New Yggdrasil - First (and second) Impressions

If the source file is the same and the Yggy is converting jitter free then it should sound the same no matter what your digital source. This AB test may exclude your cable box (as you have no control what is coming over the cable) but it is easy to check the same file from your CD and Blu ray and PC by burning the same source file to disc.

In fact if you do find a difference after ensuring the source file is identical then I would be concerned about the jitter immunity of the Yggy or the integrity of the source.

I recall when the Benchmark DAC1 came out. I could hear a significant difference between the DAC and other gear but a friend of mine could not. It was on my system so I think I had an advantage being familiar with the sound. Subsequently he got a hearing aid and I felt very bad for him as he loves music. I just hope my ears don’t go too fast and I can still enjoy the sound!

Another thing I have found is that if you run things through the same preamp then to a certain extent much of the benefits of a higher grade DAC are completely lost. A lot of the A+ sound is from the lower noise power supply and higher quality analog output stage in an A+ DAC - so the same chip on a Class B product may not sound as good as that on an A+.

My Benchmark DAC3 can output about 18 volts!!! A far cry from 1 to 2 volts that most consumer grade devices put out. So as you can imagine, connecting this DAC to a preamp that is limited to 1 or 2 volts is seriously compromising the major benefits of a Class A+ device.

@georgehifi

Mojo is right in one sense but they neglect to mention that ladder DACs do a poor job of maintaining linearity.

Basically a ladder R2R DAC has poor linearity but low noise and converts PCM natively.

A single delta sigma DAC has perfect linearity but has high noise and requires PCM conversion to DSD.

I think the current best solution is a hybrid style DAC like the ESS Sabre 9028 chip set. It has a massive amount of 1 bit sigma delta converters that can be summed to create an R2R equivalent up to 9 bits in some implementations.This could be called a massive ladder DAC with only 1 bit steps. The beauty is that by random selection of the choice of 1 bit signs deltas used in conversion this chip can ALSO achieve great linearity as well as low noise.

In essence the ESS 9028 chip is a true ladder DAC and not like a traditional R2R with just a few oddly spaced steps of 1, 2, 4, 8 , 16 , 32, 64 etc. but with a massive amount of 1 and 1, 1, 1..... ... 1,1 and 1. ( up to 512 1’s in some implementations with 4 chips)

This hybrid style chip is bringing the best of both worlds - high linearity and low noise! It appears to be the latest way forward and appears in several DACs already since late last year. Obviously further improvements will come but in all honesty R2R ladder DACs ran into a performance brick wall over a decade ago - stuck by the production limitations of accurately building resistors to such an impossible degree of accuracy (the lower resistor in a 24 bit ladder DAC must be EXACTLY 1/16,777,216th of the highest resistor and so on and so forth with ALL the resistors require impossible extreme accuracy in order to maintain linearity)

@georgehifi

My point was that the newer ESS style converters use massively parallel one bit sigma deltas and is similar to a ladder DAC only with hundreds of smaller 1 bit ladder steps. So the latest ESS chip technology has converged away from high noise DSD style single 1 bit sigma delta conversion (what you dislike) towards a solution which is more akin to an R2R ladder DAC (which you like).

In fact a ladder R2R DAC is NOT a ladder at all - it jumps 1 to 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 etc. which would hardly work to access your roof eavestroughs like a regular 32 foot ladder because if the first step was one foot then the last step would be an impassable 16 feet!!!!

FWIW I agree with you in principle. I don’t like DSD and SACD - I think the technology brings no overall benefit - all it does is provide unsurpassed linearity at the expense of massive amounts of ultra HF noise (all the noise has to be filtered out). Frankly, as a format I think it brings absolutely nothing to the table over PCM. I prefer PCM as a format!! However I do not see the absolute requirement for native conversion of PCM as in fact I do like oversampling - as oversampling really helps linearize DAC non-linearities by randomizing linearity errors much in the same way dithering improves quantization noise.