Schiit Mjolnir headphone amplifier - Page 169

 

Yes if by transport you mean the SPDIF output and not an external CD spinner.  Moving from the motherboard toslink to something with dedicated clock is worth the ~$150 buy in.  You can of course go much higher than that budget permitting.

Sigh and to think I considered myself done with hoarding gear a few days ago..

This IS Head-Fi....

don't see any headphone jacks in the J2. Don't tell me that you would have to connect the HE-6 like a speaker!

don't know about less money...dark star is 3.5K...J2 appears to be about 4K. Plus, where is the headphone jack in the J2?

It depends really. Generally here's in stock J2.

 

Don't kid yourself.  The DS is a speaker amp without speaker taps ;)  And yes buying an HE-6 means accepting that most usable amps are speaker amps.   The list of amps with a headphone jack and enough power reserve is very small. DS, B22, GS-X mk2, Mjolnir... that's it.

you're right...the internet article I read was either too old or inaccurate. $500 to $600 less is significant, but still, only speaker taps, which I am not crazy about. Could indeed be better than the dark star based on the reviews.

The Dark Star is still an awesome amp, I think for many of us it's just too much money comparatively to what you could get.

I really think the DS is one of the best headamps for HE-6 and I extremely enjoyed the T1 on it as well.

 

Other than that, I feel it's overpriced due to the beaaatuiful casework. The J2 is the best I've ever heard the HE-6,

however I simply prefer the LCD-3 overall to it. 

 

While the DS is a fantastic headamp for HE-6 it is not near as good as the plethora of speaker amp options.

 

 

With that said, I'm sure you'll immensely enjoy the DS.

Edited by paradoxper - 2/18/13 at 7:23pm

my mjolnir clips when I play the dies irae of Verdi's requiem through the HE-6 (I.e., the Robert Shaw telarc recording...this is the piece I use to make sure that an amp has enough juice). The other "clippers" in my stable are the EF-6, the Lyr, and the Burson Soloist. The wild swings of classical music indeed expose the aforementioned amps. By the way, would linking the CD player to the mjolnir via balanced cables result in more power/voltage and prevent the mjolnir from clipping and distorting?

 

SoupRKowva compared the B24 speaker amp to the Darkstar at a meet last year.  The B24 Killed it.  I had that same B24 in house and compared it to a plethora of other speaker amps and headphone amps.  Plain and simple.  If you want to get the absolute best out of your HE-6 "Today" A speaker amp with A+ grade of quality amplification is needed.  So if the B24 killed the Darkstar and that same B24 did only so-so in our HE-6 mini meet. That means the Darkstar is not really in the running "for me"

 

The Mj would be the absolute minimum in terms of a headphone amp I would go for the HE-6.  The truth is the MJ IMO is best suited for LCDs.  It does a kick ass job on them.  

 

First Watts amps have been reported to sound really good with the HE-6.  Amps like the J2 can be had for sub 3K.   My F1J at this point going down the rabbit hole - is the absolute best I've ever heard the HE-6 on - let me tell you, myself and a couple other headfi 'ers have heard these headphones on many, many amps - both speaker and head amps.   

 

All you need for a speaker amp to act like a headphone amp is this and your done.

 

 

This is true, and im still confused why you want to replace it with F4s, even on the first watt site he says that the F1 is his most revealing and brutally honest amp he ever made...sounds perfect to me. It also has the least amount of noise of all his amps.

Does anyone know if Mjolnir switches the headphone and pre-amp outs like the new Asgard 2 supposedly does?  Or does it attempt to drive them simultaneously?  I can't find documentation anywhere (including Schiit's website) that discusses this.

Changing the input voltage won't increase the power on tap.  Are you sure it's the amps and not your ears capping out?  With a 2V source, the Mjolnir doesn't clip until you are running the pot wide open.

Both outputs are always on.