This is a tear down of the Schiit Magni 3+ headphone amplifier which I just reviewed. Schiit has come a long way on objective performance. Question remains as to build quality.
Other than some really tight screws, taking the unit apart was easy and shows care in reducing cost. Putting all the components on one side helps a lot too.
Here is the main PC Board:
The architecture is quite simple. AC input becomes rectified, cleaned up with the caps and then regulated using the LM series variable regulators. High quality Japanese Nichicon capacitors are used here as well as the rest of the amplifier. Temperature rating is 85 degrees C as opposed to higher grade, 105. In this application though, I am fine with that as I did not detect the unit getting warm enough to cook the capacitors.
Input signal then goes into a couple of integrated opamps (OPA1678) so all is not discrete here. From there, matched pairs of transistors in those IC looking packages take care of increasing drive to power the final output stage which also uses matched pair transistor packages. I could not locate the matched pair transistors anywhere. However, they seem to be clones of the Nexperia dual BJT packages with the same series (e.g. 10035, 1003, etc.).
The devil is of course in the details which I can't get into.
Automated pick and place and soldering is used for most of the components with the exception of a few such as headphone jack. Sadly the past problems of solder splatter remain there:
Here is a zoomed look:
Solder balls are everywhere although not nearly as bad as some of the other Schiit products I have examined. The solder mask (in red) keeps them from shorting things out. Still, I wish hand soldering was much cleaner and left over solder brushed off.
There is some flux residue there but again, not as much as before. And likely is the "no clean" variety.
Conclusions
The construction of the Schiit Magni 3+ looks fine from the top with good choice of components in general. The hand soldering remains a weak point. If you are handy, you may want to open the unit and scrape off the solder balls/splatter. They should come off easy given the solder mask underneath.
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As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
I need to get paid for this work guys. Or at least enough money to buy a new chair as I am wearing out the current one. So get into the holiday spirit and donate using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Other than some really tight screws, taking the unit apart was easy and shows care in reducing cost. Putting all the components on one side helps a lot too.
Here is the main PC Board:
The architecture is quite simple. AC input becomes rectified, cleaned up with the caps and then regulated using the LM series variable regulators. High quality Japanese Nichicon capacitors are used here as well as the rest of the amplifier. Temperature rating is 85 degrees C as opposed to higher grade, 105. In this application though, I am fine with that as I did not detect the unit getting warm enough to cook the capacitors.
Input signal then goes into a couple of integrated opamps (OPA1678) so all is not discrete here. From there, matched pairs of transistors in those IC looking packages take care of increasing drive to power the final output stage which also uses matched pair transistor packages. I could not locate the matched pair transistors anywhere. However, they seem to be clones of the Nexperia dual BJT packages with the same series (e.g. 10035, 1003, etc.).
The devil is of course in the details which I can't get into.
Automated pick and place and soldering is used for most of the components with the exception of a few such as headphone jack. Sadly the past problems of solder splatter remain there:
Here is a zoomed look:
Solder balls are everywhere although not nearly as bad as some of the other Schiit products I have examined. The solder mask (in red) keeps them from shorting things out. Still, I wish hand soldering was much cleaner and left over solder brushed off.
There is some flux residue there but again, not as much as before. And likely is the "no clean" variety.
Conclusions
The construction of the Schiit Magni 3+ looks fine from the top with good choice of components in general. The hand soldering remains a weak point. If you are handy, you may want to open the unit and scrape off the solder balls/splatter. They should come off easy given the solder mask underneath.
--------
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
I need to get paid for this work guys. Or at least enough money to buy a new chair as I am wearing out the current one. So get into the holiday spirit and donate using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/