Schiit Magnius Headphone Amp

@Hands thanks for posting your impressions. I wanted to say the same but I do not give many impressions and didn't want to seem like I was trashing the amp.

I was actually pissed about it, I wanted to like it. it looks so cool, love the buttons.
I left it on for like 32 hours, no change. It's so sandpaper sounding and collapsed and compressed it actually hurts to listen to.

Grace Under Pressure 24/48 from Rush is one of my favorite sounding albums. It has tons of synths, keys, all kinds of percussion and guitars. The layering "soundscape" of certain passages is amazing to me. The way the guitar chords appear and go away and shimmer is intoxicating. On magnius it was almost distorted, the leading and trailing edges were very plastic/metallic sounding. There's also some parts that just seem so huge like I am out in an open space even with headphones on. It's way more pin point in front of my stupid forehead with magnius.

I already boxed it up for return. Asgard 3 is a revelation to go back to. I'm still glad I tried magnius it made me realize what an amazing amp Asgard 3 is. My first Schiit product that made me sad, I wish there was no catering to a certain group. It feels like that's what is happening. Asgard 3 is an amazing amp, such a value punches so far above its asking price. Magnius makes no f'ing sense to me...

 

and

kind of contradict each-other, no?
May be there is a specific signature in high frequency?

 

I really wanted to like the Magnius as well. It's a perfect stack with the Modius.

I spent one night and one morning with it, got fatigued, got a bad headache (both times), and packaged it for return. It might already be at Schiit, as it didn't last in my rig for 24 hours before I decided to send it back.

 

but sure all get the joke.

 

But wait, wait!! Amir loved it subjectively and he is a trained listener*. And objectively he measured and it’s amazing. You guys are off your rockers and delusional, this proves SBAF is nutz!

*Although he maxed out at level 6 as a Harman Hearing Jedi vs hired Harman Jedis who typically get to level 12.

On a serious note, it really would be great for someone to get ahold of the super Heresy version if Jason would let it out. Seems like Jason should have stuck to his guns on this one, democracy be damned!

 

This sounds like a bad joke that Jason decided to release. Something that measures spectacularly and sounds like ass, just to cater to a certain crowd.

I exchanged a defective Magni 3+ for a Magnius, paying the difference, of course. The Magnius was delivered today. I'll be pretty annoyed if it's as bad as others suggest, but that's what I get for being an early adopter.

 

I feel bad that the Magnius is getting unfavorable opinions here but I cannot say I am totally surprised after having tested the Heresy against the Magni 3+. I much preferred the latter. Still, there is a part of me that is afraid that just knowing that one of the amplifiers is op-amp-based automatically prejudices me against it.

Jason, did you guys do any internal blind testing of the Magnius vs Jotunheim in balanced out mode? Similarly, it would be super-interesting to test the Magnius in SE against the Asgard 3. I wonder if you as the designer of all of these amps would be able to pick them out in this kind of comparison.

 

Let me say as someone that's not as seasoned as a lot of folks here and hasn't heard that many amps, it's not subtle. It's not like you have to listen for it or cherry pick sources and headphones. It basically hits you over the head. How anyone could not tell the differences, good or bad opinions aside is beyond me.

 

Just realized I was wrong with opa1688. It's actually a CMOS input opamp that has no current noise. CMOS opamp typically has high 1/f noise though. The 50k pot from Jot makes it a must not to use bjt opamp. Even if you stick an opa1612 to the input stage, current draw will make it noiser than opa1688. All the other Schiit amps are tube input, so they don't have this issue with current noise. Magni 3+ and Heresey uses 25k pots, so they might be noiser when the pot is around maybe 2 o'clock position, but much quieter at other position. It looks like Jot uses a discrete input stage. With good transistors, the current noise isn't a problem.

From the pictures of Magnius, the opa1688 isn't probably used as simple unity gain buffers, so it's not feasible to replace it with simple discrete circuits like a pair of j113 as common drain.

I can only think about two other ways for mod. One is to replace the opa1688 with ada4625-2 or opa1642. It will improve, but still not near the properly designed discrete input stage. The other way is to replace it with opa1612, and then replace the pot with a 10k pot, or max the volume and use a JBL nano patch as volume control.

On a second thought, is it necessary to have the lme49724 in the circuit? Driving the tpa6120 with input stage opamp would make it a typical op+buf design. Lme49724's awesome sauce noise performance gets nullified by the input stage, all it does left is summing the input, which can also be done at the output.

 

The difference between the Heresy version and this version were very, very small. Personally, I think if you like Heresy, you'll like this amp, as well as most super-measurement amps. They do tend to converge on a sound.

Hot take: what if the "correct" sound really is only achieved with a super-measurement amp, and we're all talking colorations to individual preferences with anything else?

More serious take: I still like the discrete/low loop gain/low feedback approach, which also has a sound (that can be varied by complexity of the output stage, amount of feedback (or no feedback), etc. But that's me. It may not be for you. And if you're talking about a differential, discrete amp, you're really not going to get much less expensive than Jotunheim, at least not without serious compromises (like a cheaper pot, etc).

 

I was considering the Modius but then bit on a used Jotunheim to pair with the BF2. I was running a 789 with my BF2 for 6+ months and didn't really dabble much or changing things out.

This weekend I gave the BF2 and Jot some serious listening time and have come to the conclusion that since “upgrading” to the Jot from the 789 I have been extremely happy with the results. The Jotenheim’s slightly warmer sound on the high end really sounds that much better with the BF2 and my HD 800’s. The 789 was too bright. I have an MJ2 on the way too so I am going to also give that a shot.

I say this because was considering the Modius to save a few bucks but have been so happy with the Jotunheim / BF2 pairing that I am going stick with what I have. I have a few setups too so the MJ2 and Jotunheim will have a permanent places in one of them for the time being.

I’m sure Modius is going to make a lot of people happy for their particular stacks but I really dig Jot. Just my two cents.

 

I believe you. Still, it could be fun to let some folks here take the Pepsi Challenge on it as an interesting experiment (unmarked, sealed case, etc).

Regardless, I think folks around here will all be happy when you get back to refining Coca-Cola Classic - New Coke doesn’t seem to be doing it for this crowd at least.

 

I haven't give a try with ADA4625, guess it went to far with its correction circuits. There's really not a lot of opamps handle 50k pot very well, maybe opa1642 could be a slight improvement.

 

MUSES op amps have been used by Fiio and other companies. So using them in production is not totally crazy or outlandish. Sure, it is easier for someone like Fiio, who is already in China, be able to be able to get them and use them. Although I think even those were more expensive choices in the E12DIY and the X7 modules.

The question to me is if any company wants to align with someone like MUSES, which has quite a lot of heresy and hyperbole around them already. It would take some serious marketing to pull it off in a serious way that had little BS.

Let's all remember guys, this amp, along with the Heresy, were designed for the "measurements or death" crowd. Do that, and this is kind of what you get. It sounds like except for getting a decent pot from Alps and maybe addressing a bit of heat issue, it was kind of a boring build for Jason as well.