DENAFRIPS Terminator and Schiit Yggdrasil Evaluation and Comparison

I have an iFi iDSD PRO and will be writing an in-depth review soon. I compare it to my AMR DP-777se, the AMR CD 77.1 (hot-rod’d with a TDA 1541 double crown dac chip, Jupiter Copper Foil Paper in Wax output caps and Bendix 6900 output tubes), the iFi iDSD BL, and an old-school Museatex Bidat (still one of the best) thrown in for fun. I own all of he dacs mentioned except for the iDSD PRO. I’m also going to compare it to the latest PS Audio Direct Stream.

I will say that the PRO is impressive and what it does with DSD has shown me first hand just how superior DSD can sound (I have about 700 DSD albums) when it is not converted to PCM although at 705khz it remains close to how untouched DSD sounds.

eugene81:

Hi, hope all is going well. I am just about to write that one. It is the most difficult review I’ve ever attempted because it does SOOOO much and I wanted to be fair. It won’t be long but what I write is what I actually hear during my listening sessions and comparisons. The Berkeley, I can only speak about the Reference MK 1 which I had on hand, just forget about it. The Berkeley Ref was, well, sorry but it was just bad sounding. Hard, anti-musical just plain bad sounding digital. The Berkeley is beautiful to behold and feels like a solid piece of aluminum sculpture but you couldn’t give it to me free and expect that I would ever hook it up. 

I’ll give you a real quick and dirty run down before I write the full review. AMR DP 777 SE > iDSD Pro > iDSD BL >>> Berkeley Reference Mk 1.

The iDSD Pro playing DSD files ( I have about 800 of them) gets way way close to the AMR 777 SE. It plays DSD files better than I’ve ever heard that format played before.