pkcpga said: Yes as I said personal taste, I find the schiit Yggdrasil to be a boring listen with less separation and a little turned off by its inability to play DSD or any music that's actually 24 bit since schiit uses a 21 bit or less DAC and claims less than 1% of music is really above, might have been the case in 2010 when they first wrote that but not today. Doesn't work for myself since about a quarter of my music is above and works well with the naim and chord DACs. For someone still using cd quality or so I'm sure the schiit DACs are great but can not compete with more capable DACs, the Yggdrasil is the same price point as the naim and still needs an amp and does not play high res. So I don't find it to be a deal. Click to expand...

I'm very surprised you find the Schiit DAC boring. As for bit depth a little digital 101 is in order: 21 bit corresponds to a signal-to-noise ratio of 121 db: a near impossible target for the following analogue electronics after the DAC stage to achieve. Even 16 bits, which corresponds to a signal-to-noise ratio of 96 db would be tricky for all but the best designed analogue stages. Most DACs, including the Naim, will struggle to achieve a signal-to-noise ratio of -100 or lower (equal to about 17 bits) in their analogue stagesAlso I cannot think of any music in existence today which truly achieves a 24 bit, 144 db signal to noise ratio: just because its in a 24 bit container doesn't mean it has a true 24 bit signal-to-noise. BTW if you were to really hear a recording with with a true 24 bits S/N at a realistic level, you would probably be deaf for a while after (or permanently). 24 bits is used in the recording industry as headroom for the production and is not really appropriate for the consumer. Nonetheless, 24 bits has been hijacked as "higher resolution" by those wishing to (re)sell their back catalog of music.Summing up: a higher bit depth is not a higher resolution it is a greater signal-to-noise ratio (technically, dithering noise is reduced as the bit depth goes up). As usual in hi-fi the bigger is better is marketing spin (sample rate or bit depth) to appeal to the non-technical or hi-fi snob.