Audiophilepure

As a solid-state amplifier, the Schiit Lyr+ Fusion Architecture Headphone Amp & Preamp is easily competitive with anything in its price range, truth is, there just aren’t that many discrete amplifiers under a thousand dollars; they almost all implement some chip-based op-amp or other. On the other hand, once you stick a tube in it, the Lyr+ knocks it out of the park. While it is not the most powerful amplifier in my arsenal (my reference amplifier puts out 35Watts per channel), it appears to have enough go juice to drive most any headphone to levels that will satisfy most listeners.

For a tube amplifier, the Lyr+ has an epically low noise floor, which means it can deliver reference-level detail and soundstage, the only limit being the headphone you choose to listen with. For those who are hung up on push-pull amplifiers (“balanced”), again, the Lyr+ has plenty of power to do the job, and retains the sonic advantages of single-ended amplification (a bridge amp requires two perfectly matched amplifiers, and no such devices truly exist, which means low-level details are lost).

So in conclusion, though I miss the versatility of the modular design of the Lyr3, the improvements in sound quality more than make up for that, and I believe the Lyr+ could easily stand as the end-point choice for most headphone enthusiasts.

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