SPL Phonitor

Is that an amp that has crossfeed except you can finely control the parameters of the way that the crossfeed is done? Looks like a pro unit. Very nice.

Sound on Sound gave it a good review in 2008. As I suspected, it's designed to help with mixing, but using headphones rather than monitors. It even allows you to dial a 'toe in' for the speaker like sound.

That'll take some dialling up and tough decisions as to what you like/want.

Looks like a good piece of kit, and at a good price from Scan up above.

www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec08/articles/splphonitor.htm

www.stereomojo.com/SPL%20Phonitor%20Headphone%20Amplifier%20review/SPLPhonitorHeadphoneAmplifier.htm

It's a good idea with headphones. With Fran's filters, we're able to get a wider and flatter frequency response but to me, headphones sound like ...... Headphones. The two speakers on each ear are way too wide apart for a natural soundstage, which is why I feel that imaging is nigh on impossible really,

This unit allows the adjustment of the 'angle of attack' and then adjustment of crossfeed with another setting, I think, to solidify the centre image.

The result should sound more like speakers and is something that should have been perhaps looked into more with headphone amps really. It surprises me that headphone enthusiasts are lucky to get a half implemented crossfeed in a pale attempt to open out the perceived soundstage. Crossfeed units are often too crude to be of any real use I think.

Ifi do a decent one on their amps, but still has a long way to go really imo.

It looks nice, Simon. The effects might be quite subtle, but once you find a sweet spot, you may well end up with a headphone setup that really does emulate speakers. I'd love that to get the sound further out of my head.

If anyone makes an amp at a half decent price that does that well, they'd probably have a big seller!! That's a pro monitoring tool, so probably pretty good.

Nor me. I'm thinking about hiring out the body .......

£450? Wow!

Not sure how hardcore you want to go with this stuff but there's also a Phonitor Mini. Believe it shares the same amp section as its bigger brother but offers a lot less tweaking options. Think you only have a handful of presets but perhaps that removes some of the guesswork.

Mind you I don't think I've seen a Mini for much less than £350-£400ish used so that Phonitor was a bit of a steal.

Think you should just dust yourself down and go for the Phonitor 2 to console yourself. And a DT1770. Anything else you'd care to add to Simon's shopping list Ian?

I feel like that sometimes, Mark!!!

Crossfeeds can mess the sound up imo. It really depends on how they're done I think. The Mieir unit whan it was available was ok but you can't get them any more. The nice bit was that you could dial in the amount plus different amounts of bass to compensate.

The on/off types are a bit hit and miss tbh. The one on the Ifi amps is ok and does actually expand the soundstage in some way, rather than contract as some seem to do. Trouble is, it can expand left and right too much and it's also doing something to the treble frequencies in that sibilance is created. I think the treble is split and other frquencies perhaps not so much so treble can get a bit disturbing.

I haven't found a crossfeed that I think works that well. In fact, because of that, I tend to avoid them.

The Phonitor arrangement looks a bit superior to anything else I've seen. One reviewer said effects can be subtle (which I think is a good thing) but he also mentioned the idea of being able to adjust the centre image as well which sounds brilliant.

I think that one is designed more to make headphones sound like speakers with different amounts of toe in and then compensations for FR, so that recordings can be monitored a little easier perhaps on headphones. Thing is that headphones do some things better than speakers and speakers do other things. Imaging is better on speakers, but this unit goes quite a long way towards reproducing a similar effect electronically so that engineers are happier with headphones.

If a really good unit was available at a reasonable cost for headphones that did help to make them more speaker like, I think they'd sell like hot cakes. I've not heard anything yet though that does it well, without adding noise or odd treble artifacts.

The thing is that in crossfeeds, not all the frequency range is shared between each side, so it can result in oddities. In real life listening, there is also a delay from the other side of each ear, so that the right ear gets a direct signal from the right and a delayed signal, lower in amplitude (and differently tuned) from the left. The opposite happens with the other ear. Then you get later reflections in room so the whole process is very complex, which crossfeeds don't really emulate that well.

Ideally, for headphones, binaural is probably a better way to go, but the companies won't go that route alongside straight stereo copies. Great pity really.

have you not tried software crossfeed Ian?
i see there is a meier plugin for it.

i am just disappointed that i narrowly missed a potential bargain.

it would have been nice to compare a so called high end amp against my relatively cheap Ember and idsd micro.

i did have crossfeed on my old meier stagedac, but found i had to keep turning it on or off depending on the recording, and as i never listen to an album i just have my whole library on random play, it became a pain.

i am still interested in a used phonitor, but maybe a "used mini" would be more realistic.

www.scan.co.uk/products/spl-phonitor-mini-professional-headphone-amplifier-120v-phonitor-matrix-13362db-dynamic-range-for-pl