Grace Design m900 vs Schiit Valhalla 3

Both are desktop amplifiers, $660 against $499. This page puts them side by side on the only three things a maker can be held to — power, output impedance and noise — and then asks the question that actually matters: which headphones do they treat differently?

The Grace Design m900 reaches 100 dB on 567 of the 567 models here, the Schiit Valhalla 3 on 566.

A figure marked not published is missing from the maker’s own material, which is not the same as being good or bad. Where one of these two publishes a number and the other does not, the comparison on that axis cannot be made at all — and saying so is more useful than guessing.

Both makers publish a power rating, which is less common than the table above makes it look: of the 280 sources here, 209 publish a figure at at least one load and only 2 publish one at all four. Grace Design m900 publishes at 32 Ω, at 300 Ω and at 600 Ω; Schiit Valhalla 3 at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω. Every other row is worked out from those — between two published loads, or beyond them holding voltage constant, which understates rather than flatters.

So the two columns are not equally firm row by row: at 600 Ω only the Grace Design m900 figure is the maker’s own. On those rows the derived number is the one to doubt first.

What each of these labels means, and why a derived figure is still worth printing, is set out in how this data was built.

1 headphone reaches 100 dB on the Grace Design m900 but not on the Schiit Valhalla 3 — Symphonium Titan.

535 headphones are left alone by the Grace Design m900 under the one-eighth rule but coloured by the Schiit Valhalla 3 (64 Audio Aspire 1, 64 Audio Fourte, 64 Audio Nio, 532 more).

41 headphones stay below the audible-hiss threshold on the Grace Design m900 but cross it on the Schiit Valhalla 3 (64 Audio Volur, AFUL Performer 5, Audeze Euclid, 38 more).

566 of the 567 models here reach 100 dB on both. That is a power count and nothing more; whether either source suits a given headphone also depends on the two lines above.

The counts above say how many models the two treat differently. This says by how much. The same 8 headphones appear on every page of this kind, ordered from the easiest to drive to the hardest, so a row can be read across pages as well as across columns. Headroom is at a 100 dB SPL peak.

The widest gap on the list is the Campfire Audio Andromeda 2020: Grace Design m900 has +24 dB of headroom there against +17 dB. 7 dB is about 5.1 times the power, which matters for peaks rather than for how loud the music sits.

Hiss is this source’s own noise, in decibels SPL, in that headphone — not a rating. Below about 20 dB SPL it is under the threshold of hearing in a quiet room; a negative figure means it is far below it.

The Grace Design m900 costs $161 more than the Schiit Valhalla 3. Out of the 567 models here, that difference buys 1 more model driven to 100 dB, 535 more models left alone under the one-eighth rule and 41 more models kept below the audible-hiss threshold.

Nothing runs the other way: there is no axis here on which the cheaper of the two does better.

Everything in this paragraph counts only figures the two makers published. An advantage on an axis one of them leaves blank cannot be counted, and is not counted — how often that happens is its own page.

Each has a page of its own with every power figure traced to what the maker published and a full headphone list: Grace Design m900 and Schiit Valhalla 3. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.