To be released in January... Monolith headphone amplifier and DAC with Dirac Sensaround II

[flak]

 

To be released (hopefully) in January 2018:

https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=120&cp_id=12008&cs_id=1200801&p_id=24459&AID=11051853&PID=3821802

About Sensaround:

https://www.dirac.com/sensaround/

 

Flavio

[flak]

One of the reasons why we ventured into this is that we have found that the need for individualization is less important than generally thought, provided that the HRTFs are modelled correctly... just as in room correction, trying to model every tiny detail of a head-related transfer function can lead to errors.
The solution needs to be robust to work for everyone.
Also we have not tried to make a system that takes a given HiFi room and transforms that into headphones.
We rather wanted to create an ideal listening space... real rooms and hifi systems have lots of problems that color the sound, which is exactly what we wanted to avoid.
In a sense the virtual HiFi room could be the ultimate room correction solution

Flavio

[Youreye]

Wow! Thanks for bringing this up! Very nice product it seems. For me with one flaw: if no correction curves are supported for the headphones then you have to only rely on very expensive headphones that should sound decent. I believe this was tested with some measured headphones at Dirac and finetuned the response in order to start with the sensearound technology on top of it.

So I believe that it will be less "amazing" with some "ordinary" not corrected headphones. I might be wrong of course. This is just a thought of mine. Let's see.

[buonassi]

Anyone tried the sensaround tech yet?  I use an AU plugin in my listening chain called Goodhertz CanOpener Studio.  It is an advanced crossfeed that uses spectral delay to "pull the sound out from your head" when listening on headphones.  I've tried countless other crossfeeds and speaker/room emulators that just mess with the FR too much.  A close second to CanOpener Studio was 112db Redline Monitor plugin.  

 

Still, I'm looking for impression on the sensaround before I plop money down on one of the products.  Too bad they don't make it in a software version (at least that's my understanding). 

[Bubica]

Still no reports on the sensaround tech? Would love to hear some first hand impressions. Not manny helpful reviews online yet. Well, not the ones I found at least....

[flak]

It took almost one more year than expected but the portable unit is available now :

https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=120&cp_id=12008&cs_id=1200801&p_id=24460&seq=1&format=2

and the desktop version in December.
Starting from here the first indipendent user comment:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/monoprice-monolith-desktop-thx-amp-dac-24459-impressions-thread.860046/page-10#post-14589373

Flavio

 

 

[flak]

Dirac Sensaround® is not an "effect" so do'nt expect pyrotechnic effects...
this is the logic behind it:
https://www.dirac.com/dirac-blog/how-to-make-headphones-stereo-compatible

Flavio

[markrubin]

I received  the desktop  Monolith headphone amp and must say the Dirac Sensaround  processing is very impressive