Schiit Audio Releases Lyr 3 Tube Hybrid Amp

Schiit Audio is one of the few companies out there who picked their company name and various names of their products deliberately as a joke. It reminds me of a restaurant in South Africa, Joe Cool’s, whose slogan was “Undeniably the worst restaurant in the world“. It’s great to poke fun at yourself, and it’s often a fantastic marketing tactic as it intrigues people.
However, what isn’t a joke, are Schiit’s products. They’ve managed to give the audio world some truly great value products. In fact, they’re perhaps the only audio company that I can think of right now who are able to design and build all of their products in the USA, along with using USA-manufactured parts. There’s something profoundly noble about the act of a company using their fellow country-men within each and every step of producing a product.
Schiit’s latest offering is the Lyr 3, an updated version of the Lyr 2.

The Lyr 3

The Lyr 3 is not only a tube hybrid headphone amplifier, but you can also customise it to some extent. Schiit has given the Lyr 3 a modular design, allowing you to purchase various configurations depending on your needs.
The first configuration is simply a headphone amplifier which is capable of outputting up to a whopping 9W RMS into a 16-ohm load, and up to 450mW into a 600-ohm load. That’s almost enough juice to power a small village!

When it comes to the configurations, this is in the form of optional modules being installed into the Lyr 3. Here you’re gonna have to decide what your intended use for the device is going to be. If you want to use it as an all-in-one desktop solution (meaning as a DAC and headphone amp/preamp), then you can opt for either Schiit’s Multibit DAC module, or the 4490 DAC module. The 4490 module utilizes dual AK4490 G2 DAC chips.

However, if you don’t require any sort of DAC capabilities from the Lyr 3, then you could instead have a Phono Preamp module installed to hook it up to your turntable.

And, in case you were wondering, yes, these optional modules are the exact same as are used for the Jotunheim.

Compared to the Lyr 2, the Lyr 3 boasts some improved sonic specs. The rated SNR figure is up from 98dB to 102dB, whereas the measured THD and IMD have been lowered from 0.01% and 0.01% respectively to 0.007% and 0.005%. The output impedance of the headphone amp has also been dropped form 0.7-ohm to 0.3-ohm.

 

Pricing and Availability

The Lyr 3 is available directly from Schiit’s various websites (depending on the required region) right now. Prices will vary depending on the required modules and other optional parts, but range from between $499 and up to $764.