Working on the drum and bass sounds wasn't that easy, as we missed the physical reaction of the low-end in the room. It was a pleasure to be listening to headphones and not speakers, which makes a change.įinally, we tried a couple of mixes on it back in our studio. SPL's claim that the device helps to reduce ear fatigue was certainly borne out by our experience over those three days. It made the whole process much simpler and a lot quicker. With the aid of the Phonitor we were able to accurately gauge what we were recording, both in terms of EQ and ambience, and have it translate fantastically well onto speakers. Our normal approach would be to cobble together what I hoped was the sound we wanted, record a bit and then play it back to check it. I was in the room with the musicians so I couldn't monitor on speakers, and as it was all acoustic, even setting up was tricky due to feedback. I took the Phonitor to a three-day overdubbing session taking place in the living room of a country house. Centre level lets you control this so that it accurately matches what you hear through your speakers. When you use the Crossfeed and Speaker Angle, a side effect is that the centre of the stereo image gets boosted. The third control is called Centre Level and enables you to adjust the 'false centre' of the stereo image. These controls are rotary switches, so once you've found the setting that suits you it's possible to return to it every time. Speaker Angle enables you to further control the stereo width of the signal so that you can match the width you prefer to hear from your speakers. What the Crossfeed control does is to feed some of the left signal to the right, and the right to the left, utilising tiny delays so that the resultant stereo image remains more natural, allowing our brains to decode it successfully. The two knobs on the left are labelled Crossfeed and Speaker Angle. Hardly surprising that it sounds this good then! Tweakingīeyond the astonishing quality of the amplifier itself, the real treat with the Phonitor are those three extra knobs on the front panel. With users such as Bob Ludwig at Gateway and Simon Heyworth of Super Audio this technology is very much at the top of the tree. The principal is based around the fact that higher voltages in audio circuits give increased headroom, lower distortion and enormous bandwidth. The Phonitor utilises SPL's 120v technology, which it developed for its mastering systems. Incredible depth and clarity, not a hint of distortion and detail by the bucketful. Switching over to our Sennheiser HD580s, which are our favourite 'listening' cans, we were even more impressed. We plugged in our old Hear Safe Big Phones (specially designed closed cans to minimise spill when recording), and we've never heard them sound better. The first thing we did was hook the Phonitor up to a good-quality CD player and listen to it as a straight headphone amp. The headphone output is one stereo 1/4-inch jack on the front. The front panel has two retro-looking meters for left and right, eight switches, three small stepped knobs that control the stereo image and a big continuous volume control. The power and earth lift switches are also located at the rear. With its vented metal casing and retractable legs, it's reminiscent of a small oscilloscope.Ĭonnections are on the back panel and consist of two XLR inputs and outputs and an IEC mains input. Our first impression on taking it out of the box was that we were looking at a very high quality piece of lab gear.
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