Phonitor One
The audiophile headphone amplifier
Monitoring in highest sound quality.
Create perfect mixes on headphones – thanks to the Phonitor Matrix.
NUMBER ONE IN SOUND
For us the sound is always in the foreground. When it sounds good, we like to listen. To get such a sound, you need experience and technical finesse. We have incorporated both into the Series One.
The design of the amplification stages
Two Burr-Brown OPA 2134 SoundPlus™ operational amplifiers provide the pre-amplification. These are specially designed for audiophile circuits and are characterized by extremely low noise and minimal distortion of only 0.00008%.
Thanks to a true FET stage, the OPA 2134 achieves a slew rate of 20V/µs, making it a high-speed operational amplifier. This has an immediate positive effect on the liveliness of the playback.
In addition, low capacitance film capacitors are installed in the signal path as bypass capacitors of the coupling capacitors, which ensures a more precise transmission of the high-frequency signal components.
The excellent Panasonic ‘Electric Double Layer’ gold electrolytic capacitors are used as coupling capacitors. They offer the highest storage capacity of all capacitor technologies
The output stage
The output stage of the headphone amplifier is designed as a push-pull amplifier in class AB mode. The bipolar transistors share the amplification of the positive and negative half-waves, which produces a higher gain and a higher output voltage than in Class A operation, where only one transistor amplifies both half-waves.
The output stage transistors are thermally coupled and thus run particularly coherently, which contributes to a consistent and stable sound image.
The power supply has a buffer circuit with low source resistance, ensuring generous current reserves even when operating low-impedance headphones.
The Revolution: Phonitor Matrix
The Phonitor Matrix is the revolution in the headphone amplifier.
It enables mixing and mastering engineers to create perfect mixes on headphones, which will translate perfectly to all types of stereo speaker systems.
With the Phonitor Matrix, you can create mixes on headphones that sound just like on speakers.
But the Phonitor Matrix is not only designed for professional use in the studio.
It also enables the hifi enthusiast to enjoy music on headphones, like if it was played back on speakers.
Phonitor Matrix
The Phonitor Matrix allows the mixing and mastering audio engineer to create perfect mixes on headphones that sound great on all types of stereo speaker systems.
Crossfeed
Listening on headphones is different from listening on loudspeakers.
The biggest difference is the lack of crossing signals of the sound signal from the left speaker to the right ear and from the right speaker to the left ear.
Conventional
This results in an unnaturally wide and
wrong stereo image.
The various sound sources of the audio signal are not localized as the sound engineer intended them to.
Correct
The SPL Phonitor Matrix will correct this false stereo image with an analog circuitry and ensures a correct representation of the stereo image and a relaxed listening experience.
How is this possible?
Music is normally produced and mixed for playback on stereo speakers.
Listening on headphones is different from listening on loudspeakers. The biggest difference is the lack of crossing signals of the sound signal from the left speaker to the right ear and from the right speaker to the left ear.
These crossing signals are missing in conventional headphone listening, because there are no signals crossing from one side of the headphones to the other. This results in an unnaturally wide stereo stage and sound sources are not played back at their correct position in the stereo spectrum.
The SPL Phonitor Matrix can correct this false stereo image with an analog circuitry.
The Phonitor Matrix parameters
The two main parameters of the Phonitor Matrix are Crossfeed and Angle:
• Crossfeed determines the crossing signals of the channels.
• Angle determines the opening angle of the stereo image.
The “Crossfeed” parameter of the Phonitor One is continuously adjustable via the crossfeed control.
The “Angle” parameter is fixed at the studio standard of 30°.
To perfect the listening experience, the level of the sound sources centered in the stereo image must be attenuated when the Phonitor Matrix is activated. The result is that not only the position of all sound sources is correctly located, but also their volume.
For the Phonitor One, this parameter, which we call “Center” for the Phonitor Matrix, is fixed at a -1 dB cut, which is the best choice for an authentic representation of the soundstage.
During conventional listening on headphones, our brain can compensate a certain level of false playback representation – but this is very exhausting and leads to listening fatigue.
Summed up:
The SPL Phonitor Matrix corrects the false representation of the stereo sound image, which makes it much easier to find the right decisions for mixing and mastering engineers. The hifi enthusiast can experience the music, like it was originally mixed and recorded.
So nothing stands in the way of a successful and long mixing session on headphones.
