In pro audio magazine Sound on Sound you’ll find a review of the Phonitor 3 – our headphone amplifier and monitoring controller with 120V technology. The complete review is available at Sound on Sound as a print magazine in the September edition and online. We have summarized some of the highlights for you here on our blog.
“Mixing on headphones is becoming much more common. A consequence of the expanded studio role of headphones is that headphone amplifiers have become more relevant. Mixing on headphones means we’ve become more sensitive to headphone sound quality. The subject of this review, SPL’s Phonitor 3, reflects the increasing significance of headphone amplification. But, more than that, it offers some intriguing headphone output configuration options. Christened by SPL the Phonitor Matrix, the configuration options enable some significant manipulation of the headphone listening experience, primarily with the aim of making it more speaker-like.”
“While I’ve introduced the Phonitor 3 as a headphone amplifier, and that function does generally cover its defining set of features, it’s also a monitoring preamplifier that offers three balanced stereo XLR input pairs and one balanced XLR stereo output pair, for the connection of active monitors.”
Sound:
“The fundamental headphone sound quality of the Phonitor 3 is, to my ears, excellent. I have a pretty wide variety of headphones available, with significantly differing sensitivities, impedance characteristics and tonal qualities, and each one sang with an impressive and seductive sense of clarity and impact when driven by the Phonitor 3.”
“With its clever Phonitor Matrix, this high-end headphone amp aims to deliver a more speaker-like listening experience.”
“I found the Phonitor Matrix functions increasingly interesting and useful, particularly the Angle and Centre functions.”
Conclusion:
“The Phonitor 3 is an interesting and very well-engineered product that does extremely competently exactly what it sets out to do.”
“Very high-performance headphone amplification, fascinating and versatile headphone processing and very high build quality.”
