Schiit Midgard: power output and what it will drive

The Schiit Midgard is a desktop amplifier at $219. It delivers 4.8 W into 32Ω and 750 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 12 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 566 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here and enough but not generous on 1. Balanced throughout, and Schiit states the same power from either jack — so the 4-pin XLR buys you noise rejection, not volume.

The manufacturer publishes 5.5 W into 16Ω, 4.8 W into 32Ω, 3.2 W into 50Ω, 750 mW into 300Ω, 375 mW into 600Ω. The rest of the table is worked out from those.

The balanced output is rated separately: 4.8 W into 32Ω through the XLR4 jack.

Derived rows hold output voltage steady, as an amplifier does (method).

The noise figure above is converted, not read. Schiit does not print microvolts for this one. It prints a signal-to-noise ratio together with the voltage that ratio is referenced to, in the same block of the same table: “Low Gain: Greater than 128dB, referenced to 4V RMS”. From those two numbers the noise follows by one division — 4.0 V ÷ 10^(128/20) — which is where the 1.59 µV comes from, at the low gain setting. The ratio is printed as a bound rather than a measurement, so the figure is a ceiling: the noise is at most that, and may be lower. This is the same situation as a sensitivity printed per volt instead of per milliwatt: published, but in a convention nobody converts.

Source: schiit.com.

Easiest to hardest to drive, with headroom at a 100 dB SPL peak.

At 1.59 µV of output noise, here is where that noise lands in the five most revealing in-ears in the database.

This one hisses. With the most sensitive in-ears in the database its own noise lands around 25 dB SPL, which you will hear between tracks and in quiet passages.

At 0.1Ω output impedance this source satisfies the one-eighth rule with every headphone in the database, down to the 3Ω in-ears. Nothing here will have its frequency response shaped by the source.

Check any pair.

Of the 280 sources here, 3 do everything the Schiit Midgard does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches, stay inside the one-eighth rule wherever it does and stay under the audible-hiss threshold wherever it does. The cheapest of them is the Schiit Magni Unity at $119, against this one’s $219 — $100 less.

This counts the headphone output only; inputs, converters, the volume control and the build are outside it.

Compared with its closest rivals: vs Lake People G103-S Mk II · vs Schiit Lyr 5 · vs Schiit Lyr+ · vs Schiit Magni Piety · vs Schiit Mjolnir 3 · vs Schiit Valhalla 2 · vs Schiit Valhalla 3 · vs Schiit Vali 2+ · vs Schiit Vali 3 · vs Topping A30 Pro.

Compare any two or match your own headphones. Every Schiit source here.