SPL Phonitor 2730 headphone amplifier. (RRP $3499)

2 years ago 144

Item Condition: Excellent

Shipping Options: Shipping is available at agreed cost.

Suburb or Town: Bli Bli

State: QLD

Payment Method: Paypal commercial (i.e. NOT gift) only

Reason for selling: Thinning the herd.

The SPL Phonitor headphone amplifier was introduced by studio electronics company SPL Audio to improve headphone sound and, optionally, to bring headphone reproduction more in alignment with speaker reproduction, specifically to enable mixing albums with the usage of headphones instead of speakers - i.e. to recreate a speaker-type sound-field with headphones.

It features several options to make headphone listening similar to speaker listening - Speaker Angle, Centre Level and Crosstalk are 3 of those settings. I barely used them because the amplifier simply brings out the best sound, anyway, in high impedance headphones (for example, the 600 ohm Beyerdynamic T1 2nd Generation, but the 300 ohm Sennheiser HD 800 or 800s should work well. The Mysphere 3.2 (110 ohm) also works very well). Low impedance headphones aren't advisable.

This is a headphone amplifier only - there is no onboard DAC and the back panel connections in and out are all balanced XLR. Headphone connector is single ended 1/4 inch plug only.

In my opinion, the amplifier has an industrial symmetrical beauty and is extremely well constructed.

This is the precursor to the Phonitor 2.

Below is SPL Audio's original information about this superb and groundbreaking amplifier.

The SPL Phonitor design is SPL’s high-end interpretation for what a complete headphone amplifier should be. A well chosen system of Phonitor and headphones can, by and large, replace loudspeakers and offers all that is required for a successful session long listening periods without ear fatigue. We therefore refer to the Phonitor as a headphone monitoring amplifier system.

The basis for this high-end development is SPL’s proven 120 volts reference technology based on handmade operation amplifiers (or, Op Amps). 120 volts corresponds to approximately four times the performance of standard analogue audio semiconductor technologies and twice that of the most powerful designs. Through such 120 volts circuitry and processing, SPL reaches performance levels far beyond conventional designs in dynamic range and distortion levels, and the main technical specifications in music reproduction exceeds all known analogue or digital standards.

In addition to its standard monitoring functions the Phonitor offers new controls such as “Crossfeed“, “Speaker Angle“ and “Center Level“. These are the essential parameters that create the width, balance and overall space within a listening field and how we recognize them coming from the loudspeaker. Crossfeed simulates the frequency dependent interaural level differences from both channels. Speaker Angle determines the stereo width caused by frequency dependent interaural time differences. Center Level regulates the balance between phantom centre and L/R stereo signals.

Aside from its outstanding abilities as a loudspeaker substitute, the Phonitor offers well equipped studios a fully functional monitoring alternative. In addition one can take along the Phonitor into an unfamiliar studio or production environment that always provides the engineers or producers own monitor sound. Furthermore, with the Phonitor one can simply enjoy music as it was originally mixed, namely for playback over loudspeakers.