Schiit Yggdrasil -- 21 bit?

@gdhal 

Sure thing. Well, I have learned a lot from some of the answers. I think that Schiit took a courageous step to use R2R chips in their DACs. They have one groovy machine there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvlW4bEjB5A


Couldn't resist!

Putting one chip on -ve and one chip on +ve of balanced will simply double the voltage but won’t increase the bit depth. There really is no way to increase bit depth without a DAC chip with greater bit depth so I think Schiit is stretching the truth. I think that they are trying to say there is still signal below 20 bit due to dithering (random noise) that they must add prior to bit truncation of the last 4 bits of the 24 bit input signal. If they don't have the processing power to do dithering (normally done on a computer) then the audio quality will be compromised.

@shadorne 

Sorry, I am out of my depth here. Could you please help me with this. My thinking is as below. Where am I going wrong. 

Assume we have 21 bit of data. We use the MSB to select one of the DACs, the +ve or the -ve one. Then we send the remaining 20 bits to the selected DAC. Isn't that equivalent to sending 21 bits to a hypothetical 21 bit DAC? What am I missing?

I don’t think you’re missing anything, defiantboomerang.

Shadorne, if we denote the magnitude of the maximum possible output voltage as V, I’m envisioning that one DAC chip is controlling generation of output voltages between 0 and +V, with the other DAC chip generating 0 when a positive voltage is called for, while the other DAC is controlling generation of output voltages between 0 and -V, with the first DAC generating 0 when a negative voltage is called for. The outputs of the two DACs are then combined to create the overall output of the component. The voltage generated by each DAC would of course be quantized with 20 bit resolution, which would result in 21 bit resolution over the range from +V to -V.

Best regards,
-- Al