Schiit Magni Powering Speakers Mod

Discussion in 'Speakers' started by spwath, Nov 11, 2016.

  1. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    So I have a schiit magni, and I thought, "What cant this do?..... Power Speakers!"
    So I decided to make that possible to do (safely).
    Now my speakers are 4 ohm, and I do not think that the magni would like that too much. So I made it safe(er).
    For $30 from digikey, I bought a little enclosure, 2 nice 12 ohm resistors (to bring impedence of speakers to 16ohms to not damage magni), 2 heatsinks for the resisters, 2 nice flat 1/4" right angle connectors, and 2 sets of binding posts.
    Put it all together and I get a little box that I plug magni output into, and I plug my speakers into. And alas, It powers my desktop speakers to a good volume at around 40-50%!
    Here it is, I apologize for my bad soldering and use of hot glue...
    And bad pictures, my phone camera is bad.
    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  2. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Also note this could be pretty good for a jotunheim as well, as then you can get some serious power, and more safely than without the box.
    The resistors I got were rated up to 10w, and the heatsinks 5w at 60c. Way overkill for mine, 1.8w, but still, dont want it to overheat or have problems.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2016
  3. schiit

    schiit SchiitHead

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    I hate to be the party-pooper here, but don't be surprised when the Magni blows up anyway, despite the resistors. Driving speakers is very, very different from headphones. They are a much more reactive load, with physically large drivers that can cause significant back EMF. Headphone amps are NOT designed to run speakers, period, end of statement. They do not have the large output devices, nor heatsinking, required to run speakers.

    Sorry to spoil the fun, but that's the way it is.
     
  4. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Nah, you just made it more fun. Its no fun without explosion risk.

    I think I should be fine though, just driving single driver 3.5" drivers at low volume on a desktop setup. And the magni feels quite cool.
     
  5. Case

    Case Anxious Head (Formerly Wilson)

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    @spwath , dude, be careful, don't get your Icarus on \/
     
  6. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    I wont. The only issues I had was burning a hole in my homework when soldering.
     
  7. Case

    Case Anxious Head (Formerly Wilson)

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    Good luck!

     
  8. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    Meh, call me when you built a second one and run them as bridged monoblocks :D
     
  9. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Now that would probably not be good for the Magni(s)
     
  10. SSL

    SSL Friend

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    I'll be the first to say told you so when the crater forms.
     
  11. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    Bah, run balanced outputs to a pair of Magnis, hack an xlr to feed the pos/neg across the rcas to bridge the outputs for MOAR POWAH. I mean, you're already in this deep, you might as well commit to it.
     
  12. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Would that actually work?
     
  13. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    This is essentially how people bridge amps that don't normally have a bridging option.

    Assuming the dac outputs are electronically balanced around 0V aka ground (most are), you're fine. Don't do it with a circlotron style or transformer coupled dac output, though even then it's nothing a couple resistors hacked in wouldn't fix in a kludgy sorta way.
     
  14. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Is it bad that Im seriously considering doing that if I can find another cheap used magni 2?


    Im actually liking this setup quite well, replacing my receiverrr for now. There might be some more deffinition in the highs, but it might be placebo too, ill have to do more testing.
     
  15. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Doing this kind of stuff is fun. A few of us did this on Changstar, a smaller site, but with the heftier Mjolnir, and into HE speaker drivers with easy loads. I do feel that I need to make the following statement, mostly because a large percent of people in the world are retards, and will try to take advantage of others when they do something stupid:

    This is a bad idea and invalidates your warranty. Please don't blow up your amps and send them back to Schiit and claim "I dunno". It would be pretty obvious what happened based on the parts that blew up.
     
  16. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    I would never do that, especially to a company like schiit.
    I knew it would probably void Waternty, but voiding warenties is always fun.
     
  17. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Don't think you would do this. Just the 10000 others on HF, of which 15% might.
     
  18. spwath

    spwath Hijinks master cum laudle

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    Yeah. I might also add some heatsinks in the Magni.

    What do you think the likelihood of damage is from driving speakers?
     
  19. doublea

    doublea New

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    I'd say that depends on the nature of the output stage of the Magni. I don't have schematics in front of me but I assume it ends with some simple buffers that would probably not like the feedback from the dynamic drivers. Maybe some heatsinks on those would be enough, maybe they don't have a prayer in hell. Without concrete data it's hard to guess what will happen, these are just my intuitions.

    Edit: Actually, unless I'm forgetting something here, you will probably be able to just add some simple buffers to your breakout box (basic idea) and nothing should blow up, except for maybe those.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2016
  20. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    The first time I blew up a circuit, I managed to embed the chip in the ceiling. Come on guys, step up your game!
     

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