Also posted on H-F:

Review of the SPL Phonitor

Introduction:

Last year I started to read about this new amplifier from SPL with its exotic crossfeed and I had to hear it. SPL America generously agreed to send me a Phonitor sample for review on Head-Fi and in short I am extremely impressed with the amplifier.

On top of that the Phonitor has an amazing fully adjustable crossfeed circuitry that does an amazingly effective job at recreating a speaker setup. That

So is this like the Smyth thing that they had at canjam last year but for a 2.0 setup and thats used without mics?

So is this like the Smyth thing that they had at canjam last year but for a 2.0 setup and thats used without mics?

No the Smyth box uses measured IRFS to model the effect of crossfeed the Phonitor uses your ears and a series of adjustments to tune your experience. You can for example increase the speaker angle the crossfeed amount etc. More interactive and tunable.

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the clarification. Looks real interesting. I hope more of these come out into the wild

Nice review, Chris. I was looking forward to your impressions, because I am predispoded to like SPL gear. I have the SPL Volume2 balanced volume control, and it is a fantastic piece. Basically a single source balanced preamp. What is the msrp of the Phonitor?

Nice review, Chris. I was looking forward to your impressions, because I am predispoded to like SPL gear. I have the SPL Volume2 balanced volume control, and it is a fantastic piece. Basically a single source balanced preamp. What is the msrp of the Phonitor?

The MSRP is $2149 but the street price is significantly lower than that. You will need to talk to an SPL dealer to get the street price since I don't know it.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the trouble it has driving low impedance cans. Aren't the Sony's low impedance? It made the L3000 sound broken.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the trouble it has driving low impedance cans. Aren't the Sony's low impedance? It made the L3000 sound broken.

Dusty I'm really not sure what happened with that and I was going to mention it but then I tried it with the d5000s (32 ohm) and the SA5K at around 70 ohms and I didn't get the same effect. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe those two have flatter impedance curves but I did the RAW measurements on the D5000s and the two amps came out identical much like the HD650s.

That's why I left it out since it's a mystery to me. I don't know.....

Agreed. The way I phrased the generality is unfounded.

Not understanding it isn't a reason to leave it out. The L3000s sounded really bad out of the phonitor, and much better out of the GSX singled ended when fed by the same source.

Not understanding it isn't a reason to leave it out. The L3000s sounded really bad out of the phonitor, and much better out of the GSX singled ended when fed by the same source.

Yeah that was my impression but I believe it was only mine. Did someone else try the L3000 between the two? If you two corroborate then I'll at least fix my review over at HF to include that. I had come around to thinking that I was just getting used to the cans since it was the first time I'd put them on. I honestly wasn't at all sure if it had just been a "meet" artifact.

As usual Grawk is keeping me on the straight and narrow

Agreed. The way I phrased the generality is unfounded.

Dusty, did you try them out of the Phonitor? If you match my recollection that would help me be sure I wasn't just being insane.

What I should have done is switched back to the phonitor after the GS-X and seen what happened

The MSRP is $2149 but the street price is significantly lower than that. You will need to talk to an SPL dealer to get the street price since I don't know it.

Google found $1849.00 from here

Sound Performance Lab (SPL)*-*SPL Phonitor - Pro Audio Sales - AudioLot - 888-224-3343

$1934 on ebay too

Dusty, did you try them out of the Phonitor? If you match my recollection that would help me be sure I wasn't just being insane.

What I should have done is switched back to the phonitor after the GS-X and seen what happened

The short answer is no, but "no bass" does not describe the L3000's, that was good enough for me at the time. Colin?

Do you still have it? I'm pretty sure your two weeks are up, but if not and if you want, I could bring them by again, Friday evening or something briefly. (Alexandria is pretty convenient to me from work.)

As well as any other phones that we could test any theories with. The MDR-F1 has a pretty "testing" impedance.

Anyway, I'm going to assume not, but if so, speak up quickly, I'll make sure I have them with me tomorrow.

I only listened to the L3k SE out of Dan's (former) M

The short answer is no, but "no bass" does not describe the L3000's, that was good enough for me at the time. Colin?

Do you still have it? I'm pretty sure your two weeks are up, but if not and if you want, I could bring them by again, Friday evening or something briefly. (Alexandria is pretty convenient to me from work.)

As well as any other phones that we could test any theories with. The MDR-F1 has a pretty "testing" impedance.

Anyway, I'm going to assume not, but if so, speak up quickly, I'll make sure I have them with me tomorrow.

Dusty, I was running late but I did ship it out today. My two weeks were up 2 days ago. Massive fires at work. My initial impression was not a lack of bass it was that the baritone was obscured but I think that was my head getting used to the headphones not anything else. I have done fairly extensive A/B with the 32 ohm D5000 and I could find nothing so my guess is that it was my own brain. The scientist in me fell down on that one, I should have gone back but I was enjoying the chatting and I got distracted.

To be clear I thought the L3k had great bass out of both of the amps. I just thought it wasn't as controlled out of the Phonitor but I believe now that this was my mistake for not rechecking and it was just a mis-impression. That's why I originally did not include it. I'm not big on "inklings" etc.

Edited February 27, 200917 yr by Dreadhead

Nice, and I hope you get some success with a standalone crossfeed box. That would be outstanding. I like the effect of crossfeed in general but I've yet to hear one that wasn't highly detrimental to the overall sonics.

**** update *****

One of the people from SPL contacted me and pointed out that my Dyanmic range number made little sense and I realized he was right. The dynamic range as measured from RMAA is going to come out about the noise floor because of how the test is set up and that does not necssarily represent the real dynamic range. SPL claims a dynamic range of 129 dBA and noise floor of -97dBu using their Audio Precision analyzer (drool)

Nice job on the review, Chris. I forgot how much I dislike doing them when I did the TTVJ FET-A review the other night.

Anyway, as I mentioned on HF, I think a Phonitor / DA11 comparison might be very interesting. If I am understanding, then they do some similar things, but in very different ways. I have no idea if anybody attending CanJam has a Phonitor, but maybe you could capitalize on your contact with SPL and request that a unit be made available for CanJam. It could be shipped to JP or somebody involved in running the thing, or you could just get another unit in May and bring it with you!

Cheers.

Nice job on the review, Chris. I forgot how much I dislike doing them when I did the TTVJ FET-A review the other night.

Anyway, as I mentioned on HF, I think a Phonitor / DA11 comparison might be very interesting. If I am understanding, then they do some similar things, but in very different ways. I have no idea if anybody attending CanJam has a Phonitor, but maybe you could capitalize on your contact with SPL and request that a unit be made available for CanJam. It could be shipped to JP or somebody involved in running the thing, or you could just get another unit in May and bring it with you!

Cheers.

I made a plug for the meet. They are actually in California too. Maybe I should try again. Get one of the organizers to PM me their email and I'll pass it along to SPL.

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

Product Description: Sound Performance Lab

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.

"Pull!"

I'm amazed. I have only been listening to it for 2hrs with angles/cross-feed and centre switched on - using the suggested 30 deg. combination as detailed in the manual; and I'm now thinking how was I able to listen to Re-Foc before without it?

Edited July 16, 200916 yr by crypt@
editing...