A discrete, single-ended headphone amp and preamp that took optional internal DAC and phono cards, sold from 2019 until Schiit replaced it with the Asgard X. Almost everything measurable about it is agreed: 3.5 W into 32 ohms and 650 mW into 300 is far more power than the price implied, the single 1/4-inch jack gets all of it, the noise floor is low enough that sensitive in-ears stay quiet on low gain, output impedance is under 0.2 ohms, and the metal chassis, Alps pot and five-year warranty are a class above the budget amps below it. Two things are not agreed. The first is whether it has a sound at all: two independent benches measure it effectively transparent, while most listening reports describe a warm, tube-like richness — and one hears that same richness as lost detail. The second is the internal DAC cards, which the measurement side and two reviewers say to skip in favour of an external DAC, and which one reviewer calls the reason to buy the box at all. It runs warm to hot, the power switch is on the back, and there is no balanced output, remote, or digital input other than the card's USB.
About this product
Discontinued — Schiit's current lineup replaces it with the $399 Asgard X, and the company describes that amp as a departure from the Asgard 3 and more a successor to the Asgard 1 and 2. Despite the Class A marketing it is not a pure Class A design like those earlier Asgards: it is a current-feedback amp with Schiit's Continuity output stage, biased into Class A for about the first 500 mW into 32 ohms. Single-ended throughout, with one 1/4-inch jack that gets the full output. The optional internal DAC card changed over its life — an AK4490 card at launch, later an ES9028, alongside the pricier True Multibit — so a review's verdict on the DAC may not describe the card in a given unit.
Schiit's first product, in June 2010, was a $249 Class A headphone amp called the Asgard, the first thousand of which were built in a garage. The Asgard 3 arrived in 2019 as the third pass at that idea and broke the usual pattern twice over: it made three and a half times the power of the Asgard 2, and it cost fifty dollars less, at $199. It also stopped being a pure Class A amp — the new Continuity output stage keeps roughly the first half-watt in Class A and extends Class-A-like behaviour past that, which is why it runs cooler than the coffee-warmer it replaced and still gets warm enough to notice.
For six years it was one of the default answers to what amp should I buy? — enough power for a Susvara out of a single unbalanced jack, an Alps RK27 volume pot, a US-made metal chassis and a five-year warranty. It is also the amp that most cleanly stages the oldest argument in desktop audio, because the measurements and the listeners do not describe the same product. Schiit has since retired it in favour of the $399 Asgard X, so this is a used-market picture now.
