[tafens]

They picked the Heresy version based on measurements alone, just as they always do. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is the first "good" review they've given to a Schiit product... Predictable...

They said they couldn’t hear the difference between Heresy and 3+ too, and then picked the Heresy because measurements, which must mean that the 3+ has their.. (sort of?) approval too

 

[scottbrown5271]

They said they couldn’t hear the difference between Heresy and 3+ too, and then picked the Heresy because measurements, which must mean that the 3+ has their.. (sort of?) approval too

A sideways nod at best, too slight for their loyal disciples to notice...

 

[GumbyDammit223]

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...gni-3-and-heresy-headphone-amp-reviews.10311/

Maybe I missed it, but actual Schiit toilet paper?!?! I remember the talk about it but didn't think it actually existed!

 

[ninetylol]

Hello Jason,

Can you please fly me to in to CA? Im really interested in this

All the best,
ninetylol

 

[ev666il]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is the first "good" review they've given to a Schiit product... Predictable...

Aegir also got a positive review, IIRC. Valhalla 2 was lukewarm, mostly because Amir doesn’t like tubes (unsurprisingly.)

 

[bcowen]

Hello Jason,

Can you please fly me to in to CA? Im really interested in this

All the best,
ninetylol

ROFL!! Me too, if Jason is buying.

 

[ScubaMan2017]

I think you should throw a Vali 2 into the mix just to, you know, screw things up.

+1 on that suggestion. I'm farting around with my 600Ohm impedance cans among the Magni 3.x, Asgard 2.x, Valhalla 2.x, and Vali 2.x {{{adding the x's to imply unpublished revisions THEY've done during production runs}}}}. They all drive my Beyer's plently loud enough. And with weird-and-sometimes-detectable perceived differences in detail.
That 3-machine-death-match would be a dandy Thunderdome!

 

[scottbrown5271]

Aegir also got a positive review, IIRC. Valhalla 2 was lukewarm, mostly because Amir doesn’t like tubes (unsurprisingly.)

Thanks

 

[ZoNtO]

Just got the February issue of Stereophile.

Ragnarok Redux is front page news.

It’s not out on Zinio yet. What do they say about it?

 

[Mr Rick]

It’s not out on Zinio yet. What do they say about it?

They liked it. Better than the original in almost every way. Even JA liked it. Overall I'd say that it was a glowing review.

I think Jason would agree.

 

[valiant66]

If I lived close to you guys, you'd be sick of me coming over and putting my feet all on your furniture while doing these tests.

Jokes aside, while I think I have good ears, I'd probably fail blind tests every time. I couldn't even trust myself into truly believing the Magni 3 vanilla was slightly warmer than the Hel and Fulla 3. I was like "I must've done something wrong"

I'm really bad when it comes to dac and amps. I'm marginally better with headphone differences. Like DT990 600 vs 250ohm. And even then I wonder if the differences were just driver variance. There was even a time when I was debating between two different LCD2s because one sounded better, but the other was more comfortable.

A/B tests suck. At least when a decision HAS to be made.

I’m not sure how you can fail a blind test. It’s not like school, there isn’t a “right” answer, there’s only your answer.
.

 

[ScubaMan2017]

Pretty much 50/50 now. I expect we'll continue to make both Magni 3+ and Heresy, unless something changes dramatically.



Some small amount of noise when turning the volume pot is normal, especially on a discrete design with some input bias current, and especially especially especially with IEMs, which are insanely sensitive. The mechanical feel may be due to the potentiometer being pushed in too far, try pulling it out a little. Some changes can happen with shipping and handling, sorry about that.

With respect to audible noise from the pot, we've taken great lengths to minimize the noise in both 3+ and Heresy, but the reality is, there may be some on either model. This is typically not indicative of a bad pot, this is just the inevitable consequence of input bias current (which exists on op-amp designs like Heresy as well.) This is true of any design from any manufacturer that does not use input coupling capacitors (that is, it is not DC-coupled).

Remember, literally everything we ship is run through both instrumented testing, and is listened to. Any truly bad pots (scratchy, bad matching) that make it through the Alps sort are almost certainly going to be found and culled.

That said, of course an Alps 27mm pot like in Asgard 3 will be much better in terms of matching than an Alps 9mm pot, no matter how much custom design, pre-sorting, post-sorting, etc we do.

I appreciate Schiit addressing this issue {{{edit -- and patiently reviewing it every time it reappears on the thread}}}. My Fulla 2 makes a mild shushing noise while I spin the volume knob. No scratching noises. My Valhalla & Asgard volume knobs are dead quiet. Oddly, my little magni & vali are also silent. I won't be spraying any contact cleaner into these mechanisms (yet... in 4-5 years... with the build-up of dead skin cells, cat-fur, and sweat, and lint, maybe a different answer).

 

[HK_sends]

I think there's plenty of opportunity for Burson gear and Schiit gear to play nicely together. I just got a Burson Conductor 3X and plan to configure my rig using a little outside the box thinking; using not just the 3X by itself, but running my Gungnir Multibit DAC output through Burson's amp and feeding Burson's DAC output into my Mjolnir 2 (and, of course, my Schiit-to-Schiit connection). Should make for some interesting sound signatures...

Cheers and All the Best!
-HK sends

 

[blaked]

Not sure if this is the appropriate place to make a lengthy post like this, but I thought I'd give my positive experience with the Modi 3/Magni 3+ combo I just purchased.

TL;DR: I love them.

Long version:

I don't post here often and have fallen in and out of the audiophile hobby. I've mostly been out for the last several years, and I never did much more than dabble anyway. (I see my most recent posts here were ten years ago!)

My old setup was a Headroom Little More Power, which I purchased for something like $500 in about 1999, along with various headphones over the years: Sennheiser HD 580 (probably my favorite), Grado SR-125, Etymotic ER-4P (with P/S converter cable), Monster Turbine Pro Copper, and a few others. I'm not much of a bass head, and I love an overall neutral sound with a lot of detail. "Analytical" is not a bad word to me.

In that time I got married and had a kid, which definitely has a big impact on one's listening habits, not to mention the budget for audio gear. I gravitated more toward IEMs to keep the sound to myself, and I listened a lot less anyway. Most of my listening was done over car speakers (ugh).

About a year ago I had a bit of a shock: I was diagnosed with moderate hearing loss. Around the 3-4 KHz range, it could be called "moderately severe". I'm still pretty good at about 1.5 KHz and below, but above that a bowl forms, with my hearing from about 6 to 8 KHz climbing back up to the "mild loss" range.

No idea why this happened. I don't tend to keep my music loud, I haven't been to that many concerts, I've never worked in loud environments, and I'm not aware of a precipitating event otherwise. And I'm only in my 40s. Might just be genes. Whatever the reason, my listening habits had changed, and the decline in my hearing went unnoticed by me until I had to ask my wife to repeat herself a few thousand too many times.

I've been worried that my love of analytical detail had been sacrificed on the altar of age. But I still love my music. Was I hearing anything close to how it was supposed to sound anymore? I didn't know. I felt like I'd just been told I couldn't see some shades of green and blue anymore, and in fact hadn't been able to for a while.

I wear hearing aids now, which have helped pretty dramatically, but I hadn't done much to address my ability to listen to music. I'd been toying with the idea of using equalization to boost the frequencies I had more trouble with, but I wasn't pleased with my initial tests, and I didn't want to risk damaging my hearing further by not knowing what I'm doing.

I decided it was time to get some closed-back headphones that I could wear over my hearing aids. I loved my old Sennheiser HD 580 (no longer working by this point), so I opted for the HD 569. It seemed as close to the old HD 580 as I was likely to get with a closed back on a reasonable budget.

I then wondered if there was any point in continuing to use a 20-year-old headphone amp. I knew things had supposedly improved a lot, and gotten more budget friendly to boot. I'd previously purchased a Schiit Fulla (original version, I think) for use on my computer and was happy enough with it, so I went to look at Schiit's latest offerings. The current Magni seemed an obvious choice, and I opted to go for a Modi 3 DAC, as well.

But wait: There are two versions of the Magni: the 3+ and the Heresy. Oh, boy. I did a lot of reading back and forth at various sites, and that was a fight I had no interest in diving into. I have no horse in that race. I eventually decided to go with the Magni 3+. It might as well have been a coin toss, but my reasoning was this: The "subjective" view seems to be that the 3+ is favored by most people from what I've read so far; and the "objective" view is that the Heresy measures better, but both should sound the same, with the measurements of the 3+ still being so good that imperfections would be inaudible (and that should be especially true for me, I'd think). Okay, so one group basically says they should sound the same while the other says the 3+ is better fairly consistently, if only slightly. Looked at in that way, going with the Magni 3+ seemed like a no-brainer. Either they'll sound the same anyway or I've got the allegedly better one. Can't lose, right? Probably. Anyway, if I didn't like it for some reason, I could always switch. (And the price is reasonable enough that I'm tempted to get a Heresy for work just to try it. But don't tell my wife.)

The headphones arrived a few days before the DAC/amp combo. I tried them with my old Headroom amp and came away disappointed. The upper mids and highs sounded so veiled. I braced myself for this being my new reality with hearing loss.

Finally my Modi 3/Magni 3+ combo arrived, and I cabled everything up: computer to AirPort Express via Ethernet, then to the Modi 3 via optical.

Oh, wow. I can't begin to tell you how relieved I was to hear that wonderful combination. I've discovered that I can still hear. It may not be perfect, but I'm able to hear so many details that I was worried would be lost on me. I lay back and listened to Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety for the first time in years, and I was near tears by the end of "Brain Damage". I can't remember the last time I had such an enjoyable listening experience.

I tried my Headroom amp, too, with everything else equal: same cabling, still using the Modi 3 DAC, etc. Ugh. Either the electronics inside the old amp haven't aged well, or modern amps are just that much better (and cheaper), or both. It sounded overly harsh and bright. The upper mids and highs also sounded a bit... watery? I'm sorry for the imprecise language, but I've long since forgotten a lot of the audiophile vernacular, and I was never fluent. I find it odd that I didn't notice this without the DAC a few days prior, but I guess the Modi 3 made that big a difference over the AirPort Express's built-in DAC? I'd have to listen again with the same material. I wasn't doing a deliberate product comparison, just a "hearing enjoyment" test, so I didn't record my impressions in detail at the time.

Going back to the Magni 3+... aaaaahhhhh. Much smoother and more... I guess I'd call it "precise". It makes me wonder what I can hear with even better headphones and amps/DACs now. (Don't tell my wife that, either.)

I think I'd like to try the beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro soon, and I've got my eye on some open-back Sennheisers at Drop for use when the family is out of the house... maybe the HD 58x Jubilee?

So... color me happy with the three Schiit products I've purchased so far. I only live about 90 minutes or so from Valencia, so I'm tempted to show up for the 3+/Heresy showdown just to see/hear what all the fuss is about.

 

[RickB]

I appreciate Schiit addressing this issue {{{edit -- and patiently reviewing it every time it reappears on the thread}}}. My Fulla 2 makes a mild shushing noise while I spin the volume knob. No scratching noises. My Valhalla & Asgard volume knobs are dead quiet. Oddly, my little magni & vali are also silent. I won't be spraying any contact cleaner into these mechanisms (yet... in 4-5 years... with the build-up of dead skin cells, cat-fur, and sweat, and lint, maybe a different answer).

My Magni 3 was dead silent until I moved into an apartment with higher humidity. I'm wondering if contact cleaner would actually make a difference, or does the fact that it's a sealed pot preclude that solution. @Jason Stoddard?