Perhaps Im an idiot jotunheim 3 + Valhalla Issue
Recently I bought a pair of Thieaudio Valhallas as a replacement for a pair of Monarch MkIIs that broke. I'm enjoying them, they're good. The issue is I can't drive them very easily.
What I was driving them on before was the Schiit Fulla. I mainly play competitive FPS games, and I listen to music and watch YouTube as well. It's good, they sound fine. The issue is I can't really get the knob past 10 o'clock or there's a noticeable noise floor, and I can't really crank it up if I really want to listen to music. The noise floor is fairly inaudible if I'm playing loud music and I do have the knob turned up, it's not noticeable, but sometimes in songs that are a little bit quieter, or in the lulls in a song, you can definitely hear it.
So I got a Schiit Jotunheim 3, which everyone says is pretty good, everyone says it's great for headphones and says you can use it with IEMs with low to minimal noise floor. It's fairly the same, maybe even a little bit less loud than the Fulla over the noise floor. But I was hoping with some of the additional things it would be future proofing for a pair of Audeze LCD-3s that I'd like to get in the next two months. I know for a fact the Fulla probably won't be able to handle those the way I want it to, and I also get some additional settings with the Jotunheim 3.
But when I use the Valhallas on the Jotunheim 3, the best way to describe it is it sounds kinda crunchy. The bass feels kind of compressed, and UI elements, like joining Discord or opening an application that has a startup noise, that specifically gets crunched. People's voices also get the same treatment where they get crunched a little bit. YouTube videos are fine and music is okay. It's more so that the bass just gets completely muddied, or compressed like I said, I'm not too sure of the correct verbiage here.
If there's any way you guys can let me know if I'm using it wrong, which I totally could be, or if there's a potentially better option for IEMs to use.