The original Yggy uses a 16-bit R2R DAC and if you know what to listen for, you'll notice that it has poor small signal linearity so microdetails are lost and the soundstage depth is shortened. By comparison, the MSB has superior digital filtering and much improved small signal linearity.
This is a bold statement with questionable technical claims which I will get to eventually. I will be a dissenting voice here; let me first start with listening impressions. I use my Yggy for CD playback, and I have heard diverse MSB DACs (Premier and Reference) in various settings elsewhere, on streaming or playing of local files.
I had first an original Yggy, then the second version of it (Analog 2) and now, since about 2 years, the Yggy LIM (Less is More), which is considerably better to my ears. Yet with any Yggy, soundstage had always been great in my room. Audiophiles who visited over the years, including vinyl fans, have consistently admired my soundstage and its depth. Before I had Yggys I had a Berkeley Alpha 2 DAC, and the Yggy does not shorten soundstage depth either in my room relative to that DAC (which as a delta sigma measures better in some respects).
This last summer a gear designer visited my room and he commented that he had never heard such spatiality from digital before (and he commented positively on reproduction of hall ambience as well, see below). So I seem to have something going on here, in my particular room. I also have the speaker drivers out from the front wall by more than 7 feet, which helps.
The Yggy is also very capable of portraying hall ambience, another low level signal for which you need great linearity. Recently I did actually think that the portrayal of hall ambience might be a bit exaggerated, with on some recordings a sonic glow illuminating the instruments from within further back on the stage in their interaction with the reverberant hall. Yet when last season I visited again Boston Symphony Hall for a number of concerts I was struck by hearing that there was that same kind of effect. I concluded that the Yggy, and my system, are astonishingly faithful in their capability of portraying hall ambience, something that, frankly, I had not expected to this extent.
As for MSB, I have not been struck by a significantly higher capability to extract finer detail from instrumental timbres, even though I have to admit I have never heard a comparison in my own system and room.I did hear better performance here and there elsewhere, but then my system caught up, recently with new speakers, and I heard the same level of inner detail with the Yggy (e.g., on the subtle fine structure of the sound of massed orchestral strings).
The only time I heard, in another system, a direct comparison between an Yggy (Analog 2 version) and an MSB (Reference DAC) it was clear that on complex orchestral music the MSB could unravel the different instruments and instrumental groups slightly better. Yet that shows a weakness of the Yggy Analog 2 (and the original version). As I was able to establish with a comparison in my own system, the LIM version that I now have also separates instruments better than the Analog 2 and presumably is more like MSB in that respect. It is super clean where the Analog 2 congeals and even slightly distorts.
Whenever I heard an MSB DAC it was not in a setting with great soundstage depth, so I have no direct comparison between MSB and Yggy LIM on that front. I only know that in my system and room I have significantly better soundstage depth than in the settings where I heard an MSB.
There was only one exception where an MSB came at least relatively close on spatial depth in another room. The owner had found by measurement that the powerbase of his Reference DAC emitted a strong electromagnetic field. He then physically separated the DAC from the powerbase instead of stacking them (MSB themselves don't indicate that stacking is bad), and the soundstage went from relatively flat to much deeper, with better hall ambience as well. Apparently the field emitted from the powerbase had messed with low level signal processing from the DAC.
All in all, so far I have heard nothing from an MSB performance that would entice me to give it a try in my own system and room, also given the to me prohibitive cost. I don't see why I should spend so much money on a DAC if the benefits are not glaringly obvious to me. I do spend money where it counts. The $ 2K Yggy feeds into a $ 15K preamp, and sonically it makes complete sense. The Yggy is that good.
I do have to say that I am pampering my Yggy quite a bit. I have it on a great power cord (ZenWave PL-11) that costs more than half of the DAC itself and makes a good difference. The AES/EBU cable from MIT that connects the Mutec reclocker between CD transport and DAC to the DAC is almost as expensive as the DAC itself. It too makes a difference. As for the reclocker itself: Like so many DAC manufacturers, Schiit claims that the internal clock very well corrects any incoming jitter. That is not true. The less jitter your source has and/or the more you correct incoming jitter via reclocking, the better the DAC performs. The reclocker also renders reproduction of hall ambience more robust and convincing than when it is omitted from the chain. For my playback chain, see my signature.
As for digital noise from computer audio (which I don't use), the Yggy is sensitive as well. Also, the original Yggy had a so-called USB 3 input which, as later reported, clearly was a weak link (my first Yggy in 2017 already had a USB 5 input, current version is USB Unison). All early Yggy reviews and comparisons that used the USB 3 input can be dismissed as irrelevant, that input was no good (unlike the AES/EBU input, for example).
Now to the technical points:
The statement that the original Yggy uses a 16-bit R2R DAC is not true. It's a 20-bit R2R DAC chip. However, the LIM version that I have does use a 16-bit chip (with use of dither). It still sounds better. Mike Moffat specifically looks for high linearity of DAC chips, which is one reason he does not use regular audio chips but industrial precision chips. The ones he uses have very good INL and DNL numbers; he says those of typical audio R2R DAC chips are so bad that the manufacturer does not list them (I have checked a few classic audio R2R DAC chips for that; the data sheets indeed mention nothing on those numbers). As for the MSB digital filtering being superior, that may be debatable. The Yggy does *not* use off the shelf filtering either, but a proprietary algorithm that Moffat developed in collaboration with a math professor who solved a "divide by zero" problem posed by wanting to optimize for both timing and frequency response (he describes it in the Schiit book from a few years back). The filtering algorithm runs on SHARC processors.
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So yeah, my experiences of low-level linearity with the Yggy are different from yours, but it may well be that I run mine under more optimal conditions than what you have heard. And it's a different version, too (the DAC card can be changed from the original for $ 550).
Rather than changing the DAC, I am much more interested in improving the signal upstream further with an external 10 MHz clock for the Mutec reclocker.
Only then might I think about another DAC. Yet rather than MSB I would be thinking about trying the new MIB (More is Better) version of the Yggy, which is supposed to be yet better than the LIM version (I could also upgrade for a lower price via upgrade of the DAC card). Yet this is low priority for me; first some acoustic changes for my room and the external clock.
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