Schiit Valhalla 3 vs SMSL HO200

Both are desktop amplifiers, $499 against $399. 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 SMSL HO200 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. Schiit Valhalla 3 publishes at 32 Ω and at 300 Ω; SMSL HO200 at 32 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 300 Ω only the Schiit Valhalla 3 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 SMSL HO200 but not on the Schiit Valhalla 3 — Symphonium Titan.

535 headphones are left alone by the SMSL HO200 under the one-eighth rule but coloured by the Schiit Valhalla 3 (64 Audio Aspire 1, 64 Audio Fourte, 64 Audio Nio, 532 more).

101 headphones stay below the audible-hiss threshold on the SMSL HO200 but cross it on the Schiit Valhalla 3 (64 Audio Fourte, 64 Audio Nio, 64 Audio U12t, 98 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 Shure SE846: SMSL HO200 has +49 dB of headroom there against +37 dB. 12 dB is about 16 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 Schiit Valhalla 3 costs $100 more than the SMSL HO200, and on these three axes the money buys nothing: among the 567 models here there is not one that the Schiit Valhalla 3 handles and the SMSL HO200 does not — not on power, not on the one-eighth rule, not on hiss. The traffic runs the other way: the cheaper SMSL HO200 drives one model to 100 dB, leaves 535 alone under the one-eighth rule and keeps 101 below the audible-hiss threshold that the Schiit Valhalla 3 does not.

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: Schiit Valhalla 3 and SMSL HO200. Or put either against your own headphones in the source comparison tool.