Kevin’s new Toy - Schiit Mjolnir headphone amp.
Kevin Olson | Published on 4/27/2024
Kevin’s new Toy - Schiit Mjolnir headphone amp. Thor’s Hammer, indeed!
Greetings Audiophiles!
A new toy finally arrived. The popularity of this toy held up delivery for a few months. Worth the wait.
A number of years ago the SFAS had a headphone and headphone amp event. I was one of the attendees and one of the organizers.
I wrangled headphones and headphone amps from vendors. Some other members brought their setups. It was enlightening.
Schiit provided about four of their amps and a nice selection of headphones. Audeze and HiFi Man lent more headphones. One member brought his Focal Utopia phones. Nice.
I keep an eye on Schiit. Their products are always interesting. Recently they announced their third generation Mjolnir headphone amp. The last generation was vacuum tubes.
This time around it is old school class A.
Fully balanced, with chokes. It puts out a bit of heat. And it sings.
I hooked it up to the Pass XP-32 balanced tape outputs. Bought new headphone cables. Cardas Clear balanced. A step up from the stock single ended cables provided by Focal.
This was going to be a limited run per Schiit. But demand kept increasing and Schiit is keeping it in their lineup. Several early reviews recommended getting one before they quit making them.
Several years ago I visited a high end store in Vancouver Canada. I ended up listening to the wall of headphones. One of the sales staff warned not to listen to the Focal Utopia until last. After listening to them nothing else made the grade. Ouch. Expensive. About a year later I landed a great deal on the Utopia. I used them with my Schiit Magni and Schiit Bifrost 2 DAC on the PC. The Magni is $99.
I emailed Schiit for a recommendation on a better headphone amp. They suggested their new Asgard 3. $200 at the time. So I bought it and was happy. This in my PC system.
But shouldn’t these gorgeous headphones be on the big system?
I ordered the Mjolnir 3 in December. It arrived a week ago.
The Mjolnir has output of 2 watts class A into 32 ohms. Plenty of power. Lots of options to subtly tailor the sound. Feedback or no feedback. Single ended or push pull class A. It has a gain switch. And it can be a preamp!
It does reveal poor recordings with the Focals. But most albums sound quite good. The Mjolnir reveals the concert hall with reverb slowly trailing off and the overtones of the piano, etc. being clearly reproduced.
A pair of Audeze LCD 2 or LCD X are on my mind for lesser recordings.
For $1199 this is a stone cold bargain. Would a $5999 Blue Heaven be better? I’ll never know, but I suspect different more than better.
The Mjolnir 3 is Thor’s hammer.
Kevin says check it out!
https://www.schiit.com/products/mjolnir-3