An Audio Founder Blind-Tested Three of His Own Amps and Couldn’t Spot the “Bad” One
By Alexandra Plesa, Published on March 11, 2026
https://www.headphonesty.com/2026/03/audio-founder-blind-tested-amps/
"Schiit Audio co-founder Jason Stoddard recently described a blind listening test between three of his company’s amplifiers. ... ... The test itself was simple. Stoddard sat down with three Schiit amplifiers: the Magni, the Magni Heresy, and the Vali. All three were routed through a blind switcher and carefully level-matched. On paper, the Vali seemed like the clear outlier. The tube hybrid amplifier measures around –40 dB THD+N. By conventional engineering expectations, that level of distortion should be clearly audible. .... Yet when he listened without knowing which amp was which, he could not hear a difference...
His first reaction was not that the amplifiers sounded the same. Instead, he assumed something in the setup had gone wrong. .... After confirming the setup, it was clear: even the Vali, the amplifier that measured far worse than the others, sounded identical to the rest. ... For Stoddard, that result emphasized what he sees as a broader problem with traditional blind listening tests. ...
“I had no idea in analog design how much of it is just guessing,” .... Taken together, Stoddard believes that both measurements and listening have a role to play when evaluating audio equipment. Each provides useful information, but neither tells the entire story on its own....
https://www.headphonesty.com/2026/03/audio-founder-blind-tested-amps/