I was listening to the newly remastered Eurythmics Touch & Sweet Dreams last night. The Yggdrasil Analog 2 sounded absolutely fantastic fed from the Aries G2
It’s the best purchase I’ve made for my system in a long time, right behind my speakers.
Hydrogen Audio?
One thing that did initially put me off the Yggy was issues that Roon users were having with using the DAC with Roon. Some issue around 24 verses 32 bit from what I recall. Did these ever get resolved and if so how?
From my POV, yes they were fixed. Build 310 resulted in my Digione, Yggy, Roon, and TIDAL being in sync regardless of sample rates or bit depths. Zero false starts.
I don’t know if it was Yggy being cranky or Roon not fully baked, but all is well again.
I feel compelled to comment that Schiit advertises on that web site.
I don’t see what’s wrong with this reviewer. Evidently, for some people, it’s because he doesn’t like Schiit.
Really, I don’t have a dog in this fight. To me, it just more stuff for people to irrationally and defensively argue about.
I’d love to A/B the Yggy and Yggy 2. Pity my yggy isnt with me and I don’t know anyone with V2.
Well, as long as we’re going there…Amir owns Madrona Digital in Seattle, so he’s a dealer.
He does have that in his signature on his new forum (which, if I remember correctly, he started because he got kicked off the What’s Best Forum that he started…people had had enough of him), so he’s not hiding it.
Still, it would be nice if, on his company’s website, he listed the products that he is a dealer for so people could see how he treats these products in his reviews versus products he doesn’t carry.
Ah, no. I have been a member for a number of years. Their focus predominantly is on lossy codecs and listening tests related to them. Discussions do go outside of that but they enforce a strange rule that no justification of any audio position is acceptable outside of double blind tests. Indeed, if you attempt to discuss audio performance using measurements and engineering design, you receive a formal infraction as I did!
Posting double blind test results are no good either because they will immediately declare you as a cheat. They have a position on audio and defend it at all costs. There is no oxygen there for any discussion beyond what is considered common views of objectivists online.
So while they have adopted some aspect of audio science, their culture and charter highly limits what can get discussed there. Kind of hard for example to organize double blind tests between every audio product in order to have a discussion about what makes them tick.
My company’s business is electronic integration for mid to high-end residential and commercial installations. It has no retail business and certainly do nothing in high-end audio retailing.
That said, some products we use also come from high-end audio. In that regard, any review that I do that relates to them per US FTC rules, has a clear notice of potential conflict of interest. See this example: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/measurement-and-review-of-berkeley-alpha-dac.2355/
“NOTE: My company (Madrona Digital) is a dealer for Berkeley products. And I led the acquisition of their previous company, Pacific Microsonics (makers of HDCD format) into Microsoft. So I consider the founders professional colleagues. Feel free to read as much bias as you see fit in this review.”
And you can see from my lackluster recommendation that I am absolutely transparent about what the measurements mean:
“Conclusions
The Berkeley is clearly a competently designed DAC. It is showing its age though in lacking USB input (which today is a mandatory input) and somewhat lower performance in objective measurements. So it is hard to recommend it to purchase now over the newer entrants.”
All of my reviews start with where I acquired the unit, whether on loan or my own purchase. This is more than I can say for SBAF web site mentioned where there is no such notice. And the site itself is sponsored by Schiit.
I am not doing any of my work for commercial interest. As such there is nothing in it for me to provide a corrupt opinion. Everything I say in the review is backed by objective data in the review which can be independently confirmed. The graphs are clear, show comparisons to other products in the same category allowing people to make their own judgements. This is again very different from millions of charts posted on SBAF where no one ever looks at them. But instead go by the flowery words for anything built by Schiit.
And no, I did not get “kicked out of WBF.” I co-founded that forum and help to grow it to 500+ concurrent visitors a day. But I had a falling with my partner and decided to sell my shares to someone else. A year later my ex-partner decided to ban me because he didn’t want me questioning his unconditional support of $20,000 USB cables after telling me for years that he thought cables were snake oil. While that was in really bad form, I moved on and focusing my energy on creating more data for consumers wanting to purchase audio products in a sea of thousands of different offerings.
@Amir_Majidimehr, whilst we have your attention, and trying to steer the topic back to audio matters…a question if I may? Whilst testing DACs have you ever tried swapping USB cables out (cheap as chips cables verses overpriced audiophool makes) and noted any differences in results in the measurements?
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Thank you and yes indeed. Please see: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/do-usb-audio-cables-make-a-difference.1887/
And the related category of USB filter/isolators: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/review-and-measurements-of-intona-usb-isolator-for-audio-dacs.2616/
Bottom line, if you have a poorly implemented USB DAC, USB cables do make a measurable difference. Alas, that difference is in favor of using shorter cables, and not high-end ones. On well designed USB DACs, there is no difference and this even includes $80 ones I tested. And at any rate, even when there is a difference measured, it is hard to make a case of it being an audible one.
Thanks again for getting us back on track. 
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Back to the original review, it’s all over the place one of weirder reviews I’ve every seen.
Darko should hire Dan from Audioshark.
http://www.audioshark.org/general-audio-discussion-15/schiit-audio-yggdrasil-review-13543.html
Do measurements matter if the piece of equipment sounds great? I guess this seems like a bizarre discussion to me. It reminds me of looking at your watch to see if you are hungry. The true test of a piece of equipment is putting it in your own system and listening for a period of time. Specifically, do you tend to spend more time listening to music when a piece of equipment is being used. Do you find yourself excitedly moving through my music library to see what it will sound like with the new piece of equipment. Does the music touch both your mind and your heart. I don’t see how looking at graphs will help anyone decide what they like.