A compact desktop stack pairing Schiit's fully discrete Magni+ headphone amp with the Modi+ USB/optical/coax DAC, sold around $109 and $129 and made in the USA. Reviewers broadly agree the Magni+ has plenty of power for the vast majority of headphones — and stays quiet even with sensitive IEMs thanks to a negative-gain setting — while the all-aluminium chassis feels a cut above the price, backed by a multi-year warranty and US support. Three things genuinely divide opinion: whether the Modi+ has an audible 'sound' (it measures competently but a notch below the best budget DACs, and one camp calls it flatly transparent while others insist they hear a warmer character); reliability (the solid feel coexists with a long tail of dead-unit and scratchy-pot complaints on the budget line); and value (fans cite made-in-USA build and support, skeptics note rivals with better measurements and more features for the money). It is a simple, no-frills stack whose appeal rests as much on where and how it's made as on raw specs-per-dollar.
About this product
The 2022–2024 budget stack: the fully discrete Class-AB Magni+ headphone amp (no DAC) paired with the Modi+ delta-sigma USB/optical/coax DAC. Not the balanced Magnius/Modius or the op-amp Magni Heretic. Schiit has since continued the line as the Magni Unity and Modi 5; the amp's power and character carry over, so some amp measurements and reviews cited here are of that current Magni.
Schiit Audio built its reputation on exactly this: a small, all-aluminium headphone amp and a matching DAC, made in the USA and priced so a first 'real' desktop rig costs a couple hundred dollars. The Magni+ amp and Modi+ DAC are the 2022–2024 version of that stack, descendants of the lineage that made 'the Schiit stack' a default recommendation for newcomers.
They also sit at the centre of one of the hobby's longest-running arguments. Schiit leans on discrete circuits, domestic manufacturing and blind-listening panels; the measurement crowd counters that cheaper rivals from Topping and SMSL post better numbers with more features. That tension — heritage and build versus specs-per-dollar — is most of what there is to weigh here.
