nedbade

Thanks! Much appreciated! --Ned

Thanks, I did contact them. So far, none of the vendors they suggested that I contact are stocking it. Which is why I thought I'd just ping to see if anyone might have seen them in the wild yet. I suppose I just need to be patient! Thanks! --Ned

Will this be available in the United States soon? So far, I haven't been able to find a vendor that carries it. --Ned

Unfortunately, all of the mills and coal mines in our area have closed...

This is the core of the matter. It all comes down to how you define 'getting the best bang for your buck.' Some might agree with your valuation, some not. Having heard the Bifrost Multibit (but not the Yggdrasil yet), I lean decidedly toward Yggdrasil being the best bang for my buck in this case--even without remote capability. I'd love to have one and, given the fact that they designed the DAC to do one thing really, really well without adding on features that would have raised the cost even further (but did design it so the DAC can be readily and cheaply upgraded in the future), I'm very happy with their design decisions. Full disclosure, though, I won't have enough money for one for some time to come. But perhaps I will be able to afford the 3rd or 4th generation Yggy someday (children are even more expensive than DACs...)

One other thing to share: In another forum, the chip designer of the DAC chip used in the Yggdrasil posted after he discovered that someone was using the chip in an audio application. In his excitement he mixed up two of Schiit's products (referring to the Ragnarok, which is an amp, when he meant their next DAC down the line, the Gungnir), but his enthusiasm to see it put to another good use was palpable: Originally Posted by roddymcl This is exciting! I work for ADI and designed the AD5791 & AD5781 DAC IC's in the Yggdrasil and Ragnarok. But that was about 2009. I'm delighted a new market has been found for these products. As the Yggy blurb explains, I never considered audio when I designed these DACs. In fact the main motivation at the time was medical imaging - the nice folks who make MRI scanners are awfully fussy about performance, and for good reasons! To be honest, I'm genuinely surprised this makes a good audio DAC. It's terribly expensive and I always assumed the code-change-dependent glitch energy would make THD unacceptable to audio buffs. (There are some ingenious board-level tricks around this but they are difficult and expensive to achieve - I'd love to know if the Yggy designer is using them ... feel free to get in touch!) On the other hand, the AD5791 architecture is unbeatable for noise. I really don't know what you audio perfectionists are hearing when you listen - is it THD ... or noise? Some combination of both, I imagine ... Anyway, after years of designing products for specialist scientific, medical and industrial equipment I really like the idea of seeing my design in something I could use myself ... must get one of these! Given the prices, and my lack of sophistication when it comes to appreciating audio fidelity, I think it'll be the Ragnarok ... Roddy

Hi Chris, Great review! I hope someday that I will be able to listen to one! One other feature of the Yggdrasil (and Schiit's other DACs from the Bifrost up) that wasn't mentioned in the review but that I consider a significant feature is the fact that they are designed to be upgradeable. So not only can you pick up a top flight DAC for a comparative song but if they refine it in the future, you can get the latest and greatest upgrades to it for a modest price without needing to re-invest in the base hardware. You can see how they have planned for this by the sheer number of daughter cards in the board picture in your article. That, in the audio industry, is another revolutionary change that other manufacturers should take note of and Schiit Audio should be lauded for! --Ned

Hi all, Pardon me if this is not the right venue or if it has been covered before (I have searched here and elsewhere for a solution before posting!). I am using a Cubox-i4Pro server as a combined Logitech Music Server (LMS)/Squeezelite player driving a DragonFly 1.2 DAC into our home stereo system (the music archive is stored on an external USB 3.0 drive attached to the Cubox-i). It sounds great except for one thing: when I connect the DragonFly directly to the Cubox-i, I get random pops and clicks. I have tried to adjust the ALSA settings on the Cubox-i and have succeeded in significantly reducing the frequency of the pops and clicks, but can't completely eliminate them. They sound almost electrical in nature, which is very distracting (not like the less sharp pops and clicks from playing an old LP, for example). The one thing that has worked is to put a powered USB hub between the Cubox-i and the DragonFly, but that does seem to degrade the signal a little bit--the DragonFly sounds 'brighter' when directly connected to the Cubox-i. It would be great to find a solution where I can eliminate the powered USB hub, not only because of the improved sound but also because I would like to keep the data path as clean and short as possible. My suspicion is that the problem is due to some kind of clocking issue between the Cubox-i and the DragonFly and that introducing the hub between them de-links them enough that the clocking struggle stops. But that is pure speculation. If anyone here has any experience with this, your help or pointers would be most gratefully appreciated! --Ned