Yggy DAC

How are you doing the A-B? If you are switching rapidly, you are not likely to hear differences. Listen to each for a while, pause, then play the same selection(s) through the second DAC.

Aurender A10 Has a built in DAC. Also it can be hooked up to a outside DAC.   So i hook a Yeggdrasel DAC Up to A , B it. i could hear no difference at all.

As I patiently await my Yggdrasil which I expect to receive later this month, I'll consider your statement a positive only in-so-far as the Aurender MSRP is more than twice that of the Yggy. So if they do in fact sound the same, what does that tell you?

" in-so-far as the Aurender MSRP is more than twice that of the Yggy. So if they do in fact sound the same, what does that tell you?"


It tells me that if you add the price of an equivalent Aurender streamer (N100H) at $2700 plus the cost of a good cable to connect them, you are very close to the price of the A-10. Comparing just the DACs, they are price wise very similar.  Although different DACs at similar prices do not always sound the same,  it does not surprise me that the DAC in the A10 and the Yggy sound similar. 

The Aurender has a full-featured, advanced DAC internally, and I imagine the differences could be small between it and the Yggy. I've personally done group comparisons with the Yggy and other DACs and do not doubt what my ears and their ears found to be different. 

It also seems like the Aurender, while offering the option, is designed as a Reference DAC and streamer, and the advantages of signal path and proximity certainly favor the Aurender's DAC. Perhaps if you had an EMM labs DAC you would utilize the option, but purchasing an Yggy in addition to the Aurender does not make much sense to me. 

Good to know Aurender has a pretty nice DAC in that thing. 

I have owned multiple DACs over the years--all connected with desktop audio, and none in the multi $1K range common in big living room audiophile setups (which I had years ago, pre-DACs).

Anyway, I have most definitely heard differences between various DACs. For example, I hear distinct, though subtle differences between multi-bit DACs and delta-sigma designs; also differences between good multi-bit and pure/non-oversampling multibit.

HOWEVER...I've also learned that when a given DAC is made very well, with robust power supply, well-implemented digital section, best available USB receiver, etc--it's harder to pick out those subtle differences when comparing to another, equally well designed & constructed DAC. If one were comparing, say, 5 top level-DACs, I'd expect the multi-bit one to diverge a bit from the others in timbre of instruments, lack of grain & glare, and a slightly "wet" (ie, non-dry), rounded sound to bass. But at the top level of design/built, differences between DACs become fairly small (unlike amps and speakers, which are all over the place).