Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
It is small but very powerful and runs power hungry cans like 4xx well too.
(Schiit stack is now retired due to my preference for the R2R-11)
And yes, i was also planning on buying headphones with more impendence sometime in the future.
ps. sry for grammar and spelling errors
Maximum Power, 16 ohms: 3W RMS per channel Maximum Power, 32 ohms: 2W RMS per channel Maximum Power, 50 ohms: 1.3W RMS per channel Maximum Power, 300 ohms: 430mW RMS per channel Maximum Power, 600 ohms: 230mW RMS per channel
Schiit has pretty good customer service, I’d inquire about an exchange.
Also worth mentioning the source is the Modi 2 which is different than source coming pre-amped from your PC (it comes out completely unamped).
Also, 600 ohm Beyers to deafening levels. . .
And the Magni drives them loud...
I’d sincerely look into getting a replacment to be sure
L o l. Buyer beware on thus guy!
and @all pls stay positive i feel bad if people get in an argument because of my question :(
edit: okay, wrong about the Valhalla 2 having less power. But still it's a lot of power you do not need. That being said, i won't argue that the Valhalla 2 is a better match for the HD 6xx, but it's not because of power availability.
Pairing the 6xx’s to the Magni 3, I have never gone past 11 o’clock, and my usual listening level is around 9 o’clock at high gain. I’ve got other gear, so I’ve got no reason to blindly defend the Magni 3. The Magni 3 has loads of power. I also run my 58x’s and DT770 80 ohm’s from the amp. The 6xx’s require hardly any more volume than these.
Either contact Schiit immediately for a warranty replacement, or get a hearing test done.
Driving => not volume Driving => not just pushing sound Driving => revealing the full stage width, depth and instruments that are otherwise "hidden in plain sound".
A lot of people are just looking to get starter gear. You can upgrade when you've got the money.
Ah yes. Now I see. My bad. I was thinking about the DT 770s which I mentioned a bit later.
btw i will just buy what you guys are recommending to me because i don't have any knowledge either
It drives my Senn 600/650 quite nicely, and is very mobile :)
Other option I'd suggest (but have no direct experience with) would be the Schiit Fulla.
To be honest, if it were me, I would stick with your original plan and get the Magni 3 and run it from your Macbook for the time being. You can always buy a matching Modi down the line to complete the stack later on :)
Should you want to experiment with Tube amps later on (and there's nothing wrong with that!), the Magni will have given you an excellent reference to compare to.
Don't ever feel bad for not knowing something. You asked questions and didn't mislead anyone here. I hope you enjoy whatever you end up getting :)
Even my Fulla 2 drives them surprisingly well (not fantastic in absolute terms, but fantastic for $99 DAC/amp), and that's a cheapo USB powered device built to a silly price point. And yeah, I usually use an Eddie Current with the 6xx so I know what *drive* with special characters means.
The second two are a bit over your EUR100 budget though.
The upside of the Schiit gear is that resale value stays high, and it's easy to shift on head-fi if you ever decide to change.
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=33304
Check these sites and see by Yourself:
https://www.headphonesty.com/headphone-power-calculator/
http://www.digizoid.com/headphones-power.html
If you're only concerned about power, then one word: emotiva. The A-100 can literally burn your headphone drivers to a crisp if you're not careful and it's in the usd230 range. I'm thinking of picking up one myself for shits and giggles on my he4xx and just ordered lcd-2.
Consider a 95dB listening level, 15dB of dynamics, and you need 110dB. Consider that most amps run into their nasty range with excess distortion as they approach rated output (distortion is rarely spec'd at full output) and add 6dB or so to stay well out of there. 116dB, without accounting for the fact that the HD6XX driver spikes out to nearly 500 ohms along the way, throwing sensitivity out the window as it does it, requires almost 70mW already, per your first calculator and available specs for that driver. Add in those losses from that spike I mentioned, and you're probably aiming for close to 120dB. That's about 170mW.
Normal listening probably isn't 95dB, and you probably don't have 15dB peaks. I don't know what losses actually are here, and any headroom is better than none, so yes, that number can come down a good bit without issue, but that rough, yet fully possible example shows how far from ideal 30mW really is if you don't want to be at the upper limit of your gear.
Of course, the Magni 3 is well over double my most extreme example, so it should be hurting you with ease, but I wouldn't settle for less than about 50mW if you want to feed a HD650/6XX.
My guess is that the amp simply distorts current and/or voltage way early to a minor degree (as in more so than most amps) but is still fairly okay/accurate until the amp hits the hard limit ratings. Truly a strange beast.
... only does well with headphones with low impedance and high sensitivity. ...it's pretty dismal for the HD6XX... ...input impedance of the 6XX is just too much for the Magni 3 to overcome...
These statements are much stronger arguments than your latest comment:
...it just doesn't drive the 6XX optimally..
Which I would then agree with.
What would be dismal are tube amps trying to drive planar magnetic headphones... to me, they are never future proof. (And no, nothing against tubes, just experience from various loudspeaker tube amps in my life, some less than $3K, some substantially more.)