This is a review and detailed measurements of the Schiit Vidar stereo amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member. The Vidar costs US $699 and nicely comes with a five (5) year warranty. With amplifiers being one of the most susceptible audio products to failure, long warranty is a real value.
The Vidar sports the usual design style of Schiit which in this form factor is attractive:
Despite its narrow width, the Vidar is quite heavy as it uses a linear power supply and class AB amplification topology.
Back panel connectors are fine but I always miss balanced inputs in audio products:
During power testing and such, the Vidar got fairly warm but not too hot and typical of the category. It only shut down once when I ran a sweep causing it to clip at 20 kHz.
I only tested the unit in stereo mode and not bridged.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our 1 kHz tone delivering 5 watts into 4 ohm load:
We see the typical power supply noise spikes to the left and right of our tone. SINAD (measure of noise and distortion) is dominated by second harmonic distortion though which rises to -80 dB or so in the worse channel. As it is, performance is a few notches above average of some 85 amplifiers tested to date:
Signal to noise ratio and crosstalk follow the same ranking:
Frequency response is excellent though:
Amplifier Power Measurements
Most important aspect of an amplifier is amount of power it can deliver cleanly. Let's start with 4 ohm load:
We are getting 183 watts which is a bit shy of the 200 watt specification. But that is at higher distortion. If we allow that, we get there as well:
Unlike class D amplifiers with regulated power supplies, class AB amps like Vidar have much higher peak performance for short duration as you see above right.
Using 8 ohm load we actually beat the company spec:
Finally, the difficult test of power versus distortion versus frequency:
Nice to see these lines without any strange curves and overlap. This indicates there are no hidden dragons in the design of Vidar, just a standard degradation with frequency.
Conclusions
Seems that Schiit set up to design a straightforward Class AB amplifier with lots of powers and no design flaws. In that regard, it succeeds. You have an attractive amplifier with long warranty and lots of power into 4 ohm load. At US $699, it is priced well.
Overall, I am happy to recommend the Schiit Vidar.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Let's agree that no one does a better job of begging for money than I do. So please open your paypal account and donate using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The Vidar sports the usual design style of Schiit which in this form factor is attractive:
Despite its narrow width, the Vidar is quite heavy as it uses a linear power supply and class AB amplification topology.
Back panel connectors are fine but I always miss balanced inputs in audio products:
During power testing and such, the Vidar got fairly warm but not too hot and typical of the category. It only shut down once when I ran a sweep causing it to clip at 20 kHz.
I only tested the unit in stereo mode and not bridged.
Amplifier Audio Measurements
As usual we start with our 1 kHz tone delivering 5 watts into 4 ohm load:
We see the typical power supply noise spikes to the left and right of our tone. SINAD (measure of noise and distortion) is dominated by second harmonic distortion though which rises to -80 dB or so in the worse channel. As it is, performance is a few notches above average of some 85 amplifiers tested to date:
Signal to noise ratio and crosstalk follow the same ranking:
Frequency response is excellent though:
Amplifier Power Measurements
Most important aspect of an amplifier is amount of power it can deliver cleanly. Let's start with 4 ohm load:
We are getting 183 watts which is a bit shy of the 200 watt specification. But that is at higher distortion. If we allow that, we get there as well:
Unlike class D amplifiers with regulated power supplies, class AB amps like Vidar have much higher peak performance for short duration as you see above right.
Using 8 ohm load we actually beat the company spec:
Finally, the difficult test of power versus distortion versus frequency:
Nice to see these lines without any strange curves and overlap. This indicates there are no hidden dragons in the design of Vidar, just a standard degradation with frequency.
Conclusions
Seems that Schiit set up to design a straightforward Class AB amplifier with lots of powers and no design flaws. In that regard, it succeeds. You have an attractive amplifier with long warranty and lots of power into 4 ohm load. At US $699, it is priced well.
Overall, I am happy to recommend the Schiit Vidar.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Let's agree that no one does a better job of begging for money than I do. So please open your paypal account and donate using : https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/