Schiit Reference Sytem review: Freya into Yggdrasil, into Vidar

A designer who doesn’t have a clue about audio industry digital signal processing should not be designing audio digital converters, IMHO.

I must have missed something, which designer are we talking about here?

Cheers George

@shadorne

Thought you might find the following excerpt from https://www.computeraudiophile.com/ca/reviews/schiit-audio-yggdrasil-multibit-dac-review/ interesting.
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The "Yggdrasil is the world’s only closed-form multibit DAC, delivering 21 bits of resolution with no guessing anywhere in the digital or analog path." According to Schiit Audio. Let’s dive into that statement a bit. Many audio enthusiasts will immediately see the 21 bit number assume this DAC is inferior to other DACs that claim 24 or even 32 bits of resolution. Several manufacturers today advertise the fact that their DACs feature multiple 32 bit DAC chips per channel. Making a judgement on a DAC’s superiority or inferiority based on the number of bits advertised is foolish. For example, a 24 bit DAC has a theoretical maximum SNR of 144 dB, but the best current DACs can only obtain an SNR of 124 dB or 21 bits due to the noise floor of the components. In addition, human hearing has a dynamic range of about 120-130 dB. What’s more, DACs have what’s called Equivalent Number of Bits (ENOB) to signify the actual resolution of the DAC. A closer look at many 32 bit DACs reveals they actually have an ENOB of 19.5. Can you see why making judgements about DACs based on specifications is ridiculous?

Readers may be asking themselves, what happens when I play a 24 bit recording on the Yggdrasil if it only supports 21 bits? The reality is that 24 bit recordings don’t have 24 bits of resolution / information. It’s possible to select 24 or even 32 bits as the output resolution for the Yggdrasil in Audio Midi. The truth is that it doesn’t matter on any DAC. Note 1: Vinyl playback has about 12 bits of resolution, CD has 16 bits. Note 2: The Yggdrasil doesn’t support DSD.
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@gdhal

It is good marketing I have to admit. Claim that your competitors are all "guessing" and yours is the world’s only DAC that doesn’t "guess". It would be nice if it were true. No well known DAC competitor is actually guessing. Honestly I have absolutely no problem with this marketing claim as it is so similar to other marketing hyperbole typical of the audio trade.

Also as posted above, I agree that JA was out of line to call the Yggdrasil obsolete. The fair critique is when JA refers to mistakes in the digital design foremost by truncating (or rounding if you prefer which amounts to the same thing). This is clearly a design mistake even if it wont affect things much - possibly spurious tones at the 21 bit level which is still low.

Although in the real audio world 20 bits is very nearly as good as 24 bits, the world of high end is measured by diminishingly small additional performance. A Ford Focus RS is a very good car and performs as well as one could ever need on a legal road but that doesnt make it as good as a Porsche GT3 does it? But Stereophile were out of line just as if a car reviewer were to say the Ford Focus RT is obsolete - it is definitely wrong!

 the world of high end is measured by diminishingly small additional 


If you are one that will purchase a $5000 + interconnect cable, Schiit will not be on you radar anyway. 
Majority of Schiit’s  purchasers are not concerned with “ bit depth” details in digital files. Schiits buyers just want simple, great sound. That is what they provide.