Schiit Valhalla 2: power output and what it will drive

The Schiit Valhalla 2 is a desktop amplifier at $349. It delivers 115 mW into 32Ω and 800 mW into 300Ω, which ranks it 205 of 280 for raw power among the sources in this database.

Measured at 100 dB SPL it has comfortable headroom on 531 of the 567 dynamic and planar headphones catalogued here, enough but not generous on 26, only marginal on 4 and not enough power for 6. Output-transformerless valve amp. It comes alive into 300 and 600Ω and runs out of current well before it reaches low-impedance planars.

The shop listings these figures stand on quote 180 mW into 50Ω, 800 mW into 300Ω, 450 mW into 600Ω. Everything else in the table above is worked out from those figures, and this table says which is which.

Derivation holds output voltage steady between and beyond the published loads rather than output power, because that is what an amplifier actually does. The full method is written up here.

One caveat about the source. None of the addresses below is a Schiit document. The figures here stand on Audiophonics, a French retailer and Addicted To Audio, a retailer, which are transcriptions of the factory table rather than the table itself. A transcription is usually faithful and may well be exact here — but it can carry an old revision, and nothing on this site would notice if it did. Find these numbers on Schiit's own site and send the link; this paragraph comes off.

Source: audiophonics.fr, addictedtoaudio.com.au.

Ordered from easiest to hardest to drive. Headroom is measured at 100 dB SPL, which is louder than almost anyone listens — a small negative number means the source still plays loud, just without reserve for peaks.

These figures come from each manufacturer's own sensitivity rating. A handful of planars — the HiFiMAN Susvara and the Abyss AB-1266 in particular — are widely reported to need far more than their published sensitivity implies, so treat a bare pass on those as optimistic rather than settled.

The manufacturer does not publish an output noise figure for this source, so the hiss estimate that runs on every other page here cannot be run on this one. Rather than substitute a plausible number, this page leaves the question open.

If you know the noise figure from a measurement you trust, the hiss calculator takes it directly and tells you where that noise lands in your own in-ears.

At 14Ω output impedance, the one-eighth rule says this source suits headphones of 112.0Ω and above. 522 of the 567 models here fall below that. That is most of the database, not a niche — 222 of them multi-driver in-ears, and the mismatch tilts the frequency response audibly rather than subtly.

The rule is a rule of thumb, not physics: a source impedance below one eighth of the headphone's keeps the interaction under about 1 dB. The checker works it out for any pair.

Of the 280 sources here, 45 do everything the Schiit Valhalla 2 does as a headphone output: reach 100 dB on every headphone it reaches and stay inside the one-eighth rule wherever it does. The cheapest of them is the FiiO KA11 at $29, against this one’s $349 — $320 less, and a USB dongle rather than a desktop amplifier.

The cheaper one also publishes a noise figure, which the Schiit Valhalla 2 does not — so on the paperwork it is ahead, not merely level.

This counts a headphone output and nothing else. Inputs, converters, microphone preamps, balanced outputs, the volume control, the case and the warranty are all outside it, and any of them can be the reason to buy the dearer box. What the count does say is that the three numbers a maker can be held to do not separate them.

Worked out in advance against its closest rivals: vs Geshelli Archel 3S Pro · vs Lake People G103-S Mk II · vs Little Dot MK III SE · vs Schiit Asgard 3 · vs Schiit Jotunheim 2 · vs Schiit Lyr 5 · vs Schiit Lyr+ · vs Schiit Magni Heresy · vs Schiit Magni Piety · vs Schiit Magni Unity · vs Schiit Magni+ · vs Schiit Midgard · vs Schiit Mjolnir 3 · vs Schiit Ragnarok 2 · vs Schiit Valhalla 3 · vs Schiit Vali 2+ · vs Schiit Vali 3 · vs SMSL H200 · vs SMSL H300 · vs SMSL SH-9 · vs Topping A30 Pro · vs Topping L50. Each of those pages lists the headphones that tell the two apart.

Or put any two side by side in the source comparison tool, or run your own headphones through the amplifier matcher. Or see every Schiit source in the database, and how much of what this site says about them came from Schiit’s own documents.