Monoprice Monolith Liquid Platinum Headphone Amplifier by Alex Cavalli

The LP is not a dry amp. At all.

If the stock config is too dry for someone's tastes, tube rolling alleviates this completely. I also have the 650.

 

Sorry to interrupt this fascinating discussion of digital attenuation, but I thought I might share some actual listening notes .

I’m listening to Abyss 1266s (non Phi) and ZMF Blackwood Autuers, vía the LP, feed by the Vinshine Reference R2R DAC. First I’ve listened to the stock tubes, Amperex PQs, and Mullards, didn’t care for the stocks, slightly preferred the Amperex, which due to having a bigger headstage and smoother treble (wondering if I aquired counterfeit Mullards, don’t remember any having a “hotter” treble).

Compaired to the Lyr 3, on both headphones, the LP has a bigger headstage, better tone, and a more “refined” sound. Which, to me, is saying something, I thought the Lyr 3 was my holy grail of inexpensive headlamps. Here’s hoping a Monoprice Liquid Tungsten is in the works!

 

Hey atomicbob, I just want to clarify myself a bit. I am gathering you are mainly doing editing and voice over work based on you using Adobe Audition and the willingness to try Schiit and Cavalli. I mainly listen to music now and record and mix drum kits and guitar cabs for fun and practice in greatly varying environments.

Editing seems a much more stable process generally than using Daws (ProTools, Logic, Reaper, etc) meant for tracking and mixing music for their intended purpose with numerous plugins of varying stability. Editing dialogue does not have to nail instrumental timbre, dynamics, and the sounds of external analog gear while playing back the stage created on the console or the DAW. Schiit multibit or Cavalli anything would both end up as colorboxes for their sound sigs much like Burl and some of the Universal Audio gear in such use but are perfectly fine for dialog editing. It just would be much harder to nail instrumental tone and timbre with them if it was even possible. That matters a lot for acoustic strings and electric guitar setups that have very specific sound that want to come through and be heard and colored converters, even though they might sound cool and make everything sound cool, make that much harder, which is why I didn’t consider them for my occasional production use or the evaluating recordings for prior job. Otherwise I would have picked up a Prism box and Called it a day. I am still tempted to do so though but would want midi input and more adat inputs for drums.

USB is inherently less stable than an ADAT or AES/SDIF interface card or box running off a system bus. The interfaces with the most stable Windows ASIO USB drivers and most flexible routing, Lynx and RME, don’t exactly have the best conversion. Bass punch is pretty much just gone on them, especially the RME. This doesn’t matter at all if you’re not recording instruments, letting you use more stable interfaces for a more stable process.

Those of us with Laptops who don’t want to buy another box and don’t want to tolerate or get around the sound of them (I can’t stand RME and the original Auroras but like the Hilo), are typically stuck with CEntrance ASIO drivers, which are much less stable with mixing, multiple programs, or switching devices as Windows cannot aggregate easily without ASIO4ALL. Sure they’re more reliable than Cmedia but that’s not saying much. So unless you want to spend more for another USB interface, your DAW system will be less stable. If you’re going to spend more for another interface you don’t even like the sound of and won’t be using half of its features, you’re much better off getting an interface card or one of those RME digiface interface with just for a bit more stability over USB if I don’t want to build a dedicated desktop and maybe even never connect it to the internet after I install what I need as so many DAW computers aren’t.

For everyone else who is playback only, CEntrance is very stable for a few hours unless you constantly jump around or switch tracks or change devices. Cmedia slightly less so if it works. Native driver using devices like Behringer and Lavry? More so for playback if you set everything correctly in Windows (you might not like the sound as much heh) to not get pops but WASAPI recording didn’t work at all for me last time I checked with a cheap Behringer over usb, necessitating standard windows drivers which must be fine tuned in settings.

Just my experience. Maybe all this nutty pot bypassing, digital volume control, and stability talk should be in a separate thread. I should probably buy my own Raydat or Digiface USB at some point

 

what makes like more then 99.99% of ppl here?

 

Thanks for your post. You've confirmed my bias

Could you add what your source was, and whether your cans were run SE or balanced?

You didn't any LP/can pairing notes -- nothing significant to report?

BTW, I've found tube-rolling to be rewarding -- might change your opinion of stage depth.

 

That’s the DAC. I believe Alex said there is no difference on inputs as far as the amp is concerned.

 

Yep, with Utopia (80 Ohms, 104 dB sensitivity) I’m listening very close to the bottom of the range (LP fed balanced from Denafrips Pontus — 4.4 Vrms).

I agree w/ this with stock tubes. That said, I am really pleased with LP/Utopia pairing with other tubes: Gold Lions, Amperex PQ, Siemens NOS E88CC. DOES tame Utopia highs for me.

 

I finally got my replacement LP from Monoprice and already have a few hours of listening on it. I really think something was wrong with the first unit I got. My initial impression this time was that, unlike the last one, it sounds fairly transparent and not immediately subjectively bad. The super dry timbre I was getting is gone. The lower treble garbage is also gone. It doesn't sound completely flat like the first one did either.

My listening on this unit is at a noticeably higher volume setting also. I was doing most of my listening on the first unit at 9-10 o'clock, and beyond 10 o'clock it got harsh and fatiguing really quick. It was almost like was clipping or something? On this unit I'm listening more like 10-12 o'clock and its not getting harsh at all. Because of all of this the gain is much less of an issue with this unit. In fact I would say its not an issue at all with my HE500s.

Since it seems I already spoke to soon in my previous posts, Im going to hold off on detailed opinions until Im sure I know what Im talking about, but so far its sounding quite good with my HE500s. I still feel its slightly dry and/or polite sounding overall with the stock tubes, but not drastically so and I wouldn't necessarily say its a detriment. Its definitly not super tubey and euphonic like my Lyr 1, but it seems like a nice middle of the road tonality and its a big step up in technicalities across the board. Im definitely not hearing anything immediately objectionable with this one. I'll update when I have more time on it.

 

Glad the replacement is working out so far. For what it's worth, I've been a bit mystified by the gain issues some have reported. I'm driving my LP via XLR all the way from a YA2 to ZMFs and I'm in the 10-11 o'clock range very comfortably. I'd be in pain if I were pushing past noon, I'm pretty sure, but I feel good with the room I have and I may end up with a single-ended DAC for the LP ultimately, leaving me with even more room on the dial.

 

Well, your Yggdrasil has a little less output than my Pontus (4 Vrms vs 4.4 Vrms balanced), but that's a pretty small difference. With Auteur I'm listening right at 9:00. At 11:00, it sounds great, but I fear for my hearing -- what's left of it that is.

My big problem is Utopia with 80 Ohms (vs 300 for Auteur), and 104db sensitivity (vs 98 for Auteur). With those, I'm down at the very bottom of the pot.

 

Let's be specific: that's +0.8 dB difference.

That's +6 dB

I'm not 100% sure but I think it's +11.5 dB.

The sum is +18.3 dB - which is a lot. It explains the different findings well.

 

The first calculation of 0.8 dB is ok. The second two are incorrect. Sensitivity is X dB/mW. Note the per milliwatt. Comparisons have to be worked back to voltage from power for a given impedance.

V = sqrt(P*R)

Sensitivity of Utopia at 80R is 104 dB / 0.28Vrms for 1mW
Sensitivity of Auteur at 300R is 98 dB / 0.55Vrms for 1mW

Normalizing Utopia to Auteur voltage requires adjustment of +5.74 dB.

Sensitivity of Utopia at 80R is 109.74 dB / 0.55Vrms
Sensitivity of Auteur at 300R is 98 dB / 0.55Vrms

Sensitivity difference between Utopia and Auteur is 11.74 dB, not 17.5.

Of course the above is all an oversimplification ignoring complex impedance over frequency and frequency response of the electro-acoustic transducers.

 

This exchange should go into another thread and some moderator should put it there as we are reducing the SNR of this thread.

I also record instruments and have spent time as a studio rat in various places working with whatever is available. Ran my own project studio for 20 years with Win(x) recording 12 tracks at a time while playing back up to 12 tracks for cue mix. Worked live SR for a number of years as well. Only a few others on this forum work in this space so I don't talk about it much here.

Don't know why you are having so much trouble but I have stable USB sessions with RME interfaces acting as bridge to whatever ADC / DAC I wish to run AES/EBU for mutlitrack recording of instruments. Cubase and Adobe Audition work well for me with the RME USB interfaces.

If you really want to pursue the best sound possible and stabilty for reliable sessions then laptops aren't the best choice. iZ Tech Radar 24 comes to mind. Or if necessary to use laptop then Dante with D16 or D16R, which I can get stable multitrack sessions out of an audio recording optimized laptop but not what I would use on a high profile session.

Which as @Dzerh noted, is the majority on this forum, and why I tend to discuss dialog editing as it most closely matches the majority use model on this forum: laptop / computer, USB, DAC, headphone amp, headphones.

Bad multitrack experiences do not extrapolate to a 2 channel output only use model. I put in hours every day between DAWs and JRiver with no issues. My only quirk is the need to restart Dante VSC on reboot to resync master / slave clocks. No issues with USB only, though I strongly prefer Dante on ethernet over USB.

 

Just offering a quick addendum to my post. I was reminded that I'm using HD800 balanced with my LP rather than ZMFs. Apologies for the confusion!

 

Anyone else finding the mid-bass a little thin on the LP? To me it sounds like it would be a great match with dynamics with a rounded/boosted mid-bass response (like HD650), but my impression at the moment is that its lacking a degree of slam with HE500s. Im not the type who likes boosted mid-bass either. This is with the stock tubes and SE out.

 

I'm supposed to hear the 500s on my LP this weekend through balanced out. I'll let you know what I think.

 

For those that want some attenuation, you might consider this product

https://www.amazon.com/Nobsound-Fully-Balanced-Single-Ended-Pre-Amplifier-Controller/dp/B01MXC9HHW

I haven't tried it, but it looks pretty basic and should work.