Schiit Audio Magni 3+ and Magni 3 Heresy Headphone Amp and Preamp

Friend Of Mine bought this unit despite what I told him over my experience with the Magni 2. To make a long story short I brought it over to his house my Musical Fidelity V-Can the older black unit so we hooked it up in his system. As he's listening he's saying no way again no way ! He took the headphones off and said this sounds amazing this Schiit unit is not even close. He went back to listening to the MF unit next thing he said to me is I'm returning this unit and getting a Musical Fidelity V-Can. I told him the only way your going to get one of those units is off ebay or whatever unit was discontinued around 5 years ago. The current V series Musical Fidelity unit is around $400. The good news is he did locate a V-Can 2 in great condition on ebay for $200. including shipping. Now he's a happy camper loves the sound and always thanks me for bringing over my unit to compare it with. Now let me be clear I'm not saying Schiit doesn't make great product's because they do. In my system I use their tone control and it's amazing and a great bang for the buck. But in this shootout the Musical Fidelity V-Can outdid this Schiit Magni 3 as it did the Schiit Magni 2 on my system. And if you can get lucky and pick up this black box Musical Fidelity V-Can or V-Can 2 the silver unit for a good price it's well worth it ! And a message to the wise don't go on the hype you read easy way to get burned.

Schiit Audio sent me both these amps for evaluation and review.

In short, both these amps were excellent with all the regular headphones I plugged in to them, and near silent with even Campfire Audio's Andromedas (on low gain). It actually took me using unrealistically demanding headphones (HiFiMan's Susvaras) to get them to struggle. For the HD6XX, Verum 1, Sundara and other similar headphones they were driven, at my moderate listening levels, very well, with almost as much capability as the Asgard. The Asgard maintained its composure at high power outputs, though most people are likely to never see those.

Better amps (i.e.: Anything THX based, such as the SMSL SP200 or better) resolved more detail, but you're getting closer to 3x the cost. On the other hand, they were a step up from iFi's Zen DAC (using USB power and balanced output), likely primarily due to having more power on tap before sliding into Class AB.

The old Magni 3 had something of a "flat", if wide presentation of the music, but these new amps seem to provide something of a sense of depth to the music as well, which is very impressive for $99. The 3+ was very slightly more even-sounding, something I'm guessing is the result of using matched transistor pairs (6 of those 8-legged chips which look like opamps, but are not, in the second picture). The Heresy had a very slightly, and often unnoticeably more "lively" sound.

Well worth 5 stars for the value these give.