Schiit Magni Powering Speakers Mod

For a more constructive reply, other than "this isn't a good idea," because, well, this isn't a good idea when it comes to lifespan of the outputs, and it certainly voids the warranty,* here's what you should do to see how bad you're stressing the amp:

Get a FLIR One for your phone, or an infrared thermometer, take off the top cover of the amp, and monitor the temperature of the output devices on the Magni (the 4 big square devices near the back of the amp.) These devices have a maximum die temperature of 150 degrees C. If the case of the output device is 100 degrees C plus, that's not good. We put thermal cutoffs in speaker power amps that shut off at 85 degrees C. And they really should almost never be near that temperature.

And...bridging amps effectively halves the load that they see (a bridged amp into 8 ohms effectively sees 4 ohms.) That means boom...faster.

*All discussion here is in context of a voided-warranty device that will not be serviced by us, and not advocating for modification or misuse of our devices, just to be 100% clear.

 

I'll just slap some heatsinks on there then. Keep it lasting longer.

Thanks for clarifying the issues with this, even though I have very much voided my warenty

 

Submerge the amps in a bucket of mineral oil for higher efficiency cooling. Done and done.

 

I'm actually tempted. I've been wanting to do that with my computer

 

Better make it a metal pail, to better dissipate heat from the oil. Don't put heat sinks on the bucket though; that would just be silly.

 

If I were to go that route, I would go all out, small glass tank, magni in it, and a pump circulating oil to a radiator external to the tank. Like how my computer is watercooled, but with the whole thing in the oil.

Either way, I ordered some small heatsinks

 

Y'know... dude... this whole time I've been subtly trolling and pushing to more absurd heights, but uh... you're kinda out-doing me all on your own now.

But hey, if you're gonna use that tank for your computer later on, go nuts!

 

I know, but I figured, why not?
Ill probably stop with just the heatsinks, but who knows... Wouldent be that hard to do mineral oil, and would look pretty cool. And would probably be the only mineral oil cooled headphone amp powering speakers.

 

If it works, then you gotta try some of their bigger ones. People are probably selling their Asgard1's for cheap now anyways.

 

Hmm, looks like they are selling on ebay for only $130....

 

Or a Lyr1 for only $250... http://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649283903-schiit-lyr-original-model-with-stock-tubes/

Poke the tube out of the water to make a Schiity submarine!

 

Yeah, this is where Im stopping, when A lot of money comes into play. You can make me do stupid things, but not spend my money

 

It seems to me that a speaker amp would be cheaper anyway (hell, for $100 you could try building one).

 

Got my heatsinks

 

Heyo, I can finally contribute! I've actually helped a friend design and build a mineral oil submersed computer before. So the tips here extend to both the Schiit Speaker options, and if you do decide to build a submersed gaming rig in the future.

If you do actually go with the mineral submersion option, you have to be very careful with your cables. Mineral oil can (and will happily) creep along cables and up the sides of things, which can quickly contribute to general badness and misfortune if you're not aware of that tendency. So you gotta be careful about, 1) Mineral oil getting everywhere, and 2) rubber/latex/synthetic components that may not play nicely with the kind of mineral oil that you choose.

For a thing as small as this, I don't THINK you'd need a pump to circulate the oil, and could probably get away with just having a heatsink partially submerged (and a usb powered fan pointing at the top of it or whatever), but I don't know how hot it'd get either. If you do use a pump for whatever reason, be aware that mineral oil bubbles will splatter quite far when they pop, and you'll probably just want to put a plastic bag or screen overtop of your enclosure.

Finally, if you do use a pump, make sure the pump can actually handle mineral oil.

 

So far so good. Still kicking as my daily driver. The heatsinking should be helping. No mineral oil as of yet. That might be a summer or Christmas break project though....
No explosion yet @SSL

 

For the price of getting a tank with enough oil + Magni, I'm sure you can get a respectable speaker amp.

That being said I'm considering the same thing, only on 16 ohm speakers. A load that they actually have specs for but I'm sure isn't recommended either.

The funny thing is that the Magni is based on Lin topology which is widely used for speaker amps. This is not an exact schematic, but I don't think it's too far off.



Voltage rails are +/-15V. I measured the quiescent current before but I can't find it. I do know that it was enough to keep 600 ohm headphones in class A the majority of the time.

 

Well I essentially just made my speakers 16 ohm with the resistors.

Mineral oil would be just for fun.

 

Since he is adding some pretty beefy resistors I'd be hesitant to say that they might be able to save the 0.33ohm output resistors and maybe with some luck the BJT's near the output would be okay as well. I guess that depends on what they're using in the output stage as far as their power handling characteristics and heat dissipation goes.

disclaimer: I haven't done much with amplifier circuits and I've only ever built tiny amps (1-10 watt), most of this is speculation that could be wrong. Feel free to correct me.