Schiit Lyr Hybrid Headphone Amplifier

Decent sound if you can get $300 tubes...This thing is an oven... Comes with very cheap rubber stickers for feet. Be careful what you place this on, its a FIRE HAZARDThe tubes are not made to be pulled out...because they are impossible to pull out. You have to take the unit apart to pull the tubes out.Customer service is rude and lacking, just get attitude from them.

This amp exceeded my expectations. Plus the fact that I was able to switchand substitute tubes for my sound preferences made me a very happy guy...The HE-500s finally found their match. I briefly owned EF-5(a very good amp),but after a couple of weeks I realized that HE-500s needed a lot more pushto really perform at their best..Thanks to the Lyr amp, they now sound absolutely brilliant!!!. They simply"opened up". This little, elegant looking amplifier drives them to nearperfection.I mentioned tubes. Lyr originally came with great sounding GE 6BZ7 tubes, butI ventured and bought couple of European ones - Tunsgram, Tesla, ( Telefunken,Siemens way too expensive ) but recently settled for highly recommendedAmperex USN-CEP 6922. This is it!! Glorious highs, extraordinary detail,smooth mids and tremendous bass ( when called for ). All balanced.I can go on and on praising the Lyr. It deserves it.This amplifier for a mere $449.00 does it all. Phenomenal buy. HIGHLYRECOMMENDED.Thank you Schiit Audio for a great product!!!

After a week of burn-in, I was disappointed using this to drive my Sennheiser HD800 headphones. To my ears, the bass was congested and the high-mid and treble were not as clear as it should have been.The developers of the Schitt product have a fine high-end audio development pedigree and engage in a strong marketing sales pitch. Unfortunately, the Lyr did not perform to my expectations. It was "loud" but it was not engaging. If you choose to purchase the Lyr, you may have better success than I did by substituting other tubes.

Great sound, poor design.The tubes don't seat well in the unit, even flicking the power on or off knocks them loose and getting them to sit properly again is a tedious task when you have to do it every time you want to use it.Sounds amazing, I much prefer it over other tube amps I have and have tried but I'm not sure if that difference is worth it. May try and RMA but from a google search it sounds like this is just the way this unit is designed.

Really powerful and nice sounding amp, the only issue I had was with background noise.

I bought this and have used it for a couple weeks now. Like another reviewer, mine came with the GE tubes. It is being used between a HP Envy Laptop (With the Beats audio; I am not convinced that is beneficial) playing iTunes/Foobar and my Sennheiser headphones of 50 ohm resistance. I plan on adding in a DAC but for now it is hooked from the headphone out with a  Monster MON129340 iCable 1000 for iPod & iPhone - Speakers - Retail Packaging - Black . (I originally had a cheaper cable but I was getting hum from the nearby USB and it just didn't fit the PC headphone jack as well.)This amp is amazing. It adds so much detail to acoustic music, it is like I am looking at the musician play. I feel like I can see every movement they are making on drums, piano, strings. Every pluck, strum, strike, whatever. I can feel the dimensions and directions of the music and individual mics from the recording. I also listen to a lot of electronic music and I wasn't sure what to expect from a tube amp. I didn't need to worry. It doesn't muddy anything and, in fact, adds the same sense of dimension and presence that it did for acoustic songs. It makes good recordings great and great recordings simply unbelievable. Of course the downside to fidelity is that any less than good recordings start sounding like your ears are defective because of 2 things; 1) you can now hear the imperfections and missings sounds lost to compression and 2) you have now heard what it should have been like.I looked at several desktop amps and finally settled on the Schiit Lyr for a few reasons. I like its size. It is big and heavy enough (a hardback book is a close example in dimensions) to remain in place and not be drug around by the cables fromm the front or back. I wanted something powerful enough that I can use even more resistant headphones for greater clarity in the future. Finally, I had to face that fact that it looks pretty cool. Sure, the tubes could stick up more like their other amp but they would just be more exposed to my many office objects that sometimes fly around unintentionally.Cons? Barely. I wish the power switch was on the front sometimes but I can reach around from the top easiy enough. It is a toggle switch so pretty easy to find blind. Also, I will need more hard drive space to hold all my lossless RIPS now that I can benefit from it!I tried it with other headphones (no earbuds though...I am afraid of melting my ears) and they all sounded markedly better than directly from the computer or even through my repurposed Denon AVR. But with the higher resistance Sennheisers that change was just amazing. This was my first dedicated headphone amp purchase. It sure seemed like a lot to gamble when I placed the order but now I feel like I was stupid for waiting so long.This could be the beginning of a very slippery slope...

Too much of noise floor and microphonics, product returned.

Amazing amplifier. It will drive almost any headphones(not stax) with power and clarity. Absolutely excellent synergy with my hd800 & he500. Highly reccomended.Please note that the lyr2 is even better with its variable gain etc.