Schiit Aegir Power Amp Impressions

Cool. Was this into the Maggie 1.7s?

 

Which speakers @neogeosnk ?

 

Yes Maggie 1.7s.

 

yeah the focals tweeters are definitely on the hot side, if something is not good down the line...
They are fantastic speakers, but not so easy to match.... On a french forum dedicated to them, the best match where obtained with McIntosh or accuphase class A amps, that double their power into 4ohms, but also 2ohms
Definitely not in my price range though XD

This is good to know, I have the prologue classic tubed with kt88 and 5751 / 5814 on the preamp.
Sounded wonderful with my first speakers, the Elac UF5.

Yup, that's it, the 1038be2, is the successor of the 1037be. Can't find an impedance graph for the 1038, but there is the one from the stereophile review for the 1037. I assume they are roughly the same, cause the specs for the 1038 mention nominal impedance 8ohm, minimum 3.3ohm.

thanks, so it means freya tube gain only for monoblock operation.
Concerning the gain, I have the latest revision of the freya wich is indeed +8db. I have seen on the aegir specs page they mention 22db of gain ?

Reading this forum, and my experience with schiit products so far, I think I'm gonna wait the paycheck next week and order a pair of aegir....
I'll let you guys know how it turns out !

 

Power amps generally have a fixed amount of gain. Vidar for instance has 27dB of gain, which is probably a bit more typical in a solid state power amp. This is one of the tricks with Aegir - because the fixed gain is lower, you need higher sensitivity speakers and/or a preamp that will add gain in order to get to the same volume level at your listening position as Vidar (or a higher output source, but let’s ignore that for now). A passive preamp for instance, or a preamp with a gain of 0dB (like Freya in JFET mode) may not provide enough voltage for Aegir to put out enough power to your speakers if they are lower sensitivity. Hence the 8dB of gain in Freya tube mode will give you more headroom on the volume control to get up to the level you might need.

 

I was in this camp - looking for a more powerful SS option that sounded like 2a3 SET amp. SET Mono amps get you closer. Aegris was a strong candidate, but was looking to purchase November or so and I only heard it for a few minutes at RMAF until an early prototype decided to take the rest of the show off, but mostly I was impatient. I did get to hear the XA25 in a couple of rooms and it had air / space, slightly rolled off on both ends, low level / fine detail in spades, etc and took a chance on it. $5k MSRP is just that, MSRP - actual price on a new one is about $1,500 less - and still a shit ton for a chunk of metal that powers speakers. Also, 25 wpc is at .1% thd, at 1% thd its 80watts or so. First watt's are a much better value, SIT or J2 & F7 would be amps that are all good options, each being a different flavor for a different application.

Still recommend for more efficient speakers for Aegir, more than enough for 99db/w Klipsch I use (even if its over rated and closer to 95 db/W range). Would be cool to compare someday and see how close the much much less expensive Aegir is, and hell - the pair of monos still saves enough to go on a record shopping spree or two, an exotic trip with escorts, or an epic bender.

 

Whenever we do the Aegir loaner, we should make sure @JoshMorr is on it so he can compare the XA25 vs. the Aegir. Don't think many members have Pass stuff.

 

What are some speakers that work well with the Aegir (please mention solo or dual). I'm thinking of building a system around the source+amp. Or is this a crooked way of thinking?

 

Build your system around your transducers.

 

Get speakers you like first. Tweak upstream as necessary.

I wish I did things this way years ago.

 

Think about what sort of listening the room is equipping you for. Then the speakers.

 

This is kind of the northern european way. Source first, then downstream gear, then cheapo-ish small speakers that measure dead flat. Actually, this is a concept that isn't breached around here a lot - that different markets have different general proclivities due to differing residential construction techniques. Not saying I totally buy into this, but there is a school of thought that certain response "genres" are due to physical geo-locations that have a bit to do with what sells, which in turn is based on what that locality's residential construction styles might affect, response-wise.

For example, the typical "British house sound" could (easily) be due to BBC monitoring preferences (historical precedence), and the preferences of the British home audio market (in British homes, which *generally* are smaller square footage than American McMansions), and generally built using plaster-over-slat versus stick built + drywall. So, if you're in an American house that's small and well damped, something like Harbeth or Spendor might sound delightful. However, cramming big silly Wilson stuff (or even Klipsch) into a small, plaster room could be less than okay.

 

It's not really that simple, garbage in >> garbage out. If you go over to a place like avsforum, there's guys that have spent big money on speakers and run them off of consumer AV Receivers and they don't sound that great. But on the other side of it, you can't even properly judge upstream components until you have great speakers.

This hobby can be frustrating at times.

 

In my opinion, it really is that simple. You don't need a 5K dac to avoid 'garbage in"...but every audio nutjob has their select nervosa. Me included LOL

 

Just offering an opinion here. Building a system around a pair of speakers works better than doing it around a pair of transducer since the speaker world is more developed than the headphone world, most likely because its highly measurement based, more engineered and more understood (note the "more" doesn't mean "well"). The number of parts in a speaker like crossover, cabinet, different driver sizes and materials being combined means that the end sound is usually already decided upon by the designer and pretty well rounded frequency response wise, lessening the need for high quality source gear to gain enjoyment out of them, versus the single driver minimalist designs of headphones that have high potential but often crap frequency response.

Take the Andromeda and Solaris IEMs for example: large number of parts built in, engineered to be all rounders and sounds pretty good generally, and their best match, the Sony DAPs, like all other DAPs, are AIO systems with a lot of built-in engineering both software and hardware-wise where the user doesn't really have a completely grasp of whats happening, just that it sounds good.

I'd only go about doing source and amp first only if you're at the point where you're setting about building speakers from scratch knowing the final synergy or you know nothing can be improved about your speaker without a huge increase in cost or trading off some quality you need, or in other words when you know your speakers well and have a good understanding of other speakers and their different sounds.

Just one more example: a lot of people here who own HD800 have sold theirs at least once and come back to them when they got better matching (most likely more expensive) gear.

EDIT: @zerodeefex posted a more concise version of what I'm getting at before I could finish my long-ass post.

 

This hobby is a moving target. Which goes first, I remembered that was only a question asked by my first audio salesman... long time ago...