[FLTWS]

Rankings, barf. Musical genius is such a culturally determined characteristic I'm skeptical of any so-called objective ranking. The fact that most people can't listen to Schoenberg or Webern without cringing, despite their intellectual brilliance, seems to me an open and shut reason why we shouldn't try to pursue the goose-chase of who's the best. Like sure Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, sure, they're great, but who's to say that Schubert isn't subtler than Beethoven? That Haydn isn't sneakier and more humorous than Mozart?

We're all just looking around comparing lists with purported experts, trying to have the most respectable taste, the most clever judgment. I studied English under Bevington at Chicago, and he mentioned to me that at recent Chinese literature conferences, academics were sitting around debating who the best writers were in an utterly tedious, frivolous, and pointless exercise.

Brilliant!

 

[FLTWS]

For me music is like food, the bigger the variety I can choose from the better my life is.
Sure I have my favorites (I'm a pastahaulic), but I still like a steak or lamb chops now and then, Moo Goo Gain Pan, smoked salmon with cream cheese, onion and bagel, Pho with Tripe, salad bars, milk products, bananas....
I pretty much never met a food I didn't like, or a composer not worth a listen to on occasion.

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

I could do without Berlioz and Bizet.

 

[RCBinTN]

And there it is Gentlemen. Page 74 of TAS. Yggy gets Robert Harley's TAS Golden Ear award.

"But if the very best reproduction of PCM sources is your goal, the Yggdrasil is the ticket. It's a spectacular performer on an absolute level, and an out-of-the- world bargain."

And it's a pretty spectacular performer on an OBSOLETE level too!!!

Well done, Mike. Well done indeed!!!

Well, that is a very nice review of the Yggy.
The guy compares it to DACs that cost >$20,000.
Amazing.
I think we all agree - the Yggy and the Schiit MB technology is uber-fine.
Well done, Sir Baldr and Schiit Audio.

 

[artur9]

OMG, I will find you some counseling - next you will be hanging out at Sunday matinees with insufferable deaf, bejeweled Old Ladies, endlessly chattering loudly at the concert over the endless loop of Baroque. It is a slippery slope from Wagner to Haydn to Pachebel to Pops concerts. I will send an ambulance when you express admiration for Vivaldi as a hop to Bluegrass and the final stop, pop music.

Ouch! I was listening to the Classical Classroom recommended recently and the first episode was "crossover classical" with the Texas Tenors. Hate to see your comment on them (read: would love to see your smackdown

 

[artur9]

For me music is like food, the bigger the variety I can choose from the better my life is.
Sure I have my favorites (I'm a pastahaulic), but I still like a steak or lamb chops now and then, Moo Goo Gain Pan, smoked salmon with cream cheese, onion and bagel, Pho with Tripe, salad bars, milk products, bananas....
I pretty much never met a food I didn't like, or a composer not worth a listen to on occasion.

Here we go. @bosiemoncrieff is right, objective schmobjective. How about we take composers or works and equate them to food?

Let's see....
Haydn == Sudado de Pescado
Vivaldi == Veal paprikas with spaetzle
Tchaikovsky == Dun Dun noodles made with Chinese ingredients

Capricho Arabe == Chicken Piccata with homemade fettucine

 

[TGBerland]

So, you may ask, since I2S is better and BWD waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than SPDIF - Why doesn't Schiit use it? Schiit is a company selling big bang for the buck products. We have no sales dept and only one guy for customer service, as that is expensive overhead which flies in the face of our "bang for the buck" theme. If you frequently connect and disconnect, you will sooner or later have trouble. It also closes up the system and makes it awkward to audition other types of gear. Customer service intensive.

Am I closing the door on I2S as an external connectivity standard? You bet – it is a wet dream compared to BWD.

Take heart! All of our digital gear is upgradable and it is not out of the question that I may offer BWD as an external connection between our gear. The only problem is that I would have to make a digital source component first.

Could not BWD be transferred via ethernet (with network-card in DAC with buffer) ? Then sending BWD from computer via "audio-driver" that sends data in BWD-format over the network to DAC; or directly from any source (network player for example) to the DAC via an ordinary ethernet cable ? Or am I missing something here ?

Edit:
I of course understand that there must be more than an ordinary network card in the DAC; add some logic to push out the BWD from the network packages to the DAC's internal system. Or maybe the processor inside the Yggdrasil is capable of doing this already; with some new code?

Edit2:
Or maybe "streaming" audio from source in a understandable format (wave) over to the DAC. Same way you do when copying a file from one computer to another (just we send the audio-stream in a specific format). If there is a 1/4 second delay from me pressing pause on player-application in windows/mac till the music pauses does not matter to me if I get good quality. Skip mixer etc in OS (go low level!).

 

[madwolfa]

Ethernet implies more than just sending and receiving data. And it's more than just a pair of network cards. You would need a complete stack (TCP/IP?) on both sides, meaning hardware AND software (which would have to run on some kind of OS, even embedded). That's why most such solutions are based on some small ARM device with an embedded Linux variant. Exactly the level of complexity Schiit tries to avoid.

 

[belgiangenius]

This query has resulted in clarification and correction based on review of some very old schematics, recall of tech memories of 40 years ago, and docs of the first pre Theta D/A converters.. I2S is defined as a three wire system. Bit clock, Word clock, and Data. Sounds like BWD, no?? There is one major difference between I2S and BWD. Above I referred to muxing and demuxing. Necessary with I2S because unlike true BWD, where the data begins in sync with the word (channel clock), the data is delayed exactly one bit clock after the word clock. This allowed the majority of early I2S implementations to be two wire interfaces as bit clocks are easily derived as a difference on the bit clock interval, obviating the need to run the Bit Clock wire. That raises the I2S phuctivity up several notches, because it is necessary to decode, resync, and dephukify the data back to the word clock where it belongs. That was the operation where I could not deassify the sound of I2S.

So, Mike, dare I ask...the ultimate goal of all of these standards is simplify to supply data in a perfectly unmodified format to the DAC for conversion. Computers have been exchanging data in a bit perfect way for decades. There is no challenge to this. Yet, it seems to be a serious challenge for audio digital interfaces.

If USB 5.0 is "USB fixed", does that mean to say that the DAC is finally getting this bit perfect bitstream, as intended, and there is no room for improvement?

One would think that eventually data would be supplied as intended (as computers have done for decades) and we'd be done with the big circus caused by inherently inadequate digital audio interfaces..

 

[kstuart]

Throwing this out there for any suggestions...

I received my Gen 5 USB upgrade board and installed it without problems.

But my Home Theater PC - which worked fine with Gen 2 USB with Wyrd - won't recognize it. The PC is still running Vista. Why? Because I have spend many many hours tweaking everything on the PC for audio and video, and don't want to start over just to upgrade to Win7.

Looking at the schiit.com/drivers page, there are no new drivers for Gen 5 USB, so in theory, the old drivers should work. Grrrr...

Any ideas for things to try? Are there any Generic USB 2.0 Audio Drivers in existence?

Thanks.

 

[madwolfa]

Looking at the schiit.com/drivers page, there are no new drivers for Gen 5 USB, so in theory, the old drivers should work.

I always had better luck with "alternate" drivers. Have you tried these?
http://www.schiit.com/public/upload/drivers/Schiit_USB_1_03.zip

 

[leafy7382]

Or try a powered USB hub in-between.

 

[Baldr]

Hey guys!! We share a common hobby, or is it love, or is it that to which we listen? The point is that this would be a boring thread if we all had the same rankings/feelings/opinions (pick one - or more). It would be like an audio show where only Schiit showed up. I occasionally am caught with filters off (well, OK, frequently) and may well have pissed people off. If so, I honestly regret it. All I have to do is look into the mirror to realize the folly of taking myself too seriously. Perhaps participants here could consider this as well, so we will not resemble those on the highest floors of audio shows who are two heartbeats away from a heart attack selling their car priced systems because they mistake their opinions about a hobby as religion. This is for fun, whether some of us transiently offend or not. Let's have fun (and learn - I do) for our own sake.

 

[EricDH]

Rankings, barf. Musical genius is such a culturally determined characteristic I'm skeptical of any so-called objective ranking. The fact that most people can't listen to Schoenberg or Webern without cringing, despite their intellectual brilliance, seems to me an open and shut reason why we shouldn't try to pursue the goose-chase of who's the best. Like sure Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, sure, they're great, but who's to say that Schubert isn't subtler than Beethoven? That Haydn isn't sneakier and more humorous than Mozart?

We're all just looking around comparing lists with purported experts, trying to have the most respectable taste, the most clever judgment. I studied English under Bevington at Chicago, and he mentioned to me that at recent Chinese literature conferences, academics were sitting around debating who the best writers were in an utterly tedious, frivolous, and pointless exercise.

Agreed. This discussion about who would be the best composer is a bit like what is the best wine. Pointless. Just enjoy and be happy there is so much diversity/variety.

 

[Baldr]

Could not BWD be transferred via ethernet (with network-card in DAC with buffer) ? Then sending BWD from computer via "audio-driver" that sends data in BWD-format over the network to DAC; or directly from any source (network player for example) to the DAC via an ordinary ethernet cable ? Or am I missing something here ?

Edit:
I of course understand that there must be more than an ordinary network card in the DAC; add some logic to push out the BWD from the network packages to the DAC's internal system. Or maybe the processor inside the Yggdrasil is capable of doing this already; with some new code?

Edit2:
Or maybe "streaming" audio from source in a understandable format (wave) over to the DAC. Same way you do when copying a file from one computer to another (just we send the audio-stream in a specific format). If there is a 1/4 second delay from me pressing pause on player-application in windows/mac till the music pauses does not matter to me if I get good quality. Skip mixer etc in OS (go low level!).

Probably could. But for me the attraction of BWD is digital audio broken down to its fundamental and simple elements. Since I have no need to distribute digital audio other than from source to converter, I have no need for any distribution other than local - AOIP (among other standards) complicates things greatly. It is just as easy and less costly to isolate BWD, and slightly more so for USB. Rather than distribute audio all over my house, a have a simple source-converter setup in three rooms; a two channel in the living room, and headphone systems in the family room and office. KISS.