Monoprice M1060 Measurements and Stream of Consciousness Review

The gimbals flip flop more than a cat I know that does flip flops. I find this highly annoying.


How many more cents do we to shave off production costs? Even the headband uses a minimal amount of material.


I actually feel the sound is correctable with the aforementioned mods, but this headphone just smells of shaving off costs to increase margins. I'm sorry, but $300 is still a lot of money. Can get a HD600 or an HE400S (with better pads) for a little bit more.

Sending this off to @Hands. Loaner program after @Hands does mods. @Hands: Send me up-to-date address.

 

Agreed. I'd be on board if Monoprice put $50 more into it for better pads, better FR, and more refined gimbal mechanism and substantial material of headband and strap. But right now, the ergonomics seem so ChiFi.

 

Here are my impressions of the M1060, stock and modded. Measurements upcoming.

Build Quality, Comfort, Etc.

- I actually don't mind the materials and build quality of the headband itself. Yeah, it's a lot of thin sheet metal, but it seems functional to me. Doesn't seem like it will break unless severely abused. Let's not forget stuff like the HE560 that crapped out a lot and looked more robust at first glance. The headband is mostly comfortable, but the suspension strap itself needs more padding.

- All the swivel, flippy-floppy bullshit is mostly annoying. Like 98% annoying. I don't know how many times I picked up or set down the headphones, and they looked like a contorted mess. However, one upside to all this free motion that I DO like is how easy this makes it to fit very nicely on your head. No limitations. You can have the weirdest shaped and lumpiest head around and come out OK with these. Still, other headphones are similarly easy to fit without being contortionists.

- Pads are nice. They're comfortable and seem well made.

- The cups are real wood. If you wanted a genuine Audeze clone, I have great news for you! The cups may crack fairly easily. Sometime overnight or while I was at work, one of the cups cracked where the gimbal is attached to the cup. Cool! I have tried to be gentle with the headphones. Sometimes this is difficult when they're trying to flip out of your hands like an angry cat.

- The metal grills bend too easily, and worst of all, scratch too easily. The black coating they use gets scratched when the headphones are doing their flippy-floppy nonsense and banging the cups into each other. The screws lose their coating when gently removed for modding. Not a big deal, but kind of lame.

Sound Quality

- With the stock pads, these sound fairly neutral to my ears. They lack some oomph and thickness. Treble is uneven but well balanced - better behaved than the Elear, but less so than HD650. Kind of raspy and wispy sounding at times. Lacking a foundation.

- Staging is fairly good for a planar. Good sense of air.

- Lots and lots of ringing. Were it not for that, I'd actually say they sound pretty darn good overall. It sounds like an ever pervasive nastiness of someone banging ice-coated metal forks together in the background while using their fidget spinners with their feet.

- I want to reiterate that were it not for this ringing, which is super duper audible with any mildly complex material (rock, for one), I really would think there's something pretty good going on here. I was definitely intrigued while listening, but I couldn't get over the ringing. (And, later, the fact the wood cracked.)

Sound Quality with Audeze Vegan Pads and Paper Towel Mod

- Overall, tone is much better. Meatier and more powerful sounding. Midrange and treble seem more cohesive than before. Upper most treble gets noticeably sharper but doesn't fatigue me, but everything does sound a bit too over-sharpened and unnatural. I haven't tried this, but additional front damping may be warranted for both this and the ringing.

- Staging seems even better. Keeps the good traits but seems more focused and present.

- Sense of ringing seems reduced a good amount (probably from extra bass and lower mids) but, dammit, it's still there! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Conclusion

The M1060 is a bit polarizing in my opinion. There's a lot of things I legitimately like about it, and part of me wants one for my own modding purposes. It clearly has some solid sonic potential, including a tone I like with mods, but, damn, does it ring like crazy! It's bad enough to the point I'm not sure you can mod or pray the ring away. That, and the cups just had to go and crack on me, which sealed the deal.

While the HE400S isn't perfect itself, I'd agree with @Marvey that it's a better buy in this case if you must have a planar. Were it not for the ringing and crappy wood cups on the M1060, I would have felt very strongly otherwise and kept one alongside my HD650. Of course, the HD650 is better in almost every way except for bass distortion, but I think there's a higher cost of entry adding in an amp to make the best of the HD650. The M1060 actually sounded OK from my phone.

 

Monoprice M1060 Measurements

Stock frequency response results show a relatively neutral-ish headphone. You could look at it as needing either a bit more in the 100Hz-1KHz range or a bit shaved off around 1-3KHz. Clearly the upper-mids and treble need a bit of airbrushing, but I can say I found the M1060 more pleasant to listen to than the stock Elear. Yeah, it's kinda funky, but it's not too bad.




Keeping in mind I can't get super clean and low distortion results, I did want to point out that the bass through midrange looks pretty good for my rig. Things start to get nasty at and above 3KHz.



I'm not sure I really need to comment on this. Clearly the whole 2-5KHz area is just a total disaster. Couple that with the distortion in that area, and no wonder there's all sorts of nasty, metallic ringing going on.



With a 3" paper towel disc added in the rear, the 1-2KHz area looks a tad better. No major changes. Subjectively, it wasn't a big change.



CSD results are miraculously the same, basically!

 

Here's what the infamous Audeze Vegan Pads + Paper Towel mod looks like. Everything up till 1KHz sounds really damn good like this. Powerful, just enough meat, and balanced. I did not subjectively hear the upper-midrange/lower-treble as sounding too hot or anything (ignoring ringing). The 10KHz spike surprised me, or, rather, how freaking tall it is. I did mention this made the headphones sound unnatural and over-sharpened, but I'm honestly surprised this didn't fatigue me right away. Still, despite some imperfections, the overall tone with these mods is MUCH improved over stock. Totally different headphone.




Oh dear...that upper-end distortion may have gotten worse with these mods. But, again, everything up till 1KHz sounded great subjectively.




Don't let these results deceive you! Because of the towering 10KHz spike, everything else got pushed down in the CSD results, relatively. Make no mistake, the nasty decay and ringing are still there!




For the sake of science (I did not listen to this), what happens if we remove ALL rear damping? It looks like a more balanced response overall. Less U-shaped.




Alas, this headphone has a built-in wall meant to keep all pleasure out of your ears no matter what you do.