My first DAC was the iFi micro iDSD and was very pleased with the performance, and then I bought an iDAC2 for use at work.

I then happened upon this thread and was rather surprised to see iFi being "slagged" so much. I realize it's nothing close to summit-fi, but the micro iDSD has been fairly well reviewed and been thought of as comparable to the Chord Hugo. Granted, many of the DACs recently seen floating down the LA river have also been well reviewed. I've only just finished reading p. 13 of this thread, so there may be stuff about iFi here that I haven't seen yet.

I ordered a nano iDSD for my colleague when I got the iDAC2 and finally got around to listening to it. It's definitely glarier, more veiled than the iDAC2 and micro iDSD and generally thin sounding, so I can see how Marv and zdfx would want to burn it.

I too am hella curious what the redacted units are ...

I live in Taiwan and don't even know if there is an Yggdrasil in the country. I'll be in the New York City and Montreal area next March/April. Where can I hear this mythical Norse tree?

May I suggest that you noble pirates give the DirectStream a try once more with the new firmware? It's called "Yale" and it's really quite an improvement. The change is a lot more significant that I had expected, almost a change of DAC in magnitude.

You can really hear the Ivy League.

If the [redacted] uses the Gungnir case form, it may actually be too big for my desktop available space, now that I've gone to 2 monitors here at work, and there's that pesky BW PSU to spot as well.  A Bifrost form DAC would be more appropriately sized.  I may have to end up using my Ciunas, or even go back to my previous Lindemann.

Looking at marvey's chart, the Auralic Vega appears to have the best relative rating among the small form DAC candidates.  Do any other small size DACs suggest themselves?