Monoprice Monolith M565 Headphone Review

[Hifihedgehog]

This really is terrible.

A closed door event of fellow headphone designers at HiFiMAN, Monoprice, THIEAUDIO, etc., chanting their motto...

 

[Theriverlethe]

A closed door event of fellow headphone designers at HiFiMAN, Monoprice, THIEAUDIO, etc., chanting their motto...

What's wrong with HifiMAN, aside from the build quality, looks, quality control and occasional reversed polarity?

 

[sceptical1]

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.

The subjectivist bent can lean on synergy or a lack of concurrance with measurement and hearing to muddy the waters of HEA so that decisions are always questionable and the quest is neverending.

The same thing happens here in spite of being on the high horse of science and objectivity. No one can agree about anything, audibly perfect measurements are ignored with lame excuses like "some people can't wear IEMS", threads go on for hundreds of posts based on what everyone imagines to be objectivity when half a dozen should be enough to settle any matter if logic prevails. Is it the purpose of a site like this, that logic prevails?

Everyone here agrees that enough dacs, amps, preamps and whatever have tested as having zero contribution to the input. Why go on? Speakers will soon join that crowd and still the excuses will matter most of all to keep the cave shadows the only means of reality. Or something like that.

 

[peniku8]

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.

The "new" 560s version is different from the one Amir tested, I suppose? Because in Amir's test they had 4% THD at 20Hz at 100dB, which is quite rough imo. For reference, the Monoprice here measured with less than 2% THD while playing 14dB louder.

 

[usern]

i like +10 dB sub bass shelf, or inversely -10 dB mids and highs so these headphones could actually be for me.

 

[Tircuit]

Be great to get some 565Cs reviewed. Wirecutter had them as best audiophile headphones for a some years in a row.

 

[Theriverlethe]

The subjectivist bent can lean on synergy or a lack of concurrance with measurement and hearing to muddy the waters of HEA so that decisions are always questionable and the quest is neverending.

The same thing happens here in spite of being on the high horse of science and objectivity. No one can agree about anything, audibly perfect measurements are ignored with lame excuses like "some people can't wear IEMS", threads go on for hundreds of posts based on what everyone imagines to be objectivity when half a dozen should be enough to settle any matter if logic prevails. Is it the purpose of a site like this, that logic prevails?

Everyone here agrees that enough dacs, amps, preamps and whatever have tested as having zero contribution to the input. Why go on? Speakers will soon join that crowd and still the excuses will matter most of all to keep the cave shadows the only means of reality. Or something like that.

I suspect you're trolling with a straw man argument, but I'll attempt to respond in good faith. "Silicone makes my ear canals burn after 90 minutes" is a perfectly valid reason to avoid IEM's. The Harman IEM preference curve is also more contentious, with smaller sample size than the over-ear headphone and speaker research. I personally find the Truthear GATE a bit dull with a hair too much bass, but it would be easily correctable if I wore them long enough for it to matter.

You're just fundamentally misrepresenting what the Harman preference curves actually are - preference curves. It has nothing to do with "audible perfection." 40% of the respondents preferred a bit more/less treble/bass. There's nothing wrong with these preference deviations and Harman still represents a better starting point than whatever these headphones are doing, not to mention $2500 failures like the ZMF Atrium. There's also the possibility of physiological differences significantly interacting with headphone design. Anecdotally, Dan Clark's acoustic diffuser may not work for everyone, as an example.

This has nothing whatsoever to with do the fact that DAC's and amplifiers exhibiting low distortion and flat frequency response while operating within their limits are demonstrably indistinguishable, and have been for decades. There's still room for differentiation in these product categories with looks, build quality, output power and feature set. Amir provides a valuable service in keeping the manufacturers honest.

 

[kemmler3D]

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.

Even if the TG was literally perfect for everyone in every way... (It's not, even if it is excellent) This is more a question for the headphone manufacturers than the reviewers. As long they are putting out headphones and making claims about them, the public benefits when Amir or someone else tests those claims.

 

[Robbo99999]

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."

It's easy to EQ inasmuch that there are no sharp dips in the frequency response, so the headphone can be EQ'd accurately to the target curve using low Q EQ filters. Yes it does mean boosting parts of the frequency response by around +10dB but those are low distortion areas so it doesn't matter at all from that point of view, so the only concern would be if your headphone amp can't drive the headphone to loud enough volumes when using say a -12dB Negative Preamp. I use that kind of Negative Preamp value on my K702 headphone which is already not that easy to drive and I have no problems getting it loud enough and that's just using a JDS Labs Atom Amp in Low Gain (so unity gain, no amplification), so it's not like I need to flip the amp into High Gain. Anyway, this Monoprice Monolith headphone is easy to EQ as long you have enough power to cope with a -12dB Negative Preamp, which I think would be most people.

 

[Robbo99999]

The "new" 560s version is different from the one Amir tested, I suppose? Because in Amir's test they had 4% THD at 20Hz at 100dB, which is quite rough imo. For reference, the Monoprice here measured with less than 2% THD while playing 14dB louder.

Well, Oratory measured an Old Version HD560s which I sent him, which occurred years ago, and this was the distortion readings which shows a low distortion headphone across the whole frequency range:

So there are some differences between this result and Amir's result but they're both Old Version HD560s. HD560s does bass extremely well for me vs my other headphones, as good or near as damn it to my HE400SE & HE4XX which are both planars, and talking after all are EQ'd to Harman. So for me out of all my open back headphones HD560s does bass with good detail and low distortion, nearly on same level as my planars, but better than my HD600, HD800, K702. Yeah, so some Sennheisers can take bass EQ just fine, certainly the HD560s, but not the HD600 & HD800. That's why I initially quoted your post, I just wanted to highlight that some Sennheisers are good with bass.

 

[isostasy]

The subjectivist bent can lean on synergy or a lack of concurrance with measurement and hearing to muddy the waters of HEA so that decisions are always questionable and the quest is neverending.

The same thing happens here in spite of being on the high horse of science and objectivity. No one can agree about anything, audibly perfect measurements are ignored with lame excuses like "some people can't wear IEMS", threads go on for hundreds of posts based on what everyone imagines to be objectivity when half a dozen should be enough to settle any matter if logic prevails. Is it the purpose of a site like this, that logic prevails?

Everyone here agrees that enough dacs, amps, preamps and whatever have tested as having zero contribution to the input. Why go on? Speakers will soon join that crowd and still the excuses will matter most of all to keep the cave shadows the only means of reality. Or something like that.

It's not that deep

 

[Theriverlethe]

It's easy to EQ inasmuch that there are no sharp dips in the frequency response, so the headphone can be EQ'd accurately to the target curve using low Q EQ filters. Yes it does mean boosting parts of the frequency response by around +10dB but those are low distortion areas so it doesn't matter at all from that point of view, so the only concern would be if your headphone amp can't drive the headphone to loud enough volumes when using say a -12dB Negative Preamp. I use that kind of Negative Preamp value on my K702 headphone which is already not that easy to drive and I have no problems getting it loud enough and that's just using a JDS Labs Atom Amp in Low Gain (so unity gain, no amplification), so it's not like I need to flip the amp into High Gain. Anyway, this Monoprice Monolith headphone is easy to EQ as long you have enough power to cope with a -12dB Negative Preamp, which I think would be most people.

You're probably right. You'd have to use the balanced output on a Qudelix 5k if you want, eg. 110dB peaks for classical music, but normally doable. The Atom amp has a LOT of current output, so it would be fine. I'm a little curious why you need -12dB preamp for the K702, since oratory1990's Harman compensation only shows -5.5dB.

 

[Robbo99999]

You're probably right. You'd have to use the balanced output on a Qudelix 5k if you want, eg. 110dB peaks for classical music, but normally doable. The Atom amp has a LOT of current output, so it would be fine. I'm a little curious why you need -12dB preamp for the K702, since oratory1990's Harman compensation only shows -5.5dB.

Re K702, this is why:

AKG K702: a valid alternative EQ to Harman Curve for you to try

I'd like to offer you all an alternative EQ to the Oratory EQ, it's still done to the Harman Curve but it's using a different set of measurements. Oratory's measurement for the K702 has changed by a large amount over the various versions of pdf's he's released for it, and for my 4 units of K702...

www.audiosciencereview.com

So that combined with the fact that I also do a channel matching EQ that eats up another dB or two of negative preamp, plus an extra 2dB to account for the fact that my Soundblaster DAC operates at it's measured best at -2dBFS and also to account for intersample overs a little, so it all adds up.

 

[Grobbelboy]

IMO the headless panther is a bit harsh here. It's not much without EQ but the distortion figues are good/great and it doesn't (didn't) cost much. I don't see that big a gap in quality with any Hifiman that got a higher rating.

 

[kyuu]

IMO the headless panther is a bit harsh here. It's not much without EQ but the distortion figues are good/great and it doesn't (didn't) cost much. I don't see that big a gap in quality with any Hifiman that got a higher rating.

How is it harsh? The frequency response is extremely poor and it is basically unlistenable without EQ. Whether it can be EQ'd is neither here nor there, the headless panther rating is for the performance as it comes out of the box. You'll notice there's another panther for the post-EQ performance.

 

[Maiky76]

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.
View attachment 460042
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:
View attachment 460043
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:
View attachment 460044

Bass distortion is pretty low but we need to boost that with EQ:
View attachment 460045

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:
View attachment 460046

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:
View attachment 460047
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.

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

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Here are some thoughts about the EQ.
Please report your findings, positive or negative!

Notes about the EQ design:

• The average L/R is used to calculate the score.
• The resolution is 12 points per octave interpolated from the raw data (provided by @amirm)
• A Genetic Algorithm is used to optimize the EQ.
• The EQ Score is designed to MAXIMIZE the Score WHILE fitting the Harman target curve (and other constraints) with a fixed complexity.
  This will avoid weird results if one only optimizes for the Score, start your journey here or there.
  There is a presentation by S. Olive here.
  It will probably flatten the Error regression doing so, the tonal balance should be therefore more neutral.
• The EQs are starting point and may require tuning (certainly at LF and maybe at HF).
• The range around and above 10kHz is usually not EQed unless smooth enough to do so.
• I am using PEQ (PK) as from my experience the definition is more consistent across different DSP/platform implementations than shelves.
• With some HP/amp combo, the boosts and preamp gain (loss of Dynamic range) need to be carefully considered to avoid issues with, amongst other things, too low a Max SPL or damaging your device. You have beed warned.
• Not all units of the same product are made equal. The EQ is based on the measurements of a single unit. YMMV with regard to the very unit you are trying this EQ on.
• I sometimes use variations of the Harman curve for some reasons. See rational here and here
• NOTE: the score then calculated is not comparable to the scores derived from the default Harman target curve if not otherwise noted.

Good L/R match.

I have generated one EQ, the APO config file is attached.

Score no EQ: 36.9
Score Amirm: 54.0
Score with EQ: 100.0

Monoprice Monolith M565 APO EQ Score 2 Flat@HF 96000Hz
July022025-221836

Preamp: -11.40 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 20.6 Hz Gain 5.82 dB Q 0.25
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 193.5 Hz Gain -1.43 dB Q 1.45
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 1141.7 Hz Gain -4.21 dB Q 1.57
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 5627.1 Hz Gain 15.51 dB Q 0.70
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 5665.3 Hz Gain -7.91 dB Q 4.59
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 8711.1 Hz Gain -5.40 dB Q 5.00
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 13707.7 Hz Gain -7.94 dB Q 5.00

 

[Robbo99999]

Here are some thoughts about the EQ.
Please report your findings, positive or negative!

Notes about the EQ design:

• The average L/R is used to calculate the score.
• The resolution is 12 points per octave interpolated from the raw data (provided by @amirm)
• A Genetic Algorithm is used to optimize the EQ.
• The EQ Score is designed to MAXIMIZE the Score WHILE fitting the Harman target curve (and other constraints) with a fixed complexity.
  This will avoid weird results if one only optimizes for the Score, start your journey here or there.
  There is a presentation by S. Olive here.
  It will probably flatten the Error regression doing so, the tonal balance should be therefore more neutral.
• The EQs are starting point and may require tuning (certainly at LF and maybe at HF).
• The range around and above 10kHz is usually not EQed unless smooth enough to do so.
• I am using PEQ (PK) as from my experience the definition is more consistent across different DSP/platform implementations than shelves.
• With some HP/amp combo, the boosts and preamp gain (loss of Dynamic range) need to be carefully considered to avoid issues with, amongst other things, too low a Max SPL or damaging your device. You have beed warned.
• Not all units of the same product are made equal. The EQ is based on the measurements of a single unit. YMMV with regard to the very unit you are trying this EQ on.
• I sometimes use variations of the Harman curve for some reasons. See rational here and here
• NOTE: the score then calculated is not comparable to the scores derived from the default Harman target curve if not otherwise noted.

Good L/R match.

I have generated one EQ, the APO config file is attached.

Score no EQ: 36.9
Score Amirm: 54.0
Score with EQ: 100.0

Monoprice Monolith M565 APO EQ Score 2 Flat@HF 96000Hz
July022025-221836

Preamp: -11.40 dB

Filter 1: ON PK Fc 20.6 Hz Gain 5.82 dB Q 0.25
Filter 2: ON PK Fc 193.5 Hz Gain -1.43 dB Q 1.45
Filter 3: ON PK Fc 1141.7 Hz Gain -4.21 dB Q 1.57
Filter 4: ON PK Fc 5627.1 Hz Gain 15.51 dB Q 0.70
Filter 5: ON PK Fc 5665.3 Hz Gain -7.91 dB Q 4.59
Filter 6: ON PK Fc 8711.1 Hz Gain -5.40 dB Q 5.00
Filter 7: ON PK Fc 13707.7 Hz Gain -7.94 dB Q 5.00

View attachment 460837

Nice, as I expected, it does EQ nicely to the target.

 

[Kagemusha]

I had these and send them back, did not liked the sound and some screws were loosing fit so I send it back. Lucky me

 

[Rusk Reeder]

I think Monoprice has a 560 model, closed back, which is supposed to be quite good.

 

[Deleted member 89070]

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