Monoprice Monolith M565 Headphone Review

[amirm]

This is a review, listening test, EQ and measurements of the Monoprice Monolith M565 planar magnetic headphone. It is on kind loan and used to cost US $199 before being discontinued.

Not to be confused with its closed version (M656C), the open sides have a nicer look. The headphone is a bit fussy with a tendency for the cup to twist in your hand. It is a lightweight headphone but the small cups make it less comfortable for me to wear.

Monoprice Monolith M565 Measurements
As usual, we start with frequency response measurements on our GRAS 45CA fixture:

OK, I could understand the flat bass response but why have an actual dip in treble where we are supposed to have a peak? As noted, this will be all midrange with a lifeless sound if I were to predict it. Given the severity of response errors, it should not be hard to improve it a lot with just a couple of filters:

Bass distortion is pretty low but we need to boost that with EQ:

There are a lot of resonances but they don't show up a ton at 94 dBSPL.

Group delay shows messiness, some of which is typical and some, not so:

Seeing how the headphone is discontinued, I didn't bother to run sensitivity and impedance plots. So let's see how it sounds.

Monoprice Monolith M565 Listening Tests and EQ
Lack of treble is most noticeable upon first playback. So that filter had to go right in:

Adding the bass filter massively uplifted the fidelity of the headphone with the 1.1 kHz one adding a bit of refinement (ignore band 4 -- that's left over from previous headphone measurement). Turning off all the filters is like someone shutting all the lights off in a room and leaving you with a candle. All you hear is muffled midrange.

I was pleased that all that bass boosting didn't cause break up with the headphone able to dish out impressive bass response that you could feel as much as hear!

Conclusions
There is only one: "frequency response is king when it comes to fidelity." I realize this is a "phoned in" design from Monoprice but I hope the people doing the calling in the future, put forward some performance standard instead of just covering buzzwords. They could have had something really nice. Maybe it would have sold for a few more years this way.

I can't recommend the Monoprice Monolith M565 unless you apply heavy EQ and can get it very cheap.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

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[SuicideSquid]

One wonders if they were chasing flat frequency response with this design. If so, they hit their target! I wouldn't actually want to listen to it, though...

 

[amirm]

Maybe these "designers" listen to screechy music that benefits from such response. While research shows race has nothing to do with preference, what they listen to every day may be a factor.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Did somebody at Monoprice shoot this thing before they sent it to you? In any case, thanks for the autopsy, Amir.

 

[Rusk Reeder]

This really is terrible.

 

[Limopard]

Since the decently tuned and even cheaper Hifiman HE 400SE exists, there is no reason to exist for the M565.

 

[peniku8]

I don't understand why people would rate these headphones poorly. Every headphones need EQ and this needs a bit more, but once the FR is corrected, the performance is excellent. Extremely low distortion across the board and the thing looks decently comfy as well. If you rate this 'poor' then you'll have to rate every single HifiMan poorly due to their lower treble dip and also just about every Sennheiser with their lack of bass. In fact, you'd have to rate most Sennheisers even worse, because these can't take the necessary EQ in bass as gracefully as this unit.

 

[Robbo99999]

Hey, it's the wooden toilet seat styled headphone phoning in from the 1990's! No, jokes aside, at least the 10dB dip at 5kHz occurs in a place where the distortion is very low for this headphone so I'd say you can boost that area problem free, and also it's a smooth frequency response meaning that it should be easy to EQ up with some nice compliant low Q (broad) filters. That holds true for the 7kHz area too if I'm eyeballing that right. Fortunately the troublesome distortion wise 1-2kHz doesn't need boosting at all really so that barely matters. Bass distortion is low too, so you can certainly easily boost that up to Harman. Actually this is a bit of a sleeper headphone (to borrow the street performance car tuning term) if you're gonna be using EQ. Small cups could make it bothersome to wear predictably though, reminds me of the NAD HP50 from that one particular point.

 

[Madlop26]

I don't understand why people would rate these headphones poorly. Every headphones need EQ and this needs a bit more, but once the FR is corrected, the performance is excellent. Extremely low distortion across the board and the thing looks decently comfy as well. If you rate this 'poor' then you'll have to rate every single HifiMan poorly due to their lower treble dip and also just about every Sennheiser with their lack of bass. In fact, you'd have to rate most Sennheisers even worse, because these can't take the necessary EQ in bass as gracefully as this unit.

So you are saying headphones should also be tested for distortion once the headphone is EQ to Harman?, if does well it can not be bad, actually as good as all headphones who get there with minimal distortion?.....I voted poorly, but you have a good point there.

 

[peniku8]

So you are saying headphones should also be tested for distortion once the headphone is EQ to Harman?, if does well it can not be bad, actually as good as all headphones who get there with minimal distortion?.....I voted poorly, but you have a good point there.

Testing for distortion after compensation is a double edged sword. For one, you have your compensation baked into the data, which makes comparison to other measurements&targets harder (and/or annoying), but it levels out the playing field within your own testing, so that you can compare headphones with vastly different responses (in terms of distortion/headroom). It also adds extra complexity (read: time) to the testing and I'm happy that Amir provides distortion data at all, unlike most other reviewers. I personally wouldn't recommend HD650s to a basshead who likes listening loud for example. The 650 are about 10dB down at 20Hz compared to the Monoprice here, which means you need to compare the 94dB measurement with the 104dB one for example, where the HD650 has 4% THD while the subject of this thread is around some 0.2% THD (20Hz) it looks like.
There is another type of graph which plots the maximum SPL for a given THD value, which is decent for determining headroom, along with CEA-2010, which is a speaker standard, but could be used for headphones as well.
Here is an example of the max spl per THD graph:

 

[SuicideSquid]

I don't understand why people would rate these headphones poorly. Every headphones need EQ and this needs a bit more, but once the FR is corrected, the performance is excellent. Extremely low distortion across the board and the thing looks decently comfy as well. If you rate this 'poor' then you'll have to rate every single HifiMan poorly due to their lower treble dip and also just about every Sennheiser with their lack of bass. In fact, you'd have to rate most Sennheisers even worse, because these can't take the necessary EQ in bass as gracefully as this unit.

If it's okay without EQ and good with EQ, that's fine. If it's unlistenable without EQ and decent with EQ, that's bad. I use my headphones with a few different devices and they don't all easily support EQ.

Also, these headphones have a fair bit of distortion exactly in the region that need EQ. Those ~2k distortion numbers probably won't be a problem with default tuning, but if you boost 2-3khz by +4dB you may hear some distortion in that region (the region where you're likely most sensitive to distortion, as well).

 

[Robbo99999]

I don't understand why people would rate these headphones poorly. Every headphones need EQ and this needs a bit more, but once the FR is corrected, the performance is excellent. Extremely low distortion across the board and the thing looks decently comfy as well. If you rate this 'poor' then you'll have to rate every single HifiMan poorly due to their lower treble dip and also just about every Sennheiser with their lack of bass. In fact, you'd have to rate most Sennheisers even worse, because these can't take the necessary EQ in bass as gracefully as this unit.

HD560s is ok in the bass at stock, especially for the New Version HD560s, and it can take a lot of EQ (not that it needs it) because it's a low distortion headphone, so the HD560s would certainly go against the Sennheiser trend you mention. I agree though that this reviewed headphone (Monoprice Monolith) should be good with EQ as it looks easily EQ'able albeit the small earcups may play havoc in reality with peoples ears which could make for some very unpredictable personal experiences.

 

[Robbo99999]

If it's okay without EQ and good with EQ, that's fine. If it's unlistenable without EQ and decent with EQ, that's bad. I use my headphones with a few different devices and they don't all easily support EQ.

Also, these headphones have a fair bit of distortion exactly in the region that need EQ. Those ~2k distortion numbers probably won't be a problem with default tuning, but if you boost 2-3khz by +4dB you may hear some distortion in that region (the region where you're likely most sensitive to distortion, as well).

If you look carefully at the graph the distortion is really only from 1-1.75kHz, and the headphone does not need to be boosted in that very specific area if you look carefully at frequency response graph. (Also you're not gonna be listening to 104dB levels in music at 1-2kHz.)

 

[xanalog]

Thank you for the revealing review, @amirm,

Why are there 2 different PinkPanthers in the photo?
Your continued decapitation of PinkPanthers will not be tolerated and maybe reported to PETA, if you continue!

 

[respice finem]

Maybe a mercy shot because the panther was tormented by the results?

 

[Theriverlethe]

Ouch. Probably compares favorably with some of Audeze’s early attempts, for the subjective crowd. However, the lack of bamboo ear cups is a serious impediment to “refinement.”

 

[sceptical1]

If the $17 Truthear Gate is perfect enough why would anyone need to write or read any more about headphones?
That it keeps happening makes me question the sincerity of the reviews.
A notice saying something like "this headphone is 27 times more expensive than the TG and the thd and target response is only as good or worse" was included in all future HP reviews it would make me feel better.

For this specific review I tend to agree with peniku8.

 

[Theriverlethe]

If the $17 Truthear Gate is perfect enough why would anyone need to write or read any more about headphones?
That it keeps happening makes me question the sincerity of the reviews.
A notice saying something like "this headphone is 27 times more expensive than the TG and the thd and target response is only as good or worse" was included in all future HP reviews it would make me feel better.

For this specific review I tend to agree with peniku8.

A lot of people dislike IEM's or can't wear them comfortably for long periods of time. I don't see anything remotely disingenuous about reviewing different products at different price points, your feelings notwithstanding.

 

[amirm]

Thank you for the revealing review, @amirm,

Why are there 2 different PinkPanthers in the photo?
Your continued decapitation of PinkPanthers will not be tolerated and maybe reported to PETA, if you continue!

Pre and post EQ indicators.

 

[Theriverlethe]

HD560s is ok in the bass at stock, especially for the New Version HD560s, and it can take a lot of EQ (not that it needs it) because it's a low distortion headphone, so the HD560s would certainly go against the Sennheiser trend you mention. I agree though that this reviewed headphone (Monoprice Monolith) should be good with EQ as it looks easily EQ'able albeit the small earcups may play havoc in reality with peoples ears which could make for some very unpredictable personal experiences.

I wouldn't say requiring 16x as much power (+12dB) to reach the target with a low-impedance, moderate sensitivity headphone is "easily EQ'able."