Many people on this forum disparage this reviewer. Don’t know why, but I suspect it has something to do with his reviews about Schiit products.
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No, it’s because his measurements disagree with those of several real professionals, because he embellishes his qualifications, and because his language is highly indicative of a biased and unscientific approach.
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You mean his graphs/charts are lies?
No matter, please point me to the “real professionals” so that I might also benefit from their reviews.
Don’t you own some Schiit equipment?
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Yes, a Modi, Wyrd, and Lyr 2, for awhile. Never use them anymore, but not because I particularly disliked them.
Also, recently 2 Vidars and Freya, which I do like.
The negative reviews are, for the most part, about the Modi and Yggdrasil.
According to the reviewer’s website, his Schiit reviews (no pun intended) have resulted in significant blowback.
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User “AtomicBob” on Head-Fi and other forums, for example. As to how I know who is right, I’ve been in science and engineering for decades, including a lot involving measurement, often as a reviewer and project evaluator. You learn to detect the signs of dubious data and claims (insufficiently specified experimental conditions, hyperbole, shifting explanations, and a lot more). Enough on this topic.
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Ah, I misunderstood what you meant by “professional”. You meant websites and reviewers that take industry advertisements. In Head-Fi case, that would include Schiit.
As for “AtomicBob”, I can find no biographical data on him, so I don’t know what makes him “professional” or “real”.
Anyway, let the review I posted stand or fall on its own merits.
Still, thanks for the website reference.
Agreed.
This is your second thread on these forums pointing out schiit vs X and audio science review. What is your point?
I have yet to find a DAC that does music presentation and instrument timbres better than the Yggdrasil. That is including better measuring and more expensive DACs.
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I just posted a review because it compared two moderately priced, big name DACs and I thought it was interesting.
There are a lot of Schiit and iFi consumers on this forum, including myself.
I think you’re implying an ulterior motive, where there is none. Although I’m touched you took the time to research my posts.
BTW - I know you’re a technician. Do you disagree with the results of the review? That’s really the only necessary conversation to have in this thread.
I think the Schiit ladder stuff doesn’t measure as well as the sigma delta DACs. Fortunately for the Yggdrasil at least, the sound qualities makes up for it.
I went from 3x more expensive and measuring way better DAC to the “awful” Yggdrasil. So the usual ASR price biased excuse doesn’t play a factor in my opinion.
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I do. Why? Because others with more experience get different results. Also, Amir’s results don’t match what we see in the real world. Amir has it out for Schiit Audio. Plain and simple.
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By “professional” I meant this about “AtomicBob” == Bob Smith:
http://www.aes-media.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/2018/bsmith_lies_damn_lies_may2018/
http://www.aes.org/sections/pnw/blog/2018/1/meeting-2018-1-30
I was a colleague of JJ Johnston, a brilliant audio engineer at Bell Labs. Anyone who shares a speaker slot with JJ gets my full attention and respect.
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Thank you for your objective and honest reply; instead of some vague hand waving or cryptic attributions.
For the record, I have no emotional investment in the rep of Audio Science Review. Truthfully, I had no idea about the depth of negative feelings toward the reviewer.
Live and learn.
I routinely show the same conclusions I reach on Schiit products, using atomicbob’s own measurements. Here is the latest example: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-measurements-of-schiit-yggdrasil-dac-inconsistent.3812/
It is abundantly clear that he doesn’t read his own measurements, or chooses to paper over them and praise Schiit products no matter what the data shows.
If you have the knowledge you say you have, you should have been able to see this. Alas, you are not alone in not actually reading and understanding the graphs and just going by PR statements issues about them.
You do know that Schiit uses atomicbob’s measurements in their ads like this one in stereophile, yes? https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/latest-schiit-yggdrasil-ads-on-stereophile-may-issue.2633/
Honestly, posts like this help to protect manufacturers at the expense of consumers.
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I hired JJ into my team from Bell Labs at Microsoft. I made him the chief audio architect in my team. So if we are going by that kind of association, mine are miles ahead of Bob’s. 
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I purchased a Yggy based on the rave reviews from seemingly real people, which I read in the huge Yggy thread on Head-Fi. I don’t have golden ears, so I was not willing to, nor could I afford, a 20K or more DAC. Yggy fit the bill for me. I think it sounds great. As far as how it measures, does that really matter? No sarcasm here, I am really wondering. Is the implication that Schitt stuff is a scam? That it is really junk since there are some assertions, or, I guess, real measurements that indicate the performance of, for example, the Yggy, are so bad that it must be bad?
Are people offended by Schitt’s comedic, sarcastic attitude, and therefore looking to attack them regardless of how good or bad their products are?
Are the 2 main engineers at Schitt known to be hacks, so industry people “in-the-know” spread the word and this is why their products seem to be HATED by some?
I am honestly not trying to start something here, other than further conversation, I am really curious, fascinated by what seems like “Schitt-Hate”.
It doesn’t once you reach a certain point. If it did, everyone would be dumping Vinyl, tube gear or even McIntosh gear and switching to Devialet.
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My Yggy feeds a McIntosh Integrated, so my stuff must really sound horrible! 
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First, it is not a scam. It is simply a case of a company becoming successful by creating a strong buzz in social media, using a clever name to convey transparency and best in class engineering execution. The drank so much of their own kool aid that they thought they don’t need to properly measure their own gear to see if the design does what they think it does.
So many customers automatically thought that the company’s products were superb. Just read the Yggdrasil page on their website. You will actually NOT read anything about the “sound.” But rather a description of technical perfection:
"Yggdrasil is the world’s only closed-form multibit DAC, delivering 21 bits of resolution with no guessing anywhere in the digital or analog path. We’ve thrown out delta-sigma D/As and traditional digital filters to preserve the original samples all the way through from input to output.
Turns out they were decimating (truncating) 24 bit samples into 20 bit DAC and in the process generating non-linearities and distortions at low level which my measurements clearly showed. JA in stereophile actually pointed this out just the same in his measurements but people don’t pay attention due to flowery subjective review.
My job in my measurements sections of my reviews is to provide an independent, objective look at the engineering and design of products. The hope is that if there are flaws that the company fixes them and if not, people can know the real truth about how well executed an audio product is.
As to how it sounds, I did a bunch of careful, level matched AB testing of Yggdrasil DAC against much cheaper DACs. I can tell you with 100% confidence that there is no superiority whatsoever in its “sound” compared to much cheaper DACs.
What people perceive as better sound is due to not performing proper listening tests and as a result, thinking something sounds better even though what their ears heard was no different.
Given the fact that there are so many better performing DACs, and the fact that there is no “magic of multibit,” in the sound of this unit, why waste so much money buying the Yggdrasil? You can buy the RME ADI-2 DAC for less than half the price.
But sure, ultimately if you are happy with your purchase, that is cool. But let’s not attempt to put down my reviews which I perform purely as a service to the audiophile community.
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What is wrong with a McIntosh Integrated? It likely has less distortion than the Yggdrasil and so it is transparent in that regard.
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