Schiit Gjallarhorn is a stereo power amplifier that is in many ways really unique. It’s not only because it has that small and – especially nowadays – practical form factor, which makes it fit on almost every desktop. It’s not only lower than usual power rating. It is more the fact that it has some really clever designs solutions under the hood. These include a unique application of Class AB topology – called Continuity – together with fully discrete signal path. And, what should go really well with the former, a linear power supply. All of this actually sums up to being a serious contender in a power amplification business. It is only just scaled down, giving you 10 watts per channel on 8 ohms, and 15 when the impedance is four. What’s even more interesting – you can also use two of them in a bridged mode. Such an arrangement will not only give you that sometimes sought-after monoblock configuration, but also a fully balanced power amplifier topology. And with “fully” I mean that it will be balanced from the XLR inputs – to the speaker outputs, with these be a “floating” ones, which means no connection to the ground and both of them (negative and positive) being active. Then there’s that Continuity stuff, which is itself interesting and worth looking closer at, what we’ll surely do just a bit later on.
And, obviously, the company that makes it is no less interesting itself. Schiit was founded in 2010 by two interesting guys that – as the website states it – “decided it was time to shake things up a bit”. There’s not only a story on a Head-Fi (here: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-worlds-most-improbable-start-up.701900/), but there’s even a book on what’s happened here. In a nutshell, when I asked Jason Stoddard, formerly of Sumo, and one of the Schiit’s founders, this is what he replied:
“Mike and I have long despised the “audio jewelry” part of the business. Heck, he got out of Theta Digital, a company he founded, largely due to the surge of Uber-priced gear in the mid-1990s. Schiit was our way of breaking the mold, starting with headphone products, because there was a lot of interest in that side of things, and a real opportunity to do true value-priced gear. Then we started exploring our own takes on DACs and speaker amps, and that got us to where we are today.”
When you look at the company’s current offerings, you’ll soon notice one thing. They do stuff nobody dares to even approach from the research side of things or just deem perhaps not profitable enough to make or just too crazy. Take a look not only at the Gjallarhorn, which is a subject of this review, but also at “Schiit” like Rekkr – which is probably the smallest power amp in the world today made by a reputable audio company. Or the Loki Max – fully discrete, with XLR ins and outs and with a remote control… equalizer. I repeat – an equalizer, but fully analogue, fully discrete with balanced inputs and outputs with relay potentiometer (like in preamps with a resistor ladder relay-switched volume control) and – I will repeat myself here – remote control for each of the equalisation bands.