Monolith Desktop Headphone Amplifier and DAC with THX AAA Technology (Dual AKM 4493 DACs & Dual AAA-788 Modules)

This isn't a perfect unit, it has flaws, namely the analog inputs are converted to digital then back to analog, so there really isn't a passthrough for just the amp (due to the EQ and DIRAC options). If you're a purist, then this is a pretty big red flag, but for the rest of us, it's really not that big of a deal, not even sure they've found change in the output after feeding analog into the device, so it's really only theory that the sound is altered by these 2 extra conversions, but if you have no plans to bypass the DAC, and instead are using it as both a dac and an amp, then there is no extra conversion happening, plus, the balanced dac in the unit is a very good dac, so just use it. The amp...well, it's basically a revolutionary technology developed by THX, and has the audiophile community losing their collective minds over these THX AAA amps. They truly are a wire with gain, the noise floor and THD are so ridiculously low, the power output so high, that you really shouldn't need another solid state amp after this. This may be the 788, inferior to the 789 in power output (not by much, I'm listening to it right now on 300 ohm sennheisers, and it gets loud enough to hurt, and still has a ton of headroom in the volume , like upwards of 40-50%, no chance I'm testing how high it goes, I'll blow the drivers for sure, I'm wincing at -17db, and I think it goes all the way to +16. No gain settings, which is a bit annoying, but whatever, however the biggest flaw of this unit by a long long ways, is the volume control. It is painfully slow, I'm really hoping they fix it in a firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath. Basically you have to spin the knob like 20 times to go down a significant amount, like from high listening volume, to hearing those around you when they're trying to get your attention. It's not really a big deal 90% of the time, once you are at a comfortable volume, minor changes are completely fine, you don't even notice it's slow, only when you need to change it more than like 10-15+ db at once, does it become an annoyance, overall though who cares, the flaws have no effect on the sound (unless you're trying to bypass the dac, in which case it might due to taking the analog signal from your exterior dac, converting it back to digital, and then back to analog, that is the only way you might hear any change in the audio caused by this amp. If you're using digital inputs, then you're golden, nothing but pure unadulterated source material is what you'll hear. Buy this amp, new 887, 888, and 889 units aren't coming until late november/early december at the earliest, unless you want to pay $3,000 for the Benchmark that has a THX AAA 888 amp already. This amp though a few revisions old already, is still state of the art, industry changing, and the measured improvements are so small they aren't even audible to us, as the "inferior" amp is already producing audio that is 99.9999% to the source, at least. It simply doesn't get any cleaner. Oh, and the value is insane, a balanced dac ($200 at least) and a THX AAA balanced amp ($400) for $500. It's a steal

OMG! This thing is an absolute dream. I initially oredered the massdrop THX AAA 789 but got frustrated after the second production delay and SMSL came out with their $289 THX sp200 so I returned the 789 and pre-ordered the sp200 which is supposedly shipping out on Oct. 27, 1019. Started looking for dacs and was leaning towards the SMSL su-8 balanced dac to pair with the sp200. So while I'm waiting for the sp200, I figured I'd give the monolith a shot. Cost is about the same as the SMSL stack, next day shipping, why not? Like many of you, I read both reviews by Amir of Audio Science Review and thought that the monolith THX AAA was quite a bit inferior to the the 789 and the monolith 887 and actually even the $289 sp200. But when looking at the graphs, I thought, that little bit of noise can't be audible enough to take this monolith thx out of consideration. With the exception of the SMSL stack, this seemed to be the best value. Two nice dacs, two 788 amps, and Dirac sensaround 2, line out for speaker amp, onboard peq with shelf eq even for $500. Okay, gotta try it. For reference, I have the akg k712 pro, Sennheiser 58x, Fidelio shp9500s, hifiman he5se, audeze el-8, Sennheiser hd579 and the v-moda m100. Before the monolith thx, I was driving them with a minidsp hd 2x4 over usb asio switching off with a Sennheiser gsx1000 for gaming, all amped by a monolith cavalli liquid spark. So nothing really high end. But even so, I never expected the THX to blow me away like it did. It was just symphonic bliss. The Dirac sensaround was awesome for gaming and pretty eye-opening for certain music tracks as well. That alone is worth the price of admission. The power is admirable too. I turned it up till it hurt with still 35 percent headroom for even the akg k712 pro which is surprisingly hard to drive to its fullest potential. I haven't even tried the balanced output yet but I can't wait. I'm completely smitten. To me this is by far the best value out of the 4 thx amps in existence as of the time of this writing. I suggest you at least try it before making a final decision.

I may be a bit of an audiophile. I only recently discovered this fact, after years of slowly building up various wireless and wired audio equipment throughout the house. I've been around the block a few times, so to speak, when it comes to listening to my music collection on various pieces of equipment and in various rooms. Some of them certainly sound great, while others sound good, and nothing really sounds "bad". And now along comes this... headphone amp + dac. I resisted for years even considering buying such a device. I already "have it all" as they say when it comes to ways to listen to music. But late at night, when things quiet down, and I'm left to just listening on my Sennheiser HD650s, something was always missing. Some punch. Some oomph. Some presence. And clarity. Oh my, the clarity. You see... all of those qualities, things I wasn't missing too much, are all represented on the Monoprice Monolith Headphone Amp. No, not represented. Defined. Perfected. Impeccable? Yes. In fact, one might even say that this device is like aural... er... that word that rhymes with "lex". Wink wink, nudge nudge. This device is simply put the best money I have ever spent on music gear. Yes, it needs to be paired with quality headphones. But my oh my, the absolutely purity of sound at any volume that comes through this thing is just unmatched. I'm really, really glad I bypassed the lesser quality / lower priced gear out there. Time in a sense is money, and it would have been a lot of money wasted in search of this.

I wrote a review previously but since I tried to add a link to Joshua Valour's review of this unit it couldnt be posted. Check out his review on youtube, he nails it. Despite a shaky start at first with a beta firmware unit sent out for review at ASR and some subsequent spec cherry-picking, the overall consensus is that this packs a killer punch for the price. I definitely concur! It's clean as hell, powerful as all get-out and just pure and unadulterated sound (unless you want it to be). The lack of remote is the only real issue I think, but many HP amps don't have them anyway it seems. Most solid state amp lovers will really enjoy this. This has as black and silent a background as you could hope for - with all but the most sensitive single digit impedance IEMs (not recommended for an amp without a gain toggle anyway, nor does Monoprice recommend less than 12ohms here). This has definitely added a new wow factor to music for me. Just running HD600 and DT880 (250ohm) so far and they sound incredible. I've started to realize what people mean when they say you feel like you can hear "behind" things in music. Details that were hidden are now right in front of you, and layers become discernable. But it all feels cohesive and tight. You can change the sound however you want with eq and dirac (dirac is super helpful for early stereo recordings and movies, but also really interesting with many types of music for a more speaker-type feel) but the natural sound of this amp feels very perfect and makes you want to try it with tons of music with everything set flat. DSD streams direct, disabling any eq or dirac, and sounds amazing. I get lost for hours listening to songs both familiar and not on this. It's truly relavatory. A side note, after checking out basically all other available semi-budget options here in Canada: I didnt have a strict budget but didnt want to spend more than necessary to get something clean, powerful, and to last a long time if possible. Wasn't looking to build a stack if possible so this ended up fitting the bill perfectly. I got mine on sale at $570 as another review mentioned it does drop to that price on and off - which helped make me pull the trigger (also helps that Amazon offered free financing on this one, they do know how to make you really want something!), this would still be a value at ~$700, the usual price. Given the unfortunate lack of options in Canada without breaking the bank - importing Schiit or JDS is just ends up being too pricey, and warranty would be a hassle. JDS's Canadian dealer is still getting set up and wont ship for at least another month... there are somewhat competitive Topping and SMSL etc. offerings, but nothing quite combines all into one package at this price point (SMSL's THX amp is supposed to be quite good too but QC is a little lacking, and it still needs a separate DAC). iFi has a couple well respected DAC/amps but most are a couple hundred more dollars here in Canada. Secondary market is another option but no warranty that way. I shopped those plenty too but came up short. The Drop THX 789 amp itself is also currently available around $500 here on Amazon too, but still needs a DAC to match it. This package is stellar and unbeatable on sale. Get it and never regret!

Al principio no quedé muy convencido con el sonido cuando lo conecté a mi Mac (iMac 2015, 27 pulgadas, cabe mencionar que no necesita un controlador, pero en Windows sí), y mucho menos cuando usé unos Beyerdynamic DT770 Pro (250 Ohms), las frecuencias altas taladraban mis oídos (problema de los audífonos, no del DAC/AMP). Después de probar otros DACs y de estar leyendo y probando durante algunos meses, pude utilizar el ecualizador integrado y le resté 2 dB a la frecuencia de 9 KHz con una Q de 3 (sí, aprendí sobre cómo configurar un ecualizador paramétrico y pude interpretar la gráfica de respuesta de la frecuencia de mis audífonos). Vaya diferencia, ahora mis audífonos suenan increíble (sin que mis tímpanos sangren con las frecuencias altas) y ya no quiero quitármelos. Unos días antes pedí unos Sennheiser HD 660s, porque daba por perdidos los Beyerdynamic. Ahora ya quiero que lleguen para poder hacer una comparación (los Sennheiser cuestan casi tres veces más). Haré una actualización cuando los haya probado y comparado. Actualización: llegaron los HD660s y al poco tiempo el cable balanceado que pedí en periapt; vaya cambio, ahora no tengo duda de que este dac/amp es de los mejores que he tenido. El sonido súper limpio, y se nota la diferencia con la potencia que entrega usando la salida XLR para los audífonos. Perdí interés en estar comprando otros dacs, ya que pienso que al menos durante un buen rato (años), este será mi sistema de referencia de escritorio. Actualización 11 de agosto 2023: Acabo de recibir mi Cayin RU7 y estoy fascinado. Por fin puedo amplificar mis Sennheiser HD660S de forma portátil y el sonido que produce este aparatito es fantástico, me ha quitado la necesidad de estar probando distintos aparatos. Como nota, hace una semana me llegó mi Qudelix 5x y me pareció que sonaba increíble con mis Sony MDR7506, a pesar de que es un DAC bluetooth conectado a mi iPhone 13. El Cayin sin duda lo supera en calidad de audio, como era de esperarse, pero quiero utilizarlo también con mis Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro de 250 ohms pero la salida no balanceada del Cayin RU7 no les hace justicia. Entonces, pensé utilizar el Line Out del Cayin RU7 con mi Monolith THX 778 para amplificar los Beyer, y estoy viendo qué cable balanceado 4.4 a XLR me compro. Más tarde escribiré cómo me fue.

Si piensas comprar esto es porque te acabas de comprar unos Sennheiser HD600 o similar. En corto, si no tienes audifonos balanceados mejor cómprate alguna solución más económica de Fiio, pero si ya tienes tus audífonos con cable balanceado, esta es la forma correcta de empezar. El DAC cuenta con dos modos para optimizar el audio, la interfaz aunque no es demasiado engorrosa pudo ser mejor, el medidor de volumen viene en dB entonces es confuso pero te acostumbras. La verdad es una gran compra sacó el mejor audio que haya tenido de todos mis audífonos, los pro y los no tanto.

Bought this THX amp to power my Neumann NDH-20’s and it’s been plenty powerful to drive these or any headphones tbh. Using USB as an audio source from my desktop and it’s been great, just make sure you set the settings for audio quality to “studio quality” on windows. Love the various EQ settings it has and the DIRAC setting is pretty good. Has very sturdy and premium look and feel to it. Definitely worth every penny to me!

Originally bought this to replace the Modi3 + Magni3 Schiit stack and it was a decent improvement in detail and clarity, works great with my HD 660s v2 and Focal Elear which are both completely different headphones. I use the 660s for gaming and Elears for music and this thing powers them perfectly. I ended up buying a 2nd for a great price as a dac for my yamaha rxy 679 since the dac in that is absolutely trash compared to this thing. I have Fyne Audio F501's and they didn't sound good at all unless in pure direct which is stereo only, but thanks to this thing and DTS I can enjoy proper quality audio in surround sound now without having to spend 3x more for a decent used avr.