[Skeza]

Monolith AMT, kicks the butt of a lot of kilobuck cans, including HD-800S, HEKv2, HE6v2, etc. The tech is just better than dynamic and planar drivers. The imaging is meticulous, the sound field is holographic and deep, with great layering both side to side and front/back. Other headphones have a Wall of Sound effect, these sound natural.
Biggest caveat is that they have a flat tuning from 1K-6KHz so EQ is a must. The units are made by GoldPlanar, so use the EQ for GL850 as a base. (Which is GP's version) Note that they weigh 680g, due to the magnets.

Problem is right now they aren't on sale, which MSRP is $999. Often drops down to $600-650 range. I paid $420. ($599 + 30% coupon)

I use them with Redscape, and I had to retune the HRTF timing for head size to get it back to being spot on. The detail retrieval is estat level. Yes, I compared them to the HD-800S and the other cans I mentioned. There's a big thread on Head-Fi about these cans. These are endgame for me, until they come out with a newer version that addresses the flat tuning.

That's a huge statement! Unfortunately monolith can be quite hard to get in Australia, buying direct gets crushed with fees and shipping. Sometimes Amazon does have good deals but it doesn't look like it's even on there.

Do you know if Audeze mini XLR works with these? As I love boom mics and I use Audezes mic with my hd800.

 

[Chastity]

That's a huge statement! Unfortunately monolith can be quite hard to get in Australia, buying direct gets crushed with fees and shipping. Sometimes Amazon does have good deals but it doesn't look like it's even on there.

Do you know if Audeze mini XLR works with these? As I love boom mics and I use Audezes mic with my hd800.

My friend in Wagga Wagga NSW orders from Monoprice.com, ships from California, pays no tax, and costs him $46 to ship his headphones. (M1570) Got them in just over a week.

Yes, it is rather a bold statement, and demonstrates just how blown away I am by the quality of these cans. They dig deep into the subbass, the 10Hz response is realistic, tho I believe it's -3dB at that point. So they realistically do 20Hz and a bit under that. They benefit from a good Left Shelf to get that theatre-grade rumble. They come across like a really good, tight, sealed sub. Mids are realistic, and natural sounding, and I play instruments, so having natural sounding timbre matters to me. I have in the AMT thread posted several EQs for them.

GoldPlanar GL850 are $1599, and the HEDDphone v1 $1899 v2 $1999, and GP and HEDD codeveloped the VVT AMT driver, which is why they both have it. Monoprice has an OEM agreement with GoldPlanar so they got access to the headphone drivers. You can easily put these up against the best from HifiMan, Sennheiser, ZMF, Focal and others. What got me excited about them is that the VVT AMT design manages such great detail and resolution, and full spectrum response because they can move 4x the air compared to the same sized dynamic and planar drivers, and moving air is how you generate solid bass, and prevent smearing in the mids/treble. The treble is balanced to the mids, but is not sibilant or harsh. The AMT drivers are a type of ribbon driver, and share the speed they are known for, but do not require an energizer like ribbons and estats. Are they the best in any response? Maybe not, but I would give them 9/10 in all categories, if not an occasional 10/10. They are great, all-round headphones that have no issues with any genre I have thrown at them. And they have an unique space presentation that differentiates them from dynamics. (Planars being orthodynamics) They image like mad, and with layers in the depth. These are truly TOTL headphones, and the fact I got them for $420 new makes these the absolute King of Price / Performance.

GoldPlanar also make a flat ribbon design called the GL1200, but that gets into using an energizer, or a converter, and tapping high output from a speaker amp, much like the Raal headphones. A common amp for them is the Schiit Jotenheim-R, but it is no longer made.

 

[Mad Lust Envy]

Picked up an akliam pd5 for use with pc and consoles. Great unit.. until I tried it on PS5.

Why does PS5 always half the volume of a dac?

PS5 doesn't have high output voltage for standard dacs, and need tweaking from the manufacturers to build the dacs around ps5 use. So you either have dacs made to be used for PS5 (like the newer Fulla/Hels), or pair other dacs with higher powered amplifiers that can brute force the low signal level.

Same reason why Audeze Maxwell PS version has a PS mode on the dongle that has higher volume output vs PC mode (which also works on PS5, as it's a standard usb audio driver mode).

PS5 has nice compatibility with UAC1 devices, but yeah... the output signal voltage is not as high as say a PC.

 

[JdeFalconr]

That's a huge statement! Unfortunately monolith can be quite hard to get in Australia, buying direct gets crushed with fees and shipping. Sometimes Amazon does have good deals but it doesn't look like it's even on there.

Do you know if Audeze mini XLR works with these? As I love boom mics and I use Audezes mic with my hd800.

Don't forget about the Modmic / Modmic Wireless.

 

[Chastity]

PS5 doesn't have high output voltage for standard dacs, and need tweaking from the manufacturers to build the dacs around ps5 use. So you either have dacs made to be used for PS5 (like the newer Fulla/Hels), or pair other dacs with higher powered amplifiers that can brute force the low signal level.

Same reason why Audeze Maxwell PS version has a PS mode on the dongle that has higher volume output vs PC mode (which also works on PS5, as it's a standard usb audio driver mode).

PS5 has nice compatibility with UAC1 devices, but yeah... the output signal voltage is not as high as say a PC.

Thus why we have preamps

 

[Skeza]

Don't forget about the Modmic / Modmic Wireless.

I did give that a shot and hated it's design, it needs a refresh asap. Call me old school but I just love an analogue design, that's why I love my boom mics with the Burson Conductor.

Bought and resold the Corsair Virtuoso pro just for the dual 3.5mm mic cable! If they sold it separately it would be a game changer for hifiman/focal sets.

 

[Chastity]

I did give that a shot and hated it's design, it needs a refresh asap. Call me old school but I just love an analogue design, that's why I love my boom mics with the Burson Conductor.

Bought and resold the Corsair Virtuoso pro just for the dual 3.5mm mic cable! If they sold it separately it would be a game changer for hifiman/focal sets.

I missed your question about the Audeze mic mini-XLR cable on the Monolith AMT. No, because the port is wired with 2 pins reversed, because this is what GoldPlanar uses. There are adapters made, or you can resolder those two pins. (I've seen both done) Pin layout is on the product page (same as M1570)

 

[Skeza]

I missed your question about the Audeze mic mini-XLR cable on the Monolith AMT. No, because the port is wired with 2 pins reversed, because this is what GoldPlanar uses. There are adapters made, or you can resolder those two pins. (I've seen both done) Pin layout is on the product page (same as M1570)

Cheers for all the knowledge! I'll pay attention to the next sales and give them a go.

 

[Chastity]

I saw this post over on Reddit, and thought it worth sharing about how headphones work and balanced / SE:

Headphones sit in the middle of a circuit, with one wire going in and another wire going out. They are a passive device where the diaphragm of the headphone is moved according to the voltage differential between the wire going in and the wire going out to complete the circuit.

Single ended, it supplies voltage on one wire going in, and the other wire is unpowered ground, so if you have 2V on one, 0V on the other = differential of 2V.

What "balanced" does in a headphone context is it inverts the signal going down one wire so now you have 2V on one, -2V on the other, for a differential of 4V. So you get double the voltage.

From the headphone's point of view, it can't tell the difference between 4V / 0V SE and 2V / 2V balanced, both are exactly the same to the headphone. It only "sees" the difference.

Speakers and most other passive transducers work the same way, they only have two wires.

Some people take issue with the term balanced, because it's not the same as interconnects, and prefer the word "differential", if you prefer this use it. But "balanced" for a headphone output simply means you have both wires powered, and one is the inverse of the other. Everyone understands what it means. It's not the same as a balanced interconnect; it drops the ground, as there's nothing to do with it.

An active component receiving a balanced signal through an interconnect inverts the negative signal back to its original phase and then sums it with the positive signal. This cancels out common-mode noise, and you also get double the voltage.

A headphone is entirely passive, it can't and doesn't do any of this. There's no circuitry in a headphone to do this. So there is no noise rejection with a "balanced" headphone cable. Just double the voltage, which is the main point. You do also get lower crosstalk due to the lack of a common ground, but the main point of balanced for headphones is just this double voltage. And that bit works the same as a balanced interconnect, with the headphone you have two powered wires but drop the ground.

The ground on 4.4 Pentaconn is there for two reasons- (1) so that it can run headphones single ended; (2) so that it can be used as an balanced interconnect, which does use ground. You can get a 4.4-double XLR cable and plug directly into an amp. You can't do that from 2.5 or 4 pin XLR due to the lack of ground. This makes it more flexible.

But you can't use three wires, both + and - voltage wires, and a ground, into a headphone. It's a passive transducer with two wires connected to it. There's nothing to do with a third wire, it's not a component interconnect, there is no circuitry in there to do the summing of the balanced signal that a balanced electrical component does. All there is is a voltage differential applied to the voice coil.

 

[Skeza]

@Mad Lust Envy I am very curious to know how the LCD-GX sounds with Dekoni's new suede pads. Any chance you could pull this off?