Re: Are you a BOSE hater/basher? why?
FPGA is also an integrated circuit designed and made by companies such as Xilink or Altera. Your Chord and others need to choose an FPGA and design their circuit around it. Again, that can be done by anyone.
I just wish people overcome this thought process that the more you pay, the better sound you get. Sound delivery has the law of diminishing returns firmly embedded. Schitt, to sell a 2000$ product when their 400$ product delivers well, has to use a lot of marketing techniques. If you keep everything else the same, and just switch the DAC, will the 2000$ DAC deliver five times better results? It will not. Because if it does, the $400 one is failing miserably.
Look at the specs below.
BIFROST
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Frequency Response: 20Hz-20KHz, +/-0.1dB, 2Hz-150KHz, -1dB ?
Maximum Output: 2.0V RMS?
THD: <0.005%, 20Hz-20KHz, at max output?
IMD: <0.008%, CCIR?
SNR: >109dB, referenced to 2V RMS
YGGDRASIL
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Frequency Response, Analog Stage: 20Hz-20Khz, +/-0.1dB, 0.5Hz-200KHz, -1dB
Maximum Output: 4.0V RMS (balanced), 2.0V RMS (single-ended)
THD: Less than 0.006%, 20Hz-20KHz, at full output
IMD: <0.007%, CCIF, at full output
SNR: > 117dB, referenced to 2V RMS
So what are the improvement? Wider frequency range (which you cannot hear in any case), minor improvement in IMD, increase in gain, and an 8 dB improvement in SNR.
As I said before, keeping everything else the same and ignoring the .001% improvement in IMD, the only significant difference is the 8 dB improvement in signal to noise ratio. The wider frequency range has no meaning as the human ear cannot hear it. That means the Yggdrasil is delivering a 7.3% overall improvement in sound over it's own Bifrost. Even assuming that you give them grace for channel separation, better circuitry, better filters, and an improved realtime clock, you can say the Yggdrasil delivers 30% (4x7.3%) better sound than the Bifrost. BUT, the price is 500% better!! Is that justified? Certainly not. Then how are they able to sell? That is where marketing and control over client thoughts come in. You start small, design a low priced unit well, gain client trust and then wham - out comes a product that is priced at 10 times your introductory product prices. Look at Oppo. They started with a DVD player at some 200$. It was praised to heaven and accepted as the de facto industry standard. Now they don't have any product at less that 1500$. The justification? Better products, better DAC, blah blah blah. In Blu-ray, I firmly believe, if you take the data and transmit it properly, you cannot go wrong. A 200$ Blu-ray player should do that easily. Every company has products suited for various price points and this is how most companies work.
It is the irony of the human mind. When you spend so much money, your mind will force your to justify the spend by saying you are hearing something faar faar better. As I have said many times before, measured, none of the products can show more than 10-15% improvement in sound. Whatever else you are hearing (as improvement) is in your mind and, of course you are welcome to it.
You might very well ask the question as to what I am trying to say here. My advise to everyone is simple. Stop chasing meaningless dreams of upgradation. Balance your system in terms of pricing and specs. Plonking a 2000$ DAC on a 1000$ system is not going to solve anything. It is like taking a truck engine and showing it into a Maruti 800. Your 2000% DAC uses the revered AKM chip. So does your Onkyo amplifier. We get into long arguments as to why one is better than the other. It is better for the DAC to be closer to the source. It is better for the DAC to be closer to the speakers. Brand X uses better components. Brand Y delivers better results. The whole world is talking about brand Y. I have heard brand Y, and I swear I have yet to hear anything better. It is a game changer. It is going to disrupt the industry. Just talking about SNR is stupid. Timing, real time clock, filters, and channel separation make all the difference.
Does any of this matter? Start listening to the music, and stop chasing technologies.
You know what? My less than 150$ Asus sound card has better SNR than both the Bifrost and the YGGDRASIL! Connected to a tube based amp and my single driver speakers, the sound is seriously good. I don't see the value of constantly looking for anything else. I have wasted over 4 years in search for the perfect sound, when I already have had it at home all the time. And believe me, I have listened to some really serious equipment. My ears have never heard more than a 10 to 15% improvement in sound. And that too, when I listened as an auditioner and not as a lover of music. Most important, I really cannot afford those equipment. The ones who can have no time to listen to music.
I now prefer to just listen to music.
Cheers
, May be i need to invest in a very high end audiophile system, but i know myself i will soon get bored of that also and may need to buy some more stuff.
