Hot off the press: Yggdrasil review

Re my audition of the PSA DS. I ran it non-stop for two and a half weeks, feeding it music 24/7. The things about it that I didn't like did not change at all over those two weeks. I understand how DACs are sensitive to break-in, but I frankly found the DS to be unlistenable.

The highs did have a bit better detail than my PDS PWD-II, but the midrange and bass sounded like the music was coming through a fog. The bass on the DS was also not well articulated. The DAC actually gave a sense of pressure in my ears (I know of at least one other customer that had the same experience). I suspect that this is the noise shaping that pushes noise into the ultrasonic range. My amps and speakers extend to 100k, if that matters.

BTW, the latest version of the Yale software had been installed. On return of the DAC, PSA checked it out and said that the DAC was working perfectly.

In my system, the Yggy easily sounds better than the PSA DS or the PWD-II. The Yggy's handling of transients and the sense of instrumental timbre is something special.

Kernelbob, thanks for sharing your impressions. I definitely would not buy the PSA DS based on many credible reports. It may be designed for bright systems?

@Grannyring, I don't look at someone's activity level on a forum and use that as an indicator of their intelligence or experience, but YMMV. And I welcome dissenting experience - I simply prefer that it be of the firsthand variety, but again that's just me.

As for assuming that people will not run the unit 24/7, in fact Schiit has emphasized that the unit should not be powered off. It should be run 24/7 - once powered on for the first time, it should be left on. That's directly from Schiit.

Re the PSA DS, I didn't find fault with the frequency balance (at least in the 20 to 20k range), so no, I don't think that it was specifically designed for bright systems.

Keeping a dac on will do nothing to break it in. Need to pass a signal through it and many are not going to spin CDs 24/7. Just to much time on the transport for many of us. Computer audio...sure.