Yeti Standard 1000 – 4P power conditioner – Cleaning crew

The Sound

By now we have a pretty good idea what the Yeti Reference sounds like. A big strength of that filter is stereo imaging. Now we are not going to compare the Yeti Standard with the Reference: that makes no sense at all. Nor is it a battle: the Reference is better than the Standard in every way. And it should be like that considering the price.

What we can do is keep the Aquarius V5 in mind and switch between, for example, the Kemp PowerStrip 8Plus that we also use in our system. This power strip we use with a Kemp Reference cable and will set you back out around 1500 Euro.

Sonnet Pasithea

We mainly use the Sonnet Pasithea d/a converter in this kind of testing. Purely because the Pass Labs X150.8 is way too demanding and the Mutec MC3+ and the Mutec REF10-120 should not be powered down, as it would take too long for the clocks to stabilize after every power-up. It is really inconvenient to test with reclockers and ref-clocks. In addition, not many people will have this stuff at home, which also makes it nonsensical to test with it.

Air!

What stands out about the Yeti Standard 1000 4P is that its character is light, fast and airy. It puts out a great stereo image for its class and brings a lot of “energy” (yes, bad pun) to the playback.

The Aquarius is a bit calmer in character, if we remember correctly. It is a bit creamier than this Yeti. The Kemp is a bit more tame in character and also makes the whole thing a bit smaller. This is not immediately unpleasant, but it is noticeable.

Speed

What also stands out is the speed that remains completely intact with this Yeti Standard 1000. We can still hear the extreme speed of the Sonnet Pasithea. One of the features that made us include this dac in the reference system. The Kemp seems to make it a little “slower”. Perhaps that’s why it also sounds a bit darker. We tested the Aquarius differently, so we can’t compare it that way.

We also recently had the Plixir BAC1000e here. That was also a fine device with a pleasant sound. Very smooth and friendly. The Yeti Standard 1000 and Plixir BAC1000e both have four outputs. Both balanced. However, the structure is different, including the way of connecting the outputs. Plixir “loops” through the outputs, allowing devices to potentially contaminate each other a bit more. Yeti wires each output from the transformer, which in our view makes more sense.