New Yggdrasil - First (and second) Impressions

fact that the Yggy is mulitbit R2R ladder technology, whereas the other DACs I have are all Delta-Sigma. Further, the buzz is such that it leads one to believe mulitbit is "audibly better".

This is correct, when both are trying to convert pcm, cd, 16/44 or 24/96 or dxd. As Multibit is "bit perfect" converting these files, where Delta-Sigma can only give a facsimile of them.

Quote MoJo Music:
" When a PCM file is played on a (Delta Sigma), DSD or Bit Stream converter, the DAC chip has to convert the PCM to DSD in real time. This is one of the major reasons people claim DSD (Delta Sigma) sounds better than PCM, when in fact, it is just that the chip in most modern single-bit (Delta Sigma) DACs do a poor job of decoding PCM."

Cheers George

@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)

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

 The use of basically is correct that haven't been done well, this is why I've always stipulated "well implemented" when saying this, but saying this I'd rather have not perfect linearity compared to a Delta Sigma dac that only giving a facsimile of the real thing with pcm. Even old school TDA1541's "well implemented" sound better to me doing PCM than Delta Sigma (even the highly rated Bricasti M1) can do.    

Cheers George

I think the current best solution is a hybrid style DAC like the ESS Sabre 9028 chip set.

Maybe this is why my Oppo UDP-205 sounds so good. It uses an ESS Sabre 90 *38* chip set.

EDIT: Or why I cannot discern the difference between the Oppo and Yggy. Still working some angles on that though.....

All -

I consider my concern/inquiry regarding NOT hearing any difference when using the Yggy *phase inversion button* resolved.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_phase  "Some audiophiles claim that reversing the polarities of all the channels simultaneously makes a subtle perceptible difference in the reproduced sound, even though the relative phases of all the channels are preserved. ... In practice, the absolute phase of an audio system can be assumed to be inaudible."

The broader and more important question as to why I do not hear a difference when compared to the Oppo UDP-205 still remains though.