Magni 3+ and Magni 3 Heresy released

Have one for people to try out? I’ll do a compare of subjective performance with low and mid impedance headphones. What kind of power supply is suggested?

 

@DiligentInventor - is that a relay based stepped attenuator?

 

CCIF looks extremely clean, as do the THD under load. Color me impressed I'm guessing this is built similarly to the Magni 3+?

 

A classic 15 VA toroidal transformer is installed in this prototype.

Yes. That was a difficult decision.

I hadn't hoped to beat Magni 3+ in QPR.
***
My goal is to show that discrete transistor amplifiers are still going strong and shouldn't be underestimated.

Well, I'm not naive enough to present the 1000th reincarnation of a typical transistor circuit as the holy grail. Of course, there is some know-how in there. Not so much to impress a professional with its colors. Rather, I wanted to exchange a certain number of transistors (~40 pieces for one channel) for objective parameters (and not lose the sound!).

Depending on the price, it can be better or it can be more modest.
Year 2021, I assume we are here now.

 

do you sell PCB's and give out the BOM? I'd like to build one, or buy one from you!

 

I read this thread and bought the Magni 3+. Few other people willing to do anything but spit out the "black and red, or silver" line - perhaps in support of Schiit's marketing. @purr1n's blind review was a bit more thorough.

The little amp does everything I need it to do. It is cleaner than my Vali 2. It has a headphone stage that isn't an afterthought - duh, it's a headphone amp. It is silent compared to my Hafler SE100 preamp, though perhaps a little less musical, through the speakers. Still need to experiment a little, as I just got it last week. It is an enjoyable product.

 

There are actually a lot of thoughts around about the Magni 3+, but they're not really well collected in this or any thread, instead they're scattered in seemingly unrelated threads. The unusual part about this one is that people actually seem to like the Magni 3+, though, I just think most people here have something they like more. I've had this for a while and been thinking about it a bit lately, so while I have it in mind...

The summary is that it's not especially weak in any area. It doesn't have any standout strength as far as technicalities go, no obvious weakness either. If a headphone is good at something, I suspect the Magni 3+ will usually let it show that. Staging is okay, it's pretty narrow and shallow with an HD6XX as I hear it (prefer low gain), but not totally flat. Aeon Closed (low) or Eikon (high), it actually gets a pretty good headstage with. Closed headphones more strongly impose a stage size/shape ime, but some amps can still fail to do this justice or otherwise sound weird (the JDS Atom's staging was odd on the Aeon for example - mostly flat, but something spatially weird was going on at the edges), and the Magni 3+ doesn't fail there. Imaging is decent - not pinpoint, but pretty accurate.

As far as FR effects, tone, timbre etc, there's not much to complain about. Would agree that it's pretty clean. I hear the highs as a bit rougher than I'd like, but that'd vary by headphone and listener. That problem doesn't manifest much on the 6XX, but I don't think this is great with that on either gain. Aeon is okay on low gain (doubt an amp can fix what I dislike about that headphone). Eikon is good on high gain, but the roughness is there and sort of a problem for me.

You can get more by spending more. Very quick impression is that Lyr 3 (JJ 6SN7) is equal or better in every technical area, but rather listen for another week or so to be sure.

It's better than I expected when I bought it. It's not flawless, and some of those flaws could bother someone (like me), but this is an easy recommendation as a cheap all-rounder.

 

I find there's a positive aspect to it - can find a bunch of alternatives just by digging around. Some of which aren't readily available, especially now, but it's all food for thought, puts gear in a different light. The real trick is the Magni 3+ often being used as a reference for comparison to other gear, sometimes more expensive gear. And the more expensive gear often seems to bother people in some way that the Magni 3+ doesn't.

I never did, no. I had the JDS Atom on my desk for a while, which I think you or someone said sounded very similar to Heresy? It's been long enough (and different gear) that comparing from memory wouldn't be reliable, but I never felt it sounded bad (from what you say the tonal balance would maybe have helped my most-used headphones at the time), and anyway its most important job was bypassing a noisy PC headphone jack. Very possible it would not hold up to me on close examination now.

The staging with the Aeon really bothered me, though. I usually haven't expected much from headphones there (most of my headphone listening time over the years has been closed portables, which mostly are not headstage champions, especially not from a phone / mp3 player / headphone jacks attached to who-knows-what), but the Aeon has some tricks to get decent width and depth. That doesn't play well with the Atom somehow, there's some disconnect between the parts that image in the head (where everything's flat but seems placed about right) and outside of it (there's some depth but it's spatially odd and the sound images seem not always placed well) that's very strange. Nothing going on like that with the Magni 3+.

Now I wonder how the Atom would work with the Eikon. The smoother highs say yes, but the everything else says no. It has closed headstage tricks kinda like the Aeon, so that might augur poorly. And I could imagine it beating Magni 3+ in an area or two, but probably not Lyr 3...

 

Well, the Magni 3+ just passed a difficult song test, "Non Noblis, Domine" from the Henry V soundtrack. I always used to test gear in audio shops with that song, because there's a crescendo that makes most preamps (including the Vali 2, Hafler SE100, and the slightly higher end champagne Marantz I have) spit the bit and run into distortion. I have always thought it was just a flaw in the recording because of how much gear has fallen short playing that moment, but my Magni 3+ actually resolved it. Wow. I'm sure it's not the most resolving thing on the market, but its design appears to be a step up from a lot of other gear when the music gets complicated.

 

I made this amp back in 2017. Just seeing the challenge on the site header now though.

What’s the bogey we are trying to hit? How does this look? It’s 1.0Vpp into 51ohms (I think the THD limit was from my Focusrite 2i4 sound interface):


Using 12v wallwart to +/-24v DCDC converter followed by TPS7A4XXX LDOs and cap multiplier PSU. Amp uses all discrete JFETs and MOSFETs in push-pull SE Class A topology by DIYA member TimS. I implemented it on home etched PCB in SMT first then asked JPS64 make a real PCB.


Here was the home etched PCB version:

It’s a great sounding amp. I gave away both of the above amps as gifts to friends. I now have the intermediate versions on PCBs but no chassis. Looks like this:

Fun stuff. I’m pretty sure it will beat a M3+…

 

if you click on the header, it will take you to the challenge post with the requirements.

 

Thanks - just looked and it says beat by 1dB at 1kHz onto 32ohms and 300ohms loads. But did not say the amplitude?

 

That’s 1.56Vpp then and so not too far off what I have at 1.0Vpp. I’ll need to use a 32ohm load. Will try to do it with a budget PSU to stay within $150 BOM.

 

@schiit I feel bad for the ping but since it worked for someone else (hah): will this be a direct swap in for the gain toggle on a Magni 3+? The switch on mine got stuck halfway through somehow and the Magni's been on vacation since.

https://www.digikey.ph/en/products/detail/e-switch/100DP1T2B4M7QE/1803090