Best practices when conducting a DAC comparison

@rbstehno Thank you for your response.

Some differences: the Denafrips offers DSD; higher resolutions of PCM; Over Sampling; three I2S inputs, and an extra set of Coax, TOSLink, AES each, but no BNC --- over the Yggdrasil.

Unfortunately, probably fortunately for some : ) MQA is not an option for either DAC at this time. It would have been a nice feature to have.

I am not clear on the consumer benefits of MQA.  It does seem DRM capable however...

@randy-11 I’ll be installing the Gen 5 USB board which does offer galvanic isolation for the Yggdrasil. I believe there is galvanic isolation built into the Denafrips (but I need to double check this). For now, optical isolation is off the table; I am aware of the benefits.

Consumer benefits of MQA? Have you actually listened to MQA and compared this to other mediums or are you listening to other posters remarks? Again, I don’t listen to what other people say about new technologies because there are many times they are slanted. Some people are still pissed off from the sacd/dvd-audio debacle and won’t consider any new medium, or people way over the top about every new technology. The best thing to do is hear it for yourself using your own equipment in your own room. My buddy had 5 different dacs on loan to him so he could evaluate them with his own equipment, in his room, and using his music. This is the best way to evaluate a piece of equipment.

A recent blind test with a large group of listeners showed no statistically significant differences with 24/96 pcm. I fact, if anything, there was a slight preference for the 24/96 pcm. The test methodology was not perfect, but I have seen nothing better thus far.