Lyr 3 Discussion Thread

Yeah spending all this money on gear and not having a surge protector is kind of dumb. Also decided to buy this amp for my Clears, already have a TS to try out but i'm gonna buy the Psvane 6sn7-uk as well. Not much of a tube roller, if i like one of these two it's good enough for me.

Edit: So i just received it. Initial impression is that this amp does not like unbalanced triodes and that the stock tube i got was a dud due to said triodes. Popped in a TS and all is good. Stock sounded disjointed like there was a big hole in the soundstage. Need more listening...

 

Can someone explain to me why the lyr 3, 4490 dac module contains two 4490 chips, this design is meant for balanced output, and this amp is not balanced. Using this module on Jotunheim makes sense due to balanced design, but not on lyr, that’ll make the other dac chip redundant, the only reason I can think of is fitting the same module as jot to reduce number of products.

 

It's still using both chips. Probably a single phase from both chips for each channel. It makes sense from a production standpoint, because you can use one board for two products.

 

Wonder if using the chips in this way would double the bit rate?
Probably not, but some carefully engineered firmware can take advantage of this.

 

Doubling the chips does not double the bit rate, or anything else for that matter. Firmware won't do that either.

Almost all dac chips have some manner of balanced output (or opposed phase, or whatever). That doesn't mean your dac or dac module has balanced outs. There are multiple levels to the output stage which will do all sorts of voodoo. You can take a difference to make a "single ended" output, you can stack similar outputs to reduce potential gremlins, you can do other math, etc.

 

Thank you for the response, makes sense.

 

Hey, has anyone had the Lyr 3 fry any headphones, I’m on my second pair of Focal Clear that died while listening to the Lyr. In both case the volume was low, I heard a sound like tube rush, then the headphones sounded like you were listening to tin cans and string.

 

Oh, and I use a surge protector, so it’s not that.

 

I want to make sure I understand.... you had one set fried by lyr3, then bought another, and the second pair is now toast?

You're not the first to report this. But you may be the first that's sought a repeat experience.

 

It could still be surges, do you have a surge protector that tells you once it has stopped working? Most don’t.

 

Focal cans have a bit of a history of crapping out, and I'm pretty sure everyone here who's been in the hobby long enough is familiar with that story of how a Schiit amp fried a pair of headphones... God, years ago? I've never owned a Schiit amp (that's more a matter of local availability than anything else), but given how they've had something similar happen before I'm inclined to think they'd take steps to ensure the same doesn't happen.

I think the "repeat experience" bit is more @Aeron thinking it might've just been the Focals pooping out, because to my knowledge this might well be the first report of a Lyr 3 fricasseeing headphones.

 

Worrying but sparse on details. Was the Lyr replaced, did you use the same tube, were there gremlins in the house?

 

Just takes a casual look through recent pages of this thread and indeed the internet to see similar reports of phones dying on lyr3, and not just focals. it's like an amp version of the movie the ring. once you see it, well, you know what happens. happy halloween. and yes i would hope schiit comp'd the crapped out headphones.

 

@schiit Would it be possible to comment on this, or at least take it as a feedback for investigations? This is really not the first time I am hearing about Lyr 3 frying headphones, on SBAF or elsewhere. Still thinking about purchasing Lyr 3 w/ MB module but this is seriously troubling me.

 

Oh LOL, blaming my poor info retention skills for that one

This is pretty concerning then. Whatever else happens I do hope that the owners get recompense for the fried headphones and that Schiit gets to the bottom of what's causing this.

 

I'll be devil's advocate and also mention that there's been issues with Clears and their drivers going wonky in their housing. You're in a bad predicament because you have phones and an amp with a little bad history...

...and its a shame because both devices sound quite good.

 

Having a hard time seeing Schiit paying for $1500 headphones w/r/t the sale of a $500 amp. Stranger things have happened, I guess.

 

We haven’t seen any more than the normal amount of failures with Lyr 3 relative to any high-powered amp, but if you think there may be something wrong with yours, contact us and have us check it out.