Schiit IEMagni Review (Headphone Amplifier)

[Madeintooting]

The prototype of the CT scanner that EMI was developing was failing at the hospital in Wimbledon (can't recall its name now). Finally they send in the testing group and within days they found out the cause, the fix was applied and EMI became the first company in the world to make a CT scan of the brain.

The Atkinson Morley-
https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/about/history/neurosciences/

 

[Helicopter]

I meant that I would pay more for that amp topology with a Blue Velvet, size of the case be damned.

The ONLY gear I have had that developed that level of noise in a matter of weeks are the Schiit amps. I owned several small iBasso DAC/amps when I traveled frequently on business some years ago, no issue, ever. Do you really think it's acceptable that one should have to take the cover off a desktop amp to clean a brand new pot in a matter of a couple of months? I don't think you really do.

The pot on my Hel is scratchy, but the others are all quiet on my Heresy, Magnius, Sys, (and obviously) Freya, and Saga.

 

[sarumbear]

The Atkinson Morley-
https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/about/history/neurosciences/

That’s the one. Thank you.

 

[Jimbob54]

The pot on my Hel is scratchy, but the others are all quiet on my Heresy, Magnius, Sys, (and obviously) Freya, and Saga.

You bought a lot of Schiit!

 

[Helicopter]

You bought a lot of Schiit!

Yup. I've got Modi 3 and Modius too. It was the Modius review that led me to ASR. I am a big Schiit fan.

 

[CedarWind108]

I always get excited when a Schiit product comes out and immediately decide to buy it. Then I read about a meaningful problem, like the channel matching in this. Seems like they always do at least one thing wrong. So I’m yet to own a Schiit product.

 

[JuliaCoder]

I like his Thunderdome approach but I think it's really a rationalization to design new stuff. I decided not to buy a Jot 2 because it has too much power for any full size headphone and therefore gives off more heat than I want on my desk and would be too noisy for IEMs.

 

[JohnYang1997]

Maybe have a retest of A90 to justify its 50mV performance? I don't think it's possible for the 50K pot to produce nearly as low noise as A90. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...f-topping-a90-headphone-amp.11946/post-346275
That was a year ago..... Exciting times.....

 

[phoenixsong]

Funny that it stuggles with low impedance yet claims to be for iem's. Some pretty ugly channel matching too for highly sensitive iem's. However it will be a quality buffer for power amps , almost L30 good.
Edit : I see no switch for the rca out/ headphone operation and is it a preout?

My thoughts exactly. Soo close to being the perfect specialist product though

 

[Dogen]

Nice to see them putting in the effort and succeeding, They may put out a few products where accuracy isn’t the top design goal, to meet particular markets, but they’ve shown they know how to do it.

 

[PeteL]

Funny that it stuggles with low impedance yet claims to be for iem's. Some pretty ugly channel matching too for highly sensitive iem's. However it will be a quality buffer for power amps , almost L30 good.
Edit : I see no switch for the rca out/ headphone operation and is it a preout?

Looking at this kind of power, for iems, by the times it starts to « struggle », your ears may hurt quite bad. Iems don’t require much.

 

[phoenixsong]

Looking at this kind of power, for iems, by the times it starts to « struggle », your ears may hurt quite bad. Iems don’t require much.

Exactly, imbalance is worse at lower levels on the volume knob? Amir did mention that the -10dB low gain helps though

 

[phoenixsong]

@Vini darko 's point is that it is neither here nor there- there are weaknesses exposed when driving low impedance high sensitivity iems and also at the opposite end of the spectrum with harder to drive headphones

 

[PeteL]

Exactly, imbalance is worse at lower levels on the volume knob? Amir did mention that the -10dB low gain helps though

yes all volume pots are like that to some extent. you want an healty usable range, not already too loud at 8 o’clock.

 

[PeteL]

@Vini darko 's point is that it is neither here nor there- there are weaknesses exposed when driving low impedance high sensitivity iems and also at the opposite end of the spectrum with harder to drive headphones

Except, it doesn’t struggle, bring the gain down 10 dB this flattening of the curve will dissapear , and remember, this doesn’t mean the sinad (or thd+n) start to increase (or struggle) it means it reach it’s optimal value earlier than full power and keep it till clipping, no issue there really, certainly not with IEMs

 

[Aperiodic]

Cosmetics are much nicer than the Heresy; never liked the red on the Heresy.

Wonder if one of the other two is going away. They're starting to compete with themselves in this price segment.

 

[Maki]

IEMagnius with 4.4? Please.

 

[Helicopter]

IEMagnius with 4.4? Please.

Yes. And a silver colored case.

 

[kaka89]

Can this be used as a pre-amp in home stereo setup?

 

[YSC]

nice performance but again the imbalance from the pot is a bit disappointing, beyond certain threshold SINAD is less important than channel balance, as a headfi guy for over 5 years before jumping into genelec, for me when an amp or dac having channel imbalance it sounds annoying while lower SINAD to around even 70db (yes, I was once tricked using Audio-gd dac which showed here is hell of a distortion machine). poor SINAD might make you think the music was just like that in the recording or having some tinting on sound where one might not perceive, but the shifted image will just feels weird especially when I wear a pair of open headphone, which in speaker case you can slightly adjust your head position to make the acoustic center sound right, but in headphone you will try to do the same but since it's headphone, you will always have a shifted image