This is a review, listening test and detailed measurements of the Schiit Magni Unity Headphone Amplifier with its optional DAC. It is on kind loan and costs US $199 as configured.
In black, the unit looks serious and attractive. Typical of Schiit products, there are no display and hieroglyphics are used as labels. Due to simplicity of the amp, the latter is not a big deal.
Back panel shows simplicity in the limited connectivity:
Only USB-C is provided which is fine by me but others may want coax or toslink digital inputs as well.
The transformer is the familiar Schiit fixture which bucks the norm of using switching power supply. Left plugged in, it uses enough power to stay warm.
One annoying thing is naming: I have lost track of how many "Magni" amps Schiit has released. This one is called Unity but you wouldn't know it unless you looked in the back.
Schiit Magni Unity Measurements
For most of the measurements, I used the Unity as a combo DAC and headphone amplifier. Let's look at how its DAC performs using RCA out in the back:
This is the best results I could get. When I first plugged in, Ch1 (Left) was way down at 95 dB. Ch2 (Right) climbed up to 102 dB but then would dip down to 96 dB. I messed around with grounding and messed around some more and all of a sudden got the above result. I have not seen this level of sensitivity in hardly any products. Whether you see the same thing when you hook the unit up in your system, I can't say. As is, performance lands in competent category:
In this day and age though, I expect better. Ditto as far as dynamic range:
IMD test shows the same noise issue:
The dashed blue line is a $250 device that came out 5 or more years ago.
Filter implementation is rather typical:
Frequency response is excellent as I would expect:
What is not, for this class and brand, is linearity:
So many DACs nail this test that I have recently stopped running it. But here we are, with a DAC that starts to lose accuracy before the sweep is over.
Multitone test turns in decent but again, not competitive response:
And there is that one spike above 10 kHz which is kind of strange. But not nearly as much as jitter test:
I thought days of getting responses like this was over. Clearly no attempt was made in keeping DAC output clean.
We see yet another manifestation in our wideband distortion+noise vs frequency:
It is not filter related as higher sampling rate barely lowered it. So I ran the wideband FFT test:
A lot of junk is out there, below and above 20 kHz. Fortunately likely not a bother to the ear but my eyes are popping out!
Inclusion of negative gain in the form of lowest gain saves the unit in that department when it comes to headphone output:
And lots of power as well. Distortion does rise though at the limit, especially with low impedance loads.
I specifically tested for noise for sensitive IEMs and response there is again quite good:
To see if the DAC is holding back the pre-amp, I ran the SNR rest both with digital and analog inputs:
Basically they are the same with tiniest edge to analog input.
Oh, I forgot to run the channel match.
Schiit Magni Unity Headphone Listening Tests
I did some listening tests using my Dan Clark E3 headphone which has a 27 ohm impedance. Up to about 3:00 o'clock on the volume control, the sound was excellent on my reference tracks. Above that, which starts to become loud, distortion started to set in with sound getting brighter and crunchy. To be sure it was not the headphone, I switched back to my Topping DX5II unbalanced out. Not only the Topping get louder, it stayed gorgeously clean and produced dynamic range far beyond the Magni. I know, not a fair comparison given the $100 price difference but just making the point that the Magni is not the "end game" the company says it is.
Conclusions
For a while, we had it good with Schiit, with the company stepping up its game and producing excellently measured DACs while being price competitive. The have kept the latter but alas, it seems that they have slipped backward. The DAC simply lacks the hygiene we expect these days. The headphone amp is powerful for its class and triple gain settings is nice. If you don't need to have it drive very low impedance headphones at high output levels, then you are good to go.
Overall, I am reluctantly recommending the Schiit Magni Unity with DAC. Company can and should do better.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
In black, the unit looks serious and attractive. Typical of Schiit products, there are no display and hieroglyphics are used as labels. Due to simplicity of the amp, the latter is not a big deal.
Back panel shows simplicity in the limited connectivity:
Only USB-C is provided which is fine by me but others may want coax or toslink digital inputs as well.
The transformer is the familiar Schiit fixture which bucks the norm of using switching power supply. Left plugged in, it uses enough power to stay warm.
One annoying thing is naming: I have lost track of how many "Magni" amps Schiit has released. This one is called Unity but you wouldn't know it unless you looked in the back.
Schiit Magni Unity Measurements
For most of the measurements, I used the Unity as a combo DAC and headphone amplifier. Let's look at how its DAC performs using RCA out in the back:
This is the best results I could get. When I first plugged in, Ch1 (Left) was way down at 95 dB. Ch2 (Right) climbed up to 102 dB but then would dip down to 96 dB. I messed around with grounding and messed around some more and all of a sudden got the above result. I have not seen this level of sensitivity in hardly any products. Whether you see the same thing when you hook the unit up in your system, I can't say. As is, performance lands in competent category:
In this day and age though, I expect better. Ditto as far as dynamic range:
IMD test shows the same noise issue:
The dashed blue line is a $250 device that came out 5 or more years ago.
Filter implementation is rather typical:
Frequency response is excellent as I would expect:
What is not, for this class and brand, is linearity:
So many DACs nail this test that I have recently stopped running it. But here we are, with a DAC that starts to lose accuracy before the sweep is over.
Multitone test turns in decent but again, not competitive response:
And there is that one spike above 10 kHz which is kind of strange. But not nearly as much as jitter test:
I thought days of getting responses like this was over. Clearly no attempt was made in keeping DAC output clean.
We see yet another manifestation in our wideband distortion+noise vs frequency:
It is not filter related as higher sampling rate barely lowered it. So I ran the wideband FFT test:
A lot of junk is out there, below and above 20 kHz. Fortunately likely not a bother to the ear but my eyes are popping out!
Inclusion of negative gain in the form of lowest gain saves the unit in that department when it comes to headphone output:
And lots of power as well. Distortion does rise though at the limit, especially with low impedance loads.
I specifically tested for noise for sensitive IEMs and response there is again quite good:
To see if the DAC is holding back the pre-amp, I ran the SNR rest both with digital and analog inputs:
Basically they are the same with tiniest edge to analog input.
Oh, I forgot to run the channel match.
Schiit Magni Unity Headphone Listening Tests
I did some listening tests using my Dan Clark E3 headphone which has a 27 ohm impedance. Up to about 3:00 o'clock on the volume control, the sound was excellent on my reference tracks. Above that, which starts to become loud, distortion started to set in with sound getting brighter and crunchy. To be sure it was not the headphone, I switched back to my Topping DX5II unbalanced out. Not only the Topping get louder, it stayed gorgeously clean and produced dynamic range far beyond the Magni. I know, not a fair comparison given the $100 price difference but just making the point that the Magni is not the "end game" the company says it is.
Conclusions
For a while, we had it good with Schiit, with the company stepping up its game and producing excellently measured DACs while being price competitive. The have kept the latter but alas, it seems that they have slipped backward. The DAC simply lacks the hygiene we expect these days. The headphone amp is powerful for its class and triple gain settings is nice. If you don't need to have it drive very low impedance headphones at high output levels, then you are good to go.
Overall, I am reluctantly recommending the Schiit Magni Unity with DAC. Company can and should do better.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
