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Schiit Magnius Balanced Headphone Amp Review

Tks

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"kindly sent to me by the company "
That always worries me, screams golden sample.

The penalty on the unbalanced section seems to work well enough as a tradeoff for the superb performance in balanced. Still, I'm always hesitant of company or fanboy samples.

Hopefully their QC is up to snuff, and a teardown can be performed to ensure other users are seeing the same board and component layout. </Hint>

Otherwise, kudos to Schiit for another sharp looking, and well performing product!

Just to comment really quick. Even if the device suffers something not intended, and something you discover that is wrong with it. Schiit has really nice customer service. My first desktop amp was a Schiit Magni 3, and it started getting MEGA scratchy. Told me no problem, swing it on over back to them, and they'll solve it.

So even if they want to risk the blowback from a potential golden sample scenario (which only lunatics would considering the pay-off would not be worth it, in my opinion), if you as a user have a problem I doubt they'd leave you dissatisfied with a purchase.
 
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amirm

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Hi @amirm, do you get to keep this product?
It is not stated so I assume so. I don't need the favor but do appreciate not having to pack, ship and schlep it to the post office. :)
 
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amirm

amirm

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"kindly sent to me by the company "
That always worries me, screams golden sample.
Sometimes you look someone in the eye and you decide to trust them. That is my current stance with the company. But sure, if you have doubt, buy one and send it to me and I will retest. Hard to imagine there is a lot of unit to unit variation given the architecture.
 

gvl

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Kudos to Schiit for aligning the outputs on the Modius and inputs on the Magnius, given many others can't get it right it's an achievement by itself.
 

YSC

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it seems to me that once they switch back to IC based amp design and the performance instantly rocks up! is that the OPAMP improved in these years or just they can't make great discrete designs?
 

Doodski

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This is a interesting IC design. It's like discreet but in IC form where the parameters of the circuit can be controlled and repeatability is good too. This IC is used in the Atom and the EVGA NU Audio PC sound card.
https://www.ti.com/product/LME49600
fbd_snas422e.gif
 

Koeitje

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I really like they got products in black now. Also good to see that they keep on improving in terms of performance, but its disappointing that the unbalanced performance is pretty bad.
 

ayane

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Oh that was fast, lol. Schiit knocked it out of the park this time, for balanced mode anyway. I'm happy that they're taking measurements more seriously. That single-ended performance hit seems to be because of distortion leaking into the grounding plane. They're using "proper" balanced topology rather than "summing" the balanced inputs by driving the gain stage differentially...
 

Veri

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I would have to ask the big guy about that one. I assume he has his reasons.
Cheaper Chinese amps use unofficial 4.4mm connectors and not official Sony Pentaconn ones. In the US, I would assume it is a whole lot more expensive if you want to license and use Sony's brand-name connector.
Edit: JohnYang's explanation
 
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PuX

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Really?!?! They've started posting their own AP measurements on their site. Pretty ballsy move to do that, send Amir a golden sample that matches that and hope no one else on planet earth puts one through a half decent analyser.
Freya S had huge variation between two tested samples, so why would that surprise you?
 

restorer-john

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and not official Sony Pentaconn ones.

Is it actually a Sony proprietary and licensed connector? Interesting. I thought it was a third party who had patented the design and was licensing manufacture/use.

@JohnYang1997 may shed some light on it.
 

Veri

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Freya S had huge variation between two tested samples, so why would that surprise you?
Freya S was discrete and not a design using op-amps with very tight production variations.
 

PeteL

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If Schiitt wants everyone to buy this for balanced use only, why does the promo pic have the se input plugged in?
They never said that everyone should buy it for balance only, TM Noble actually said he likes the sound of the TRS output. What they said was that if the performance difference is an issue for some, they have other SE options.
 

charleski

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Chinese amps use unofficial 4.4mm connectors and not official Sony Pentaconn ones. In the US, I would assume it is a whole lot more expensive if you want to license and use Sony's brand-name connector.
I’m sure this was an important consideration and they decided to go with an open standard rather than a proprietary connector.
But Pentaconn connectors were actually developed by a small Japanese company called DICS. People tend to think they came from Sony because they were the first to adopt them.
 

restorer-john

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This is a interesting IC design. It's like discreet but in IC form where the parameters of the circuit can be controlled and repeatability is good too. This IC is used in the Atom and the EVGA NU Audio PC sound card.

The Schiit product shot shows a TPA-6120A2. I see no LME-49600 on that PCB.
1597225089886.png


The picture above corresponds perfectly with the pin out and markings on the IC.
1597225172881.png
 
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restorer-john

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But Pentaconn connectors were actually developed by a small Japanese company called DICS. People tend to think they came from Sony because they were the first to adopt them.

That is what I had concluded. Thanks for clarifying.
 

Jimbob54

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Freya S had huge variation between two tested samples, so why would that surprise you?

Because where does it end? Company sends product- amir tests, performs well. Does he have to either buy or borrow a retail sample for every device sent by manufs?

Look at the time he and @WolfX-700 spent on the M500 v1 to determine not a golden sample but temperature discrepancies in performance. Cant do that for everything

I'm not doubting companies may have QC and consistency issues but at some point we have to take ASR for what it is- one man doing us all a bit of a favour. I'd rather see more products tested than less.

He has and does revisit items that have been of particular interest. But to allege golden sample given what I said about measurements is going way too far. Woe betide the company that gets found out doing it too.
 
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PeteL

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Why even include the unbalanced outputs then, if the performance is so wildly different?

I think Amir's measurements here are charitable, in that they just show elevated levels of second harmonic distortion, which might be less audible. But the intermodulation distortion (IMD) performance is also pretty poor in unbalanced, as shown in the AP measurements posted on Schiit's website.

This is a lot like the Bifrost 2... harmonic distortion measures ok, but IMD tells quite a different story.
The funny thing is, at the rate they engineer stuff, soon enough Schiit will come up with one that measure equally well with both balance and SE, and then some will say, great, but If only they could have made that for 200$.
 
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