Schiit Magni 2

Bought the Magni 2 on Amazon after reading the reviews. When I got the unit I did not use it right away it was some 4 months before I set up the unit. And let me be clear here to anyone saying well he might have lower end equipment that he's using, the quick answer to that would be no ! I have a totally restored Marantz 1550 top to bottom, current Marantz CD player around $800. I got from Crutchfield also a modified Yaqin CD3 I bought OFF Audiogon for $350. All RCA interconnects are Audioquest Chicago and Blue Jeans Cable. OK I set up the Schiit Magni ran the RCA from tape output put to input on the unit put in a recent jazz CD I'm not going to bore you on who it was but I will tell you how it sounded and that was not good. The sound was very digital sounding and I was getting low end distortion through my Grado SR-325X. I went to some rock CD's and the same just plain not good sounding. Now I looked at the Receipt from Amazon and I'm beyond the window to return it bummer. I also had forgotten some 4 or 5 years ago I had purchased another headphone amplifier from Amazon. It was a Musical Fidelity V-Can the black unit What HIFI did a review on. Got it on a closeout from Listen UP on Amazon $200. Hooked up the V-Can and all I can say it was amazing sounding the soundstage was smooth not digital sounding and everything opened up yes a totally different sound. The Magni 2 I will sell on ebay cheap this unit was not even close to the Musical Fidelity. Now I'm not saying all Schiit headphone amplifiers are bad sounding not at all but I can clearly tell you this I would skip over this low end Schiit and maybe the next one up or get the current Musical Fidelity V headphone amplifier that will be even better than the V-Can.

 
In the audio world, nobody can say we don’t have a tonne of choice available to us. Some audition gear with slight differences to find the piece that truly stands out to them. This customizable experience is what drives enthusiasts in this hobby.
 
 
But what of the everyman? What of the student on a tight budget who needs the best “bang for your buck” experience? Some will point at the O2, but I would honestly recommend the Magni 2 instead in its basic form – the non-Uber $99 version.
 
 
One reason for this is that the O2 has a slightly bright sound signature while the Magni 2 has an incredibly uncoloured and neutral sound. There is a time and place for amp colouration, with tube amps being sought after for this very reason, but don’t discount the strength of transparency in an amp source. I previously used a Schiit Asgard 2 from May of 2013 to mid-March 2016. It has a nice and slightly warm sound which went well with my previously owned headphones, the Beyerdynamic DT990, the Sennheiser HD600 and the Hifiman HE400i. However, when I got my hands on a ZMF Vibro Mk. I, a headphone with rolled-off highs, it felt almost stifling as a pairing. It was then that I bought the Magni 2.
 
 
The clarity of this made a large difference with the Vibro. Some previous problematic recordings (with the Asgard 2) were cleaned up for listening as nothing was preventing the headphones from sounding as they should – at their tuned level of warmth. The Magni 2 also provided the same amount of power, 1.0W at 50 ohms, that the Asgard 2 did for my needs with the Vibro being a T50RP mod at 50 ohms. It had plenty of power and, with low gain, I never had to increase the volume dial over 11 ‘o clock.
 
 
Enter my ZMF Omni, another warm pair of headphones with much more extension in the highs than the Vibro. The Omni and Magni 2 paired really well, especially after I introduced a Schiit Gungnir into the mix. The detail of the Gungnir fed through the Magni admirably to give a clean and powerful signal to the Omni.
 
 
What the Magni does really well is keep it simple, stupid. Schiit’s marketing is famously anti-marketing and they don’t cry out the virtues of their products very much, letting the quality speak for itself. It has one 1/4 headphone jack, one pair of RCA inputs, a gain switch, an on-off switch and it uses a wall-wart as a power supply. There’s no balanced input or output and, quite honestly, that is a non-issue for $99. The $149 Uber version has preamp output and slightly more power wattage but also succeeds at providing a simple quality experience.
 
 
I strongly feel that this amp is all that is necessary for the “apparently I need a headphone amp?” crowd. It can power headphones up to 600 ohms quite easily, with only problems arising (I predict) with the extremely hungry pairs like the Hifiman HE6. I would also recommend it for those who want an inexpensive but transparent amp lying around for certain genres that require the solid-state bite that tubes can’t give. It’s also incredibly small, so just put it to a side and forget about it until you need it.
 
Make no mistake, this is not a "natural" sounding amp. It doesn't give that sweet sound many seek. It's rigid in design and implementation. This is the amp for those who want the headphone to do all of the talking.
 
Build quality is standard Schiit fare, sharp edges and incredibly sturdy industrial design with metal being used. My one gripe is that it takes quite a while to start up, about 20 seconds approximately. Otherwise, it’s a fine product by Schiit audio. Comes with rubber feet too which are always good.
 

 
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 Got one of these for a downstairs/bedroom system I'm trying to put together for peanuts. For your money, you get a very well made little steel box, crinkle finished, painted silver. You can see thru the vents to the single red circuit board with all surface mount devices, robotically soldered, each component precisely labeled, neat as a pin...nice! You turn it on, the relay clicks on after about 8 seconds, and you get a fiercely bright little white LED which makes this device look the business. You can see a solitary LED glowing orange thru the 2nd vent hole on the top, same glow as a vacuum tube has....but nobody will ever mistake this little guy for a tube amp.
       What makes this amp hugely more useful than their original is that it now comes with a low gain switch. Thus deployed, you get 3 db of gain, which doesn't sound like much, but I submit for the majority of headphones out there, is about perfect. With this setting, I'm between 9:00am and 12noon most of the time, with my Sennheiser HD 650's. You thus are in the most linear part of the volume pot. You can even use this amp with sensitive IEM's, but you'll probably be pretty low on the pot, around 8:00am or so. With the low gain setting you get NO hiss at ALL, which is hugely helpful.
        The sound...out of the box, it had a nasty treble peak, which smoothed out and gradually went away after being on for a few hours, never to return. Can't help but think this was some passive components breaking in. The sound is pretty sweet and clean, for a Class A/B SS amp.  Treble is extended and pretty grain free,no upper mid hardness. Bass is pretty deep and tight, and there seems to be just butt loads of headroom even in low gain mode. It seems to be a very good match with somewhat dark headphones, like the HD 650. So if you just got one of those, and can't afford a more expensive amp, I can recommend one of these without hesitation...it'll do you way better than sticking it in the headphone port of your laptop(gah!).
        Which brings me to the downside of this little amp. It is actually transparent enough to let you know of anything upstream of it that is not up to snuff...unlike a tube amp, it will NOT pretty it up for you! Any grain or hardness upstream, it'll pass on, but without adding any of its own, which is nice. I was trying to use an old Cambridge Audio DVD player as my CD player, and this little amp let me know in FULL DETAIL just what a wretched CD player that device is! So I shall have to deal with that...either a Modi will have to be ordered, and hope that the DVD player at least outputs a clean digital stream, or I'll have to upgrade to a good CD player. With my wife's Cambridge Topaz CD 10 CD player, this little guy sounds sweet and clean.
      But....to my ears, digital in particular is always a bit harmonically threadbare, and this amplifier does nothing to rectify that. SS and digital together is always problematic to my ears; I think they are SO clean that they strip out TOO much harmonic distortion....maybe a little even order distortion is what the ear craves, and that's exactly what tubes deliver...you've gotta have some tubes somewhere in the signal chain! My wife's Topaz CDP sounded good with the Magni 2, quite acceptable. But it sounds absolutely GLORIOUS with the Valhalla, so that's why I gave this one a 4 star rating for sound quality, and a 5 star rating to the Valhalla. But that's just me. I really don't think you're going to find anything much better for 1 clam, so if that's your budget, I can definitely recommend this amp. It is well made, has no glitches or idiosyncrasies, and should last a lifetime. Just make sure whatever you're feeding it is squeaky clean, or the Magni 2 will tell you all about it!