Seems the consensus is that it is good. I haven’t tried the BF2/64, but the BF2 OG had a good SE performance from what I remember.
I’m not sure, but I remember a reviewer saying that the BF2 SE was better than the Yggy OG SE out. Don’t quote me on that though. Also, I have never used any Yggy variants.
Thank you! I can work with that
My experience with it was that the SE out was only slightly inferior to the bal out. It absolutely has one of the better SE outs in that price bracket.
Above comments are the concensus. I have the OG and would agree the
single ended is good. Schiit did confirm for me, however, to NOT leave balanced and single ended connected at the same time. ie unplug the one not in use.
That’s news to me. I always assumed both outputs were active simultaneously. When I had an OG BF2, I has the XLR output connected to my Cayin iHA-6 and the RCA output connected to my SW51+. I do the same with my Yggy A2 now. Is this a bad idea?
Depends on how the SE signal is derived from the Balanced, and how the loads react when a device is powered down.
If for example the SE input is derived from the Balanced input by just discarding the -V channel it’s potentially an issue, since the +V channel is now loaded with both loads in parallel and the -V isn’t, so you lose a lot of the value of balanced at the very least, potentially cause other issues depending on how balanced is implemented.
If there is a buffer/opamp between Balanced and SE it’s probably harmless.
Just took a look at the Yggy manual and here is the first question on the FAQ:
“Can I run both the single-ended and balanced outputs at the same
time?
Yes, you can.”
Others know much more about the why…when I asked their FAQ section some
time ago it said not to, that it messes up the balanced. Again that was for the OG…others may be different.
Since I do use both I’d be interested in a definitive answer, but I’m ok with just
unplugging the balanced cables when I occasionally use the Asgard 3 and
unplugging the SE’s when using the balanced outputs.
Bifrost 2 at least the OG used a different mechanism to convert from Balanced to SE than Yggy.
One of it’s note worthy features was that unlike the OG Yggy the SE out was very close to the Balanced.
So the answer for the Yggy isn’t necessarily applicable to the BF 2.
I have no idea if that changed with the 2/64.
The BF2 manual says:
“Note: Both RCA and XLR outputs are active at the same time.”
This implies to me that it is ok to use them at the same time.
I use both outputs on my Yggy OG at the same time, no issues.
Added the Wyred4Sound usb reclocker back to the Yggy with 2 jitterbugs and its mandatory. With the V550 I didn’t hear a difference but with the Aic its so clearly better and it gave the Aic a better space to work with, the yggy changed its behavior to the better.
So it looks like this now: PC > 2x Jitterbugs (silences pc usb noise) > the short 6" usb cable provided by Wyred4Sound + ifi power X > Callisto > Yggy 
Yup, RIP OG AD based stuff…
Jason previously said this would be the case (like over the summer? I don’t recall). He said AD stuff was difficult to obtain reliably and the price of the chips kept going higher even still. An AD based Yggy would have faced significant price increases, pushing it out of the range Schiit was wanting to charge for Yggy.
Don’t know if there’s any good info here since I just started watching it, but Jason did a live stream earlier.
The end of an Era……
So we have confirmation of Aegir 2, Valhalla 3, and Gungnir 2 for next year. Baring unforseen delays, of course.
Interesting to see Schiit following Chord and PS Audio (and others?) down the path of home-brewed sigma-delta modulator based DACs. Lots of potential here, but in the end it’s a bunch of engineers trying to out modulator and noise-shape each other. Given that they all bump up against similar fpga constrains, I wonder how much further Schiit can go with this than others? Or if they can match these other companies and come in a little cheaper? Qutest at $1.5k - $2k is the cheapest entry in the home-brew sigma-delta game right now (excluding Mojo2). If Schiit comes in between $1k and $1.5k with a unique sound, they could do well with this.
