Did You Know: Schiit Yggdrasil GS

Did you know that American company Schiit have a DAC called Yggdrasil? It’s their TOTL and by all accounts it plays music with rare ability. At a price of $2449/€2959 the Yggdrasil isn’t cheap. But every review I’ve come across makes a point of mentioning its amazing price-performance.

Did you know that the Yggdrasil saw an upgrade a couple of years ago? Schiit introduced the new Analog 2 card, replacing the Analog 1. According to Schiit the 2 sounds better than the 1. I wouldn’t know as I’ve heard neither.

But here’s what I do know: after upgrading a bunch of their customers’ Yggdrasils to the new analog 2, Schiit have a bunch of the old analog 1 cards laying around. What does any sensible business do with those?

They take the analog 1 cards they now have in surplus and put them into the new-production Yggdrasils and sell them at a massive discount.

Welcome to the Yggdrasil Garage Sale:

What do you do when you have a bunch of used Yggdrasil Analog 1 cards that are gathering dust? Well, if you’re us, you put them in an otherwise new-production Yggdrasil so we can give you a chance to get our best DAC for a very attractive price.

“But wait, used?” you say. “What do you mean by ‘used,’ and what do you mean by ‘Yggdrasil Analog 1’?”

Good questions.

For those of you who are new here, Yggdrasil has had two different analog cards during its lifetime. The first, Analog 1, was replaced by Analog 2 a couple of years ago. Analog 2 have a bunch of internal changes that make them sound better, but both cards use the same stunningly expensive Analog Devices AD5791BRUZ D/A converter—two per channel, or 4 per Yggdrasil.

So, after upgrading a bunch of Yggdrasils, we have a lot of used cards. These cards have expensive chips on them. So, we came up with a crazy idea: put them in new production Yggdrasils and sell them for less. That’s Yggdrasil GS.

If you decide to get an Yggdrasil GS, you get:

1. Two Analog 1 cards in an otherwise complete new-production Yggdrasil.

2. New firmware that makes the Yggdrasil GS measure almost the same as Yggdrasil (see the APx555 reports for both products). Yes, we still think the Analog 2 sounds better. Yes, we’re weird.

3. A full 3 year warranty (a couple years less than Yggdrasil).

4. The older Gen 5 USB card rather than Unison USB. This may be a plus if you are using an ancient version of Windows, since Unison USB does not support any Windows OS prior to Windows 10.

Who said value-for-money? Who said sustainability? This is how we make hi-fi greener. Schiit, lead the way.

The Garage Sale Yggdrasil sells for $1599.