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Monoprice Monolith THX 887 Balance Headphone Amp: New Champ?

Veri

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For some low-sensitivity headphones, especially planar HF, we need Hi (3rd in 789/887) gain.
Perhaps with 2V input. I'd doubt one would need third gain with balanced 4V XLR input.
 

JohnYang1997

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There is absolutely no need to use high gain even mid gain if the volume is enough when you turn the pot all the way up.
Set the amp to high gain and use 9 o'clock range is just (sorry for being too straight) stupid.
 

JohnYang1997

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No it`s not, it is Single Ended, the balanced input is also converted to single ended.
It's still properly balanced. Just not fully balanced. It takes the balance input and sums it. Then regenerate the differential signals. It's still properly balanced. In this case you get all the balanced design benefits, doubled voltage swing and separate channel.

Other amps like hpa4, sp200 are not balanced out. Though they still have xlr output jack. This way you still get lower contact impedance and better separation.
 

Bobosaurus

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Not really, that is not Balanced. Yea it does take balanced input but it outputs in single ended.
 

JohnYang1997

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The outputs of 887 and 789 are balanced.
They both have 4 output channels with same output impedance, same exact circuits, driving two outputs differentially. This is properly balanced outputs.
IMG_20191119_143147 (1).jpg
Massdrop THX AAA 789 teardown main PCB reduced (3).jpg
 
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JohnYang1997

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the circuit itself is not a balanced construction all the way through.
Yeah. That's true. Like I said it's not fully balanced from input to output, but you do get all the benefits from balance and differential signalling.
Common mode rejection is taken care by the input section.
The double voltage swing is taken care by the differential and balanced output stage.
Both input and output are balanced so technically it's a properly balanced design. Though I would argue the benefit of using balanced dac to connect to it. You only need a good single ended dac for it to perform, assuming you don't have ground loop issue in your setup. And using single ended input and output often give less noise(shown in 789 specifications).
You use balanced devices for their benefits not just because they are fully balanced or not. There can very well be devices that takes differential input and takes the + signal directly to the single ended output without summing. And there are certainly devices using xlr jack with non differential output stage. As stated above 789 and 887 gives all the benefits you get from a fully balanced (and differential) device. And it's considered "properly balanced".

For more details, you can read more about balanced signalling and differential signalling. They are not interchangeable and actually mean different things.
 

jae

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I wonder if they are planning on releasing a version with a built-in DAC?
 

skypablo

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I came from hugo2 that I sold for a sabaj D5 after having both for a week. To be sure to not missing anything I bought a monolith 887 , I live in Italy, really a bloodbath. I connected the dac to the amp with 2 mogami-neutrik xlr cables. I think that the bass sounds are a bit more controlled than with the d5. The flares gold that are my all time preferred IEMs are perfectly defined on the bass sounds of power metal, less rumble than before. The R70x are great too , no distortion at idiotic volume. Gain always at 1, two is not necessary. There is a little imbalance at the begin of the volume.... left comes up before right but only at very low volume. Classical with k812 are always perfect and I do not notice differences between d5 and 887 amp.
Really love the combo.......
 

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trl

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the circuit itself is not a balanced construction all the way through.
I'm not sure I understand why. OPA1612 are dual-opamps, so one OPA1612 can take care of both hot wires coming from one XLR input. Couple of OPA1612 and four single opamp buffers seems fully balanced to me, but maybe I'm missing something here.
 

JohnYang1997

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I'm not sure I understand why. OPA1612 are dual-opamps, so one OPA1612 can take care of both hot wires coming from one XLR input. Couple of OPA1612 and four single opamp buffers seems fully balanced to me, but maybe I'm missing something here.
As being discussed before, the balanced inputs are feeded to differential amplifiers with single ended output then goes through 2 gang pot. The signals are then converted again to differential signals, feeding 4 output channels.
 

trl

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And that's just because they couldn't find find 4-gangs pot or because these are quite expensive? Hmmm...I wasn't expecting this, although the amp itself if a real performer anyway.
 

JohnYang1997

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And that's just because they couldn't find find 4-gangs pot or because these are quite expensive? Hmmm...I wasn't expecting this, although the amp itself if a real performer anyway.
It's much easier to implement this way than full balanced all the way through while needing to do balanced to single end conversion for single end output. Also it should be able to convert single end input to balanced output. Meaning there will be four different independent signal paths. It needs a lot of switches to realize the function, relays or multiple manual switches.
By converting to single ended signal, it only needs one input selection (or doesn't need any) to do almost exactly same thing with all the benefits.
 

skypablo

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Hello, using flares gold on 887, gain 3 volume max (player on pause or golds will explode).... 0 sound. It seems an oled tv, perfect black. My father, old classical hifier noted.... the really dark background of this 887 with piano and opera , connected to d5. D5 alone and hugo2 are not so dead silent.
 
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