Review: SPL Phonitor

[Dreadhead]

Hey, Chris. I just saw your review here linked to the SPL website under forums:

Product Description: Sound Performance Lab

Nice. Sorry if it decreases the SNR

1st post here

Wow, this is awesome. I was just browsing the SPL Phonitor site and while looking in their forums section I saw a link to a review on head case and this place looks really cool. I can't believe I missed this site all these years and it looks great.

Can I join pweeeeze.

[Cosmopragma]

Recently I've spent about 60 listening hours with a Phonitor.

I don't have much to add to Dreadheads concise and striking review.

There's not much you can say about a "wire with gain" amp except that they are quite rare (in contrast to what members of team all-ss-amps-sound-the-same propagate ).

The crossfeed is by far the best on the market, period.

I've owned headroom and Meier crossfeed, the latter built-in and stand-alone, and I have tested several DSPs.The SPL crossfeed is the best .IMO, naturally.

Nevertheless I did return the amp.(The amp came with a 30-days-no-questions-asked return policy).

Why?

There are 2 reasons.

1) The amp was primarily meant to drive the Sennheiser HD800s since most of my other cans I regularly use are electrostats.

The Senns are already relatively bass weak, and everyone experienced with crossfeed knows that the crossfeed effect does psychoacoustically weaken the bass.All those switches and controls, and they forgot to add a bass boost in order to compensate for the perceived loss.The mids control didn't do the trick.

Well, in my experience the Senns don't respond well to bass boost anyway so in this case the lack of bass boost doesn't make much of a difference.

2) I'm a seasoned lover of headphones audio.I'm listening through headphones several hours a day for ~ 10 years now and fortunately my brain has long adjusted to the "unnatural" separation of the stereo channels and , frankly, I dont need crossfeed except for weird hard panned stuff and the latter is mixed/mastered by idiots anyway so an inferior software based crossfeed wouldn't ruin the sound quality if there's no exceptional SQ to begin with.

Any crossfeed (even the very good SPL) comes with a trade off.It does smear the finest details by nature.Some of us that are able to adjust to the strong channel separation are better off without crossfeed.At least I am.

I had to realize that the Phonitor with activated crossfeed is a bad match for the Senns and without it's somewhat overqualified with all that features I rarely need, and so I decided consequently to return it.

I've got the stripped down version called Auditor instead.It's the same amp without the special features, and it costs about 50% of the Phonitor.

The only feature I miss is the adjustable gain.This is a relatively high gain amp, and for overly sensitive headphones it's certainly too much gain.Don't drive your IEMs with this amp or an uncontrolled move of the volume knob might turn your customs into plasma, and that's probably not good for your brain.

On the other hand (and I think Dreadhead didn't mention it) the Phonitor and the Auditor either do provide serious oomph.

These amps do drive the K340s without any effort, and they even drive the K1000s (my hot summer days headphones for obvious reasons) more than competently.

Unfortunately my auditor does hum slightly (the Phonitor didn't) and I really hope it's defective (shit happens) and no design flaw.Through the HD800s it's hard to hear, only during very quiet passages and then faintly, but through a 30 Ohm higher sensitivity Grado it's easily audible and a noise revealer like a AT-H W5000 would hum like a swarm of hornets .That's not acceptable and I really hope the replacement amp will be flawless since I really really like it and would hate to part with it.

[TC_Shadow]

Recently I've spent about 60 listening hours with a Phonitor.

I don't have much to add to Dreadheads concise and striking review.

There's not much you can say about a "wire with gain" amp except that they are quite rare (in contrast to what members of team all-ss-amps-sound-the-same propagate ).

The crossfeed is by far the best on the market, period.

I've owned headroom and Meier crossfeed, the latter built-in and stand-alone, and I have tested several DSPs.The SPL crossfeed is the best .IMO, naturally.

Nevertheless I did return the amp.(The amp came with a 30-days-no-questions-asked return policy).

Why?

There are 2 reasons.

1) The amp was primarily meant to drive the Sennheiser HD800s since most of my other cans I regularly use are electrostats.

The Senns are already relatively bass weak, and everyone experienced with crossfeed knows that the crossfeed effect does psychoacoustically weaken the bass.All those switches and controls, and they forgot to add a bass boost in order to compensate for the perceived loss.The mids control didn't do the trick.

Well, in my experience the Senns don't respond well to bass boost anyway so in this case the lack of bass boost doesn't make much of a difference.

2) I'm a seasoned lover of headphones audio.I'm listening through headphones several hours a day for ~ 10 years now and fortunately my brain has long adjusted to the "unnatural" separation of the stereo channels and , frankly, I dont need crossfeed except for weird hard panned stuff and the latter is mixed/mastered by idiots anyway so an inferior software based crossfeed wouldn't ruin the sound quality if there's no exceptional SQ to begin with.

Any crossfeed (even the very good SPL) comes with a trade off.It does smear the finest details by nature.Some of us that are able to adjust to the strong channel separation are better off without crossfeed.At least I am.

I had to realize that the Phonitor with activated crossfeed is a bad match for the Senns and without it's somewhat overqualified with all that features I rarely need, and so I decided consequently to return it.

I've got the stripped down version called Auditor instead.It's the same amp without the special features, and it costs about 50% of the Phonitor.

The only feature I miss is the adjustable gain.This is a relatively high gain amp, and for overly sensitive headphones it's certainly too much gain.Don't drive your IEMs with this amp or an uncontrolled move of the volume knob might turn your customs into plasma, and that's probably not good for your brain.

On the other hand (and I think Dreadhead didn't mention it) the Phonitor and the Auditor either do provide serious oomph.

These amps do drive the K340s without any effort, and they even drive the K1000s (my hot summer days headphones for obvious reasons) more than competently.

Unfortunately my auditor does hum slightly (the Phonitor didn't) and I really hope it's defective (shit happens) and no design flaw.Through the HD800s it's hard to hear, only during very quiet passages and then faintly, but through a 30 Ohm higher sensitivity Grado it's easily audible and a noise revealer like a AT-H W5000 would hum like a swarm of hornets .That's not acceptable and I really hope the replacement amp will be flawless since I really really like it and would hate to part with it.

When I had listened to the auditor next to the phonitor I thought the phonitor had a more balanced frequency range with better extended highs; it sounds smoother I think. Although the differences I heard were probably due to the source entirely (Rega Saturn compared to DA10).

[Hopstretch]

When I had listened to the auditor next to the phonitor I thought the phonitor had a more balanced frequency range with better extended highs; it sounds smoother I think. Although the differences I heard were probably due to the source entirely (Rega Saturn compared to DA10).

My nominee -- most well-deserved facepalm of the week.

[TC_Shadow]

My nominee -- most well-deserved facepalm of the week.

however let's first agree what I heard was correct that phonitor was smoother than auditor; let's further hypothesize the difference in sound was caused by the difference in amps and not just the sources.

The probability of my hearing phonitor sounding smoother than auditor would be high (say >80%) if we assume my hypothesis is true; conversely the probability of my hearing phonitor sounding smoother than auditor would be low (say <20%) if we assume the negation of my hypothesis, which is the difference in sound was not caused by the difference in amp and was caused just by the difference in source.

So with the above in mind, the likelihood ratio of the difference in sound was caused by the difference in amps and not just the sources given that I heard the phonitor sounding smoother than auditor would be 0.8/0.2 or 4. This means, without knowing more, it's 4X more likely that the difference in sound was not caused solely by the sources.

so what I really want to say is it's not totally a face-palm moment

[Sherwood]

let's first agree... let's further hypothesize ... if we assume ... if we assume ...

so what I really want to say is it's not totally a face-palm moment

Are you sure that's what you really want to say?

[grawk]

Let's look hypothetically...I have a 1999 McLauren F1 with cooper tires, and a 1984 hyundai with pirellis. Lets assume that the handling differences aren't caused by the suspension, but by the tires. It's not a total facepalm moment to say that the tires are all that matter.

[mypasswordis]

The probability of me thinking this is a facepalm moment is 100%. The probability of me thinking this is not a facepalm moment is 0%. Don't make me divide by 0.