Sonic Frontiers dac.  You could not be more wrong about this thread.    

 

[pyfgcrl]

   
There's a lot of thread to go through to get this answer.  First thing to realize is that the thread title is the opinion of one man (Purrin), not everyone on Head-fi or even in this thread.  The short version is that some folks think that D-S DAC's don't sound as good as analogue R2R DAC's.  They sound more "digital" and "grainy" and "artifical", while the R2R sounds more "natural" and "realistic" and "smooth".
 
As someone who recently picked up a pair of vintage R2R DAC's, I'd have to agree that they do sound better IMO.  But I don't think this makes D-S DAC's sound bad, I just don't really like that sound anymore.  
 
 
The Yggy just came out; it's a hype train thing.  Eventually talk will return to the differences between high-end DAC's.  You just popped in at an interesting time.
 
Also, it just so happens that the designer of some of the best R2R DAC's from the 90's now works for Schiit Audio.  He comes in here and educates us occasionally and I find that pretty awesome.  If it happens to help sell some units as a corollary, well I'd say he earned it by doing what most companies won't.  Just my $0.02.

Yeah, I don't see any engineer-types from other high-end audio companies giving us these lessons like Mike (and Jason for that matter) do... they clearly give a Schiit what we, the customer(s), think — that's my perspective anyway.  Other manufacturers are clearly missing the boat if they're not here to educate and enlighten.  I for one am so sick of audiophile-oriented marketing fluff and a good half my reason for trusting in the value of Schiit products is the honesty and straightforwardness of the posts from the company's owners on an enthusiast message board.

 

[diamondears]

Yeah, I don't see any engineer-types from other high-end audio companies giving us these lessons like Mike (and Jason for that matter) do... they clearly give a Schiit what we, the customer(s), think — that's my perspective anyway.  Other manufacturers are clearly missing the boat if they're not here to educate and enlighten.  I for one am so sick of audiophile-oriented marketing fluff and a good half my reason for trusting in the value of Schiit products is the honesty and straightforwardness of the posts from the company's owners on an enthusiast message board.

iFi audio...into bit-perfect filtering since 2 years ago when the iFi micro iDSD was released (and it's portable)...AMR way way back...their engineers (Thoersten Loestch, among others) discuss a lot about their engineering at the iFi nano, micro, Retro 50 and Pro threads...

 

[estreeter]

 

The original post predates Purrin hearing the Yggy for the first time.  The Yggy is the first dac by Schiit to top the list.  The Master 7 ruled the roost for quite some time before Purrin got his hands on a Sonic Frontiers dac.  You could not be more wrong about this thread.    

 
But from the day he got the SFD DAC, the remainder on that first page basically went into a box marked 'toys I know I'll never play with again' : it was always going to be a quest for a modern version of one of the vintage R2R DACs from that point forward. Not being critical, but its all there in black and white. Whether that makes this a 'marketing thread' is a matter of opinion but my interpretation of that first page now is that the non-R2R DACs are just there for comparison purposes. If I was about to spend anything resembling a thousand dollars on a d-s DAC, would this thread be an incentive to hold off until I had more money or at least had a chance to hear the Yggy for myself - to my way of thinking, it would, particularly given the scarcity of the highly regarded vintage R2R models on the used market.  

 

[wahsmoh]

That bad part of those sweet R2R's... I can get the volume higher before the treble becomes a problem and I will probably suffer quicker hearing loss 

 

[estreeter]

@pfygcri, have you never seen the epic posts typed up by Ayre's Charles Hansen ? This thread got decidedly nasty in places, but Charlie shoots straight from the hip and he clearly got sick of the usual suspects at CA telling him how to design a DAC. Like Mike and Jason, he wears his heart on his sleeve re the future of DSD - or lack thereof - but he was bludgeoned into implementing DSD in the latest version of the QB-9. 
 
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f6-dac-digital-analog-conversion/ayre-wants-%241-5k-direct-stream-digitaled-qb-9-a-15650/

 

[Insidious Meme]

Looks like a place in the intarwebs that Jason and Mike never visited..