“Recording studio performance at home and at an affordable price? The Phonitor se makes it possible, because SPL brings its top technology down to the essentials in this headphone amplifier.”
You can find the full review (in German) online at lite-Magazin. Here we provide a short English summary.
Sound:
“And so we experience with the Phonitor se an excellently clear, neutral and transparent reproduction. But we are fascinated not only by this purity, but also by the directness, the apparent presence and tangibility of the musicians – we feel as if we were present at this recording session, which, according to the photos, took place in a small recording studio!”
“We hear each of the varied strokes on the cajon, finely nuanced in intensity, as if we were standing right next to it; the upright bass player’s touch is also an acoustic poem: the string slides, the vibration as the strings hit the fingerboard, the fullness and body of the bass tone in the instrument’s creamy ranges, the twang in the higher pitched regions – that’s what a upright bass has to sound like to be realistic.”
“Apart from this excellent and dynamic detail representation, the Phonitor se impresses us with the excellent openness and spatiality of its overall performance.”
Phonitor Matrix:
“With the Matrix circuitry of the Phonitor se, a completely different level can be achieved. As soon as we switch on the crossfeed, the five musicians take a step back and move noticeably closer together instead of playing music across our head, far apart. Now they appear to us as an ensemble, acting with a nice spatial arrangement in front of us. Wow!”
“It makes the listening experience even more intimate and…present, human and sympathetic: we just realize that we are sitting in front of the Phonitor smiling. The use of the Matrix makes this recording extra good.”
“With crossfeed activated, the sound image gets much more structure and naturalness.”
Conclusion:
“The SPL Phonitor se concentrates the top technology of the bigger Phonitor models to the essentials: As a headphone amplifier, it offers Voltair technology, thanks to which it manages an excellent neutral reproduction with great transparency, dynamics and low-end power. With the Matrix circuit focused on two stages of intensity, it also gets the music out of the head and provides a much more natural reproduction that avoids the super stereo effect and the exaggerated reverberation of rooms, which is exhausting in the long run. Upgrading with the DAC module additionally makes the Phonitor se extremely HiRes capable, up to PCM 768 and DSD256.”
