Josh Valor Magnius Review:
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i mean he is basically right because its just a magni heresy with a balanced outputā¦
but im still buying the cheaper 3+ because it works well with a schiit stack
Was considering pairing this with my Modius/Asgard 3. But Iām not so sure anymore considering mixed early opinions.
I like that it has a neutral sound. This would complement the colored sound of the Asgard 3. That way switching from a SE cable to a balanced cable would have more purpose. Though, it doesnāt seem to match up to the performance of the Asgard 3.
Ok here is my experience with the Schiit Modius and Magniusā¦I was surprised.
Hello, after having the package from Schiit via Fedex becoming lost for a few days the new Schitt Modius and Magnius have arrived a few days late but intact, no damage and looking very nice.
After a few hints of an upcoming amp to match Modius I had to try this stack out and see what Schiit magic was cooking at the Schittr āplantā. My main gear I use daily are the Schiit Bifrost 2 (after years with Bifrost 1) and a Schiit Lyr 3 and Schiit Jotenheim. I also have many other amps in house about half retail and half DIY experiments.
The Modius and Magnius are a great looking pair. Black, stark looking IMOā¦some have complained that they would like silver hereā¦understand and Schiits comments were ānope, in keeping costs down this was their decisionāā¦doesnt affect the sound at allā¦One thing I do miss is some indication of it being onā¦no more front panel led etcā¦if its in a stack with something on itā¦its hard to tell if its on or not. There is a nice red led on the pcb that you can see thru the vents on the topā¦but if you put your Lyr 3 on top of itā¦
The Magnius is a wonderful amp. It shines. Whether is was being used in low or high gain it provided more than enough power to make the headphones I used play to very, very high levels. The volume knob is great, long enough to grasp nicely, firm, velvety smoothā¦and finally Schiit got this right!! They have a nice āvisableā dot on the volume knob!! It appears to me a machine milled or drilled ādotā into the aluminum volume knobā¦ah its the small things!! Schiit has made a ābigā thing about the pot in the Magnius, well its a really good Alps RK 27114 27mm Blue Velvet balanced potentiometer! Smooth and I had no low level tracking issues. Well done Schiit. Technologyā¦sureā¦fully differential op-amps, current feedback, THD down to very, very low levels, and its Schiits best measuring amp if your into measurements. Its powered by the usual Schiit wall wort. But how does it sound or ānotā soundā¦after all shouldnt an amp be a straight wire with gain and nothing more or less??
A great amp is only as good as its inputs? In this case it became very clear that the Magnius is a great amp. With inputs from Modius and Bifrost 2 the differences were stark IMOā¦very noticeable.
Which leads to the Modius connection.
Which can be had in either silver or black! It has the AKM 4493 d/a convertor and has both SE and fully balanced outputs to feed the Magnius or any other amp. DC coupled outputā¦to some this is important. Very versatile with optical, coax, usb (Unison) and even AES sources. It pairs nicely with the Magnius physically. The analog stage is based on LME 49724 for the balanced outputs, an OPA 1662 for the SE outputs. Both are independent. So you can use the SE outs to a Lyr 3 and balanced to a Magnius or Jotenheimā¦nice. Unlike the Magnius power can come from a simple USB cable if your using Modius only as a dac. If you use the other digital inputs and NOT using USB then you need to use the included USB wall wart. The cosmetics of the Modius are simple elegance. A single push button to rotate thru the various inputs. Again no visable front panel led to indicate its powered up. The nice thing using the Unison UBS interface is it comes on when you turn on your PC. Simple. Nice.
Going back and forth with SE and balanced (both from the Bifrost 2) there is no audible difference in the overall sound quality and what I was hearing. The only thing that changes is the volume level in your headphones. Some reviews state the SE part of the Magnius measures not as well as the balanced sectionā¦for me this is not an issue and your not going to have any real sonic degradation at all. When I compared the Magnius I compared it with the Schiit Lyr 3 and Jotenheim and it compares nicelyā¦not going to try to explain with glittering generalities the āminuteā differences. When level matched and doing fair AB testing its difficult to state in objective terms the differences, subjectively they are there. But realistically this amp provides more than enough power, is clean, open and transparent under varying loads. For me to keep an amp it has to perform and make my listening experience āreally goodā and this amp does that very well. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Now for the surprising āto meā part:
Headphones that I used in this āexperienceā were Focal Clears, relatively easy āloadā for most amps and the newer HEDD headphones a bit less efficient to drive. I listened via the Magnius with first the Modius for several sessions and then Bifrost 2. It was an immediate difference for me with both headphones.
One was more clear, less veiled and less closed in than the otherā¦being a critical listener, I checked and rechecked cabling and tried several sets of xlr interconnects as well. I was not expecting the difference to be this well ādifferentā. I abandoned DS dacs years ago, so my Multibit dac ears are attuned to that r2r sound, especially from Schiits Bifrost 2. Modius has 4.0V RMS balanced and 2.0V single ended, and as does the Bifrost 2. So the Magnius was being driven with pretty much with the same voltages.
What I was hearing IMO was the difference between a āds dac and a MB dacā. Schitts implementaion of the AKM chip is a very good one. Some reviews have stated that the S/N ratio exceeds the actual chip spec sheetā¦some reference to Schiit has some secret sauce here. I did not come to the following conclusions after reading other peoples reviews or experiencesā¦and mine do differ.
So what did I experienceā¦with my demo list of tunes, ripped 44.1/16 bit stuff playing with Foobar 2000 and Jriver MC 24ā¦I went back and forth between the Modius and Bifrost 2. In all cases the Bifrost 2 was cleaner, crisper, more open, more transparent, less veiled in sound. Amazingly so.
Regardless of SE or balanced or gain setting. I found myself cranking up the volume on the Magnius when connected to the Modius to get the Bifrost2 multi-bit sound. It just didnt happen for me. I used my trusty ole Radio Shack SPL meter to level set as wellā¦same resultsā¦my brain kept telling me āhey the Modius is great, but the Bifrost 2 is like the ākingā hereāā¦
So thats in a nutshell here. If I hadnt have had a multibit dac for years my experience might have been different. If I used headphones that are less resolving my experience might have been different. It is what it is.
I would recommend the Modius/Magnius to someone that wants a fully balanced setup stack and is on a budgetā¦for the $398 combination price this is a great deal. Schitt has many good choices in its products. As always YMMV and your experience may very well be different from mine.
All the best!!
Alex
17 Likes
Thatās alotta Schiit
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Look at that pile of schiit
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A person made this observation on another site:
Surely, as with the Bifrost 2, the source selection leds serve as a visible front panel indication that the Modius is powered up. No source selection led, no power; source selection led on, powered up.
Its a good one an one I totally missed!!
Alex
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How many Schiit products must be stacked before said stack is simply called a ādumpā?
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If youāre in Europe, I can just recommend looking elsewhere. My Magnius was absolutely dead on arrival, and now I have to pay for shipping to get a refund, so I ended up spending $100 to ship a dead piece of kit around the world.
Really interesting read. I did extensive listening between the BF2 and modius using focal clears and Diana v2. I did not have the same experience. I could barely if at all tell the difference. I kept them both connected to the modius for weeks and would often forget which was connected to what input.
I would often hear some music and really critically listen and think āthis must be the bifrostā because what I assumed was a higher level of clarity, only to switch, hear the exact same thing, and realize that modius was the first dac.
Iām not saying there isnāt a difference. I was just unable to pick it out. Guess I lucked out with cheap ears.
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Iāll know soon enough if I have the same āproblemā or if Iāll have money problems
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How does this switch between headphone out and pre out? Is it simply when you unplug hte eadphones that it switches to pre out?
I donāt own this amp but I have read complaints that the signal to the pre-out is always active, no matter whether you have headphones plugged in or not. So you would need another way to mute your power amp or powered monitors when using headphones. Or turn them off when using headphones.
Just now realized, zeos reviewed these on his patreon. Guess thatās something for people to look forward toā¦ Wonder if he will also get the jot 2
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Yeah, and that wood interconnect almost made me want a Schiit stack.
For this of you who have it: https://snakeoilsound.com
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Wow nice one!
Pretty cool interconnect. Looks like they are trying to blow the stack apart with a brick of C-4.
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INTRODUCTION
Itās been a wild few weeks for me with sound gear. After lots of encouragement and positive feedback from this forum I reached out to a few audio companies and asked to review stuff for them. Schiit was one such company and graciously agreed to send me a Magnius for review. The only condition they asked for was to read this review first to do a ātech fact-check.ā I agreed, as I also want to be sure I get my Schiit straight. [A Schiit rep read this review before posting and did not ask for any changes or edits.] Also, I donāt plan to spend too much time on the tech aspect of it because really what weāre after here is the sound, isnāt it?
The TL;DR version of this review is that the Magnius is an outstanding value in this measurement-focused, sorta-budget-kinda-low-cost category of headphone amps. I havenāt heard all of this type of amp yet, but Iāve heard a good number. To my ear the Magnius is 1) the best sounding example of its type of amplifier so far and yet 2) it still doesnāt quite reach the standard that Schiit themselves have set for how good a $200 headphone amp should be.
I must declare a bias I had going into this review. I owned the THX-based SMSL SP200 for several months and while I was initially impressed I rather quickly became aware of its shortcomings. Namely, it had harsh, brittle treble, mediocre spatial re-creation, and was bettered by the far less expensive JDS Labs Atom amp on timbre. Since multiple sources described the SP200 as nearly sonically indistinguishable from other THX amps I have developed a bias against THX amps and other amps that take the same measurement-focused design approach. Itās my current position that up to about $150 the measurement-focused amps sound great and are price appropriate, but the SP200 just didnāt offer much of value beyond what those entry-level units already offered. So, when Schiit dropped the Magnius at $200 while making claims they were getting into the measurement game I was equal parts intrigued and skeptical. With that declared, letās dive into the detailsā¦
ABOUT THE MAGNIUS
As I said, Iām not going to get deep into the tech, so you get this one paragraph on design. Iāll stick close to what Schiitās website has to say about the Magnius. Itās a fully balanced headphone amp rated to deliver 5 watts of power from its balanced output at 32 ohms. That makes it more powerful than most THX amps out there. On Schiitās description page, they describe the Magnius thusly: āMagnius uses a handful of very high-end integrated circuits, including buffers with feedforward, exotic fully differential op-amps, and powerful current-feedback outputs in a composite configuration to reduce THD and noise to vanishingly low levels.ā I read that as Schiit saying they have combined elements of the feedforward topologies found in THX and similar amps with more traditional solid-state designs. Schiit clearly plants their flag with the very next two sentences on their description page, though: āIf youāre looking for measurements, Magnius is our best-measuring amp. And it out-measures a whole lot of other gear out there, at much higher prices.ā [emphasis mine] Clearly Schiit wants in on the what is obviously the hopping market right now of relatively low-cost, measurement-focused headphone amps. So, since thatās the measuring stick they want, Iāll compare the Magnius to several such amps later on in this review, as well as Schiitās own Asgard 3.
The Magnius includes a single-ended RCA input, a balanced XLR input, and both single-ended RCA and balanced XLR pre-outs on its back panel. The main power switch is also in the rearā¦a uniquely Schiit-y feature that at some point needs to go away, but is what it is for now. The front panel has both SE and balanced XLR headphone outputs, a gain selector button (2 levels, high and low), an input selector switch (RCA and XLR), and the volume knob which is connected to an Alps potentiometer. The build is rather solid. The construction is a fairly light but solid aluminum chassis and the power supply is an external power brick, which brings the unitās weight down a fair amount. The power brick itself is integrated into the plug. I get that this power supply is cheap and helps the amp reach a price point, but there are also cheap power supplies that donāt integrate the big brick part into the plug. Thatās a big, bulky thing to plug into a power strip and I wish Schiit had used a cheap power supply that had the power brick mid-cord. Some will argue with me on this, but that kind of arrangement is more friendly to my setup. Back to the amp itselfā¦thereās a red LED inside the chassis that can also create a cool light pattern as the light filters through the ventilation holes in the top of the chassis. But thatās about it as far as build and features. Itās a pretty simple unit in that itās a really no-frills design that is meant to take a music waveform in and make it come out taller. So on with theā¦
SOUND
The bulk of my time with this review was listening through Magniusās balanced input and balanced headphone output. I checked performance using the single-ended input and found that it really did not differ noticeably from the XLR input, but the unbalanced headphone output is definitely not up to the performance level of the XLR headphone output. If you buy this amp, make sure that itās to use the balanced headphone output. The thoughts that follow will therefore be based on my listening from the balanced output.
Remember the bias I declared in the first section? The Magnius almost made me eat crowā¦almost. The Magnius has that same ultra-clean sonic presentation of the amps itās trying to compete with and that cleanliness makes a great first impression. I also quickly noticed the treble was not as sharp as I remember the SP200ās being and the spatial presentation ā soundstage and imaging ā were better than I expected as well. The overall signature is quite neutral, and thereās a good overall mix of smoothness and detail. The bass was extended and controlled and the mids were smooth with reasonably natural timbre. The overall sonic presentation reminded me of what I hear from the Asgard 3. Thatās a good thing. For my money the Asgard 3 is the sonic benchmark at $200, and honestly probably is still the sonic benchmark up to $300 or maybe even $350. That puts the Magnius in pretty good company. To my ear there was really nothing noticeably wrong with the sound. So why the āalmostā?
The āalmostā comes from the fact that the Asgard 3 just gives you a little bit more; a little bit more detail, a little bit more soundstage width, a little bit tighter imaging, a little bit more instrument and vocal separation, a little bit more natural timbre. The A3 doesnāt have that immediate āwoah, thatās clean!ā impression that the Magnius offers. It takes some time ā a couple dozen hours for me ā to āhear pastā the shiny object that is Magniuās sonic cleanliness. That is not to say the A3 sounds dirty or noisy ā it most certainly does not! ā just that the Magnius has such a black sonic background that itās attention-grabbing in its own way and makes a first impression that lingers. It was biodynamic-driver headphones (a level 3 Lawton modded TH-X00 and a ZMF Eikon) where the differences between the Asgard and Magnius started to reveal themselves. Then, slowly, planar-magnetic driver headphones started showing the same thing (HiFiMan Edition X V2, Audeze LCD-2 and LCD-3 both prefazor). Finally, even with classic dynamic-driver headphones in the same price class as the Magnius and Asgard (Beyerdynamic DT-880 600 ohm balanced modded, Massdrop + Sennheiser HD6XX) those same differences started to come out. The Asgard just wrings out slightly more from every headphone I tried. These differences were hard to parse out initially but once I did the Asgardās improvement in individual technicalities summed up to a more natural and involving listening experience. The Asgardās sound just drew me in more quickly and left me wanting to stick around longer. That does not mean the Magnius is not engaging or enjoyable ā there were several hours-long listening sessions I really enjoyed with ā just not as much as I do with Asgard.
COMPARISON WITH OTHER AMPS
I already compared the Magnius to the Asgard 3 above. I also mentioned some of my long-term-memory recollections of how Magnius compares to the SP200; the Magnius was much closer to the A3ās performance than the SP200ās. Yes, that should be taken with a grain of salt because of the time between, but I was on the lookout for the flaws I remembered from the SP200 in the Magniusās sound and I didnāt find them. I am also currently reviewing (now finished!) the Topping L30 and the Geshelli Labs Archel 2 GMR. Both of those amps have a similar āwow thatās cleanā initial presentation like the Magnius does. The L30 has a much smoother sound than either of the other two. The Archel 2 GMR sounds a hair more treble-forward than Magnius, though not by much. The Magnius sounds wider, has more coherent and even soundstage than either of the other two, and is more detailed with slightly more natural timbre than either of the others. Magnius also had a bit more slam and control in the low-end than either L30 or GMR. These differences were not large but they were easier for me to parse out than the differences between the Asgard and the Magnius. At $200 the Magnius, to my ear, sounds appropriately superior to the L30 and GMR at $130 and $150, respectively.
SIGNAL CHAINS
I tried the Magnius with the balanced outputs of each of the iFi Zen Dac, SMSL SU-8, Schiit Modius, and Schiit Bifrost 2, and from the single-ended output of the Topping D10. Unsurprisingly it was most at home with the Schiit DACs, but they have a competitive advantage here. The best combo was Bifrost 2 + Magnius, which again isnāt surprising since the BF2 is 2.5x the price of any of the others. Combined with the Modius ā letās call it the Schiitius stack because thatās funny ā the Magnius still sounds excellent. When Schiit claims on their website that the Schiitius stack could be an āendgameā stack for measurement-focused listeners, they may not be joking. Itās a solid combo for the price thatās only sonically bettered if you swap out the Magnius for the Asgard 3, IMO.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I must congratulate Schiit for what theyāve accomplished with the Magnius. Going into this review I thought the Magnius would be more-or-less a balanced version of the same sound obtained from the <$150 measurement-champ-amps floating around out there in abundance now. In actuality, itās closer to the livelier, more natural, more engaging sound of the Schiitās own Asgard 3 amp, but also notā¦quiteā¦there. The Asgard 3 remains the best sounding amp, to my ear and that Iāve heard so far, up to at least $300. Yet, the Magnius impressed me enough to give me hope that amps of this type will eventually catch up to the Asgard and come down even more in price. We all win when that eventually happens. I recommend the Magnius for users whoās primary goal is to get that black sonic background in their sound. Right now I donāt know of a better price/performance option on the market. You should also consider the Magnius if you have a bad ground loop problem in your system and can match it with a balanced DAC and are on a budget.
I hope Schiit lets me hang onto the Magnius a little longer. I hope to get the Topping A90 in here someday soon and it would be an awesome comparison point. What do you say, Schiit?
[They said YES!]
Iām still working on an iFi Zen CAN review. Then, I will post a round-up post of <$200 amps. Stay tuned!
Thanks for reading, all. Enjoy the music! 
24 Likes
as alwaysā¦ Rock solid work here!!
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Thank you, sir!