Looking forward to reading write-ups on the Class A, AB, Continuity listening, and whether the Class A was converted into a BBQ at the end
SERIOUSLY!!!
@Jason Stoddard @ArmchairPhilosopher - don't keep us in suspense!!! What was the outcome?!?!?!?!
The "Pure Class A Aegir" sounded horrendously bad. No stage at all, everything happened through what felt like a key hole between the two speakers. No bottom end whatsoever, there was no separation worth mentioning, the midrange entirely overwhelmed everything else, and the upper frequencies could never quite decide if they want to needle your ear drums to shreds at one moment, or just disappear behind the steamrolling midrange altogether.
"Class A/B Aegir" sounded better to me, but started to strain a bit when driven a little harder. The stage widened quite a bit when compared to the class A, and accuracy improved a tad as well. Upper midrange and above, though, turned almost raspy when driven a bit harder. The amp wasn't clipping, but something was definitely off there.
Would be a great amp to enjoy somewhat grungier live rock with, though. But a hard pass for anything that requires accuracy, imaging, or a wider stage, like jazz, classical, acoustics, or the like.
At least as far as I'm concerned, Continuity (the unaltered Aegir) won hands down. Without any exaggeration: It wasn't even close. But then again, I might be somewhat of a Continuity fanboi without actually having realized it until last night, because I always liked the way Aegir sounded. And even after close to a year of ownership, I still drool on an almost daily basis over the results my Tyrs produce.
Continuity Aegir had by far the widest stage, most precise separation, and crispest low end. But it started to struggle with higher volumes. At normal-to-above-normal listening levels, it was by far the most accurate and musical of the three variants.
With all three I hated the highs. Prickly, glassy, harsh. Just way too "in your face," to the point of being utterly offensive. It got worse the louder you played them, and regardless of genre.
But since I'm somewhat intimately familiar with the Aegirs (in stereo as well as in mono configuration, but for this experiment they were run in stereo) and know for a fact that they can do way better than that, I blame that offensiveness on the speakers that were used. (A pair of Salk Song 3, I think? Ribbon tweeters, they sure are … something!)
As far as I could tell — and before it was announced which amp was which, mind you — people's opinions were all over the place on which one they liked better between the first (class A) and the second amp (class A/B), but overwhelmingly seemed to prefer the third (Continuity) overall.
Personally, I was pretty much instantly able to tell which one was Continuity—simply because it was the only one that would be worth turning into an actual product. A and A/B sounded so horrendously bad to my ears that I couldn't imagine that anyone would actually pay any money for them. I've heard bluetooth speakers that sounded more musical. Just based on that alone, the third one
had to be Continuity. But there were other indicators as well.
I did get my picks of A and A/B wrong, though. I attributed the second amp's somewhat wider stage and improved accuracy over the first one to it having to be class A, and thought that this raspy "struggling" I heard when driven a little harder would have to be an indicator that it's flying a little too close to your typical "class A power limitations." And thus, I assumed, it follows that the first one would have to be class A/B, also because it did not at all deliver
anything of that certain je ne sais quoi that poeple usually associate with class A. To me, it felt like the least accurate (or most distorted, if you will), it had no stage nor separation, and really nothing else that would be worth gushing over. Like, at all.
A very interesting result, I think, and at least to me it was somewhat surprising. But absolutely worth the experiment.
Plenty. Not quite Folkvangr or Asgard 1 levels of hot, but it gets seriously hot.
The prototype didn't have the final heat sink design yet, and it also didn't have a case that could help with dissipation. It was literally just the naked board screwed on a Mjolnir 2 base plate. I would hazard a guess that the final product will probably be somewhat similar to Mjolnir 2 in how much heat it radiates.
Wait, that's all you have to say?!
Mhm. The prototype wasn't really "final" in that the board layout will still change, it didn't have the final chokes (the ones it had are considerably smaller than what is planned for the final product), and it lacked certain protection mechanisms. The state it is currently in, you for example have to unplug your headphones every time you wanted to switch between high and low gain, between single-ended and push-pull, or between … I forget what the third switch did, sorry.
So it wouldn't really be fair to "publicly" judge Mjolnir 3 at this point.
But I really, really,
really! enjoyed it in push-pull on high gain (with that third switch in the down position, whatever that means), though. For that alone I'll be buying one, that's for sure.