Monoprice Monolith: A new planar?

What??? What is burning-in? Are you in the humid environment and they adopt to your ambient humidity? I cannot imagine how else suede or foam can burn-in, can I?

 

Why do I enjoy these headphones so much if they are so horrible as some say?

One obvious reason: There may be considerable variation between units in certain areas ofperformance.
Secondly: Only small adjustments/tricks are needed to make them sound great (though probably only if one has a reasonably well-performing unit in the first place).


Some points:

Unpleasant tonal balance? Yes, but they respond beautifully to EQ and are very easy to adjust by ear. SOLVED! (for a good deal of people).

The bass? One-note bass? I do not recognize this in my unit. And I think the bass has been praised in many quarters as their strong point. Synth bass tones in the lowest octaves are well separated (and blasted out effortlessly), if you ask me. Good seal and enough power is needed. I suppose. (people w glasses would be nearsighted to buy these). Solved? For most users probably a non-issue.
Pads? Others have covered this well. I will not go into it. Personally I found stock pads OK, they just needed a different EQ settings than, say, the Audeze Vegans I ended up with.

The ridiculous headband/yoke thing? One gets used to it. (but I must admit that I have panicked a few times, when the whole thing turned into the resemblance of a Chinese riddle). Solved! (sort of).

The aggressive ringing which can totally spoil the listening pleasure? In my case it never really was that bad. When investigating, it turned out that the right side has no annoying treble peak whatsoever! It does not show up in demanding music, nor when listening to tonal sweeps, nor in measurements. A good deal of uneven-ness in a narrow band in the 4k area when istening to sweeps, yes, but nothing disturbing w music. In theory there could be units out there, exhibiting this nice behaviour on both sides, who knows.

Now to the left side! The left cup exhibits an annoying peak at 4k. But not the kind that is heard in every loud orchestral passage, like the case was with the problematic HD800 I used to own, rather only noticeable on occasional loud notes in a few recordings. But then it admittedly sounds like somebody is shaking an iron bucket full of thin metal strips somewhere at the back of the orchestra (or sometimes like African football-fans played back at triple speed).

Well, it turned out that I was able to cancel out this annoying 4k spike by placing a little sound-reflecting disk (diameter about 4cm, and 4 cm outside the driver, precise positioning being critical). It is about redistribution of acoustical energy, of course, and/but it has no obvious audible drawbacks as far as I can tell. Rather solved!(if you ask me).


Ridiculous look? Yes, but it is soon forgotten, unless one listens in front of a mirror. Addedweight? Insignificant 15g with the materials used. I could have cut out a disk from the black material itself (see picture) but that stuff is hard to work with. Then it would be rather 10g, probably.

The mod is reversable.( One of the great things with hot glue is that it is not that good).

I can now listen to every kinds of music at any level with no distracting elements, and with utter pleasure. I mostly use these headphones now, while my Stax and Koss electrostatic setups are having a rest.

Are the M1060 good headphones? No, they must be judged by their ”stock sound” like everybody else, and variation between units is a bad thing, needless to say. But... (see above).


Cheers, Olaf
Veteran of the Pirate Fleet




some pictures:

 

I didn't know Pierce Brosnan was an audio enthusiast.

 

OK, this pictures intrigues me. I've always assumed the room acoustics didn't really matter for headphones, as long as the room was quiet or silent. If @OlafR can hear a difference with this mod, then "near head acoustics" may very well be relevant. Lots of mods focus on the internal of the headphone cups, but this is the first one I've need to focus on the reflections outside the cups. I wonder if such an approach could tame the peaks or alter the FR in other very open headphones, like the HD800. Would the material used for the "reflector" matter? More sound reflective vs less sound reflective. Could bass be affected with reflectors positioned closer to the cups?

I will probably be sitting at my desk holding different thing up to my ears now to hear any differences. And, of course, we need to get measurements of with and without the reflectors.

Plus, with the above mod he has a place to wind the headphone cable for storage!

 

Do things like that have an effect? Yes.

To what degree depends on the driver type and design. HE-6 and HE-1000 are very open designs and you can hear changes placing your hands within ~6 inches of the cups depending on ambient levels.

You're still affecting the driver reflections and not room acousric reflections from the headphones. That would be nuts and at such a low level it's probably not measureable.

I had some external damping on my HE-6 for a time instead of the metal grill but returned it to stock for cosmetic and longevity concerns.

 

You are absolutely right. Not room acoustics, but exterior to the cups. With a 3d printer and some good design skill, some interesting snap on reflectors might be quite interesting.

 

I've been searching for detailed reviews of the M560 (something with objective measurements and reasonably detailed comparisons) and I've come up empty... anyone know of anything? Seems like all the attention has gone to the M1060.

 

I'm pretty sure the attention is all but gone for M1060/M560.

Apparently though, the new ones announced are getting some positive feedback. Hopefully they are good.

I doubt members here will purchase them blind for measurements and a loaner unless Monoprice is willing to throw them in of a Platinum loaner happens.

 

Still have these kicking around haha, discovered lots of 3d-print options (people when thru ~4 fazor iterations getting them right). Decided to resurrect them (pads fell apart, cable broke, misc glue probs, etc). Ordered a basic cable, dekoni pads and cleaned off all the nasty (original) glue.

Printed parts in the mean time! Fazors front/back, pad adapters (can just snap on/off pads). Nice open hex grills.

Actually ended up with a pretty robust headphone that actually sound very nice!

Just FYI if anyone still has these... kinda fun printing parts for them!

 

Glad to see these getting a little love. I really enjoy my modded M1060's and M1060C's. Just a heads up, if you get tired of the shit headband, the HiFiMan HE560 V2 headband sold HERE is a direct replacement using the factory pins and clips. The only thing you need to modify is the rubber grommet, it needs to be shortened a tiny bit to allow the slightly thicker HFM headband to use the stock pins.

Here are a few pics of my Monoliths. Unfortunately one of the wood grills on the M1060 have cracked into oblivion since these pics and I'm back on black honeycomb grills for now.




And my M1060C after I got the headband painted.

 

Very cool wood grills, Thanks for the headband idea! My v1 honeycombs are done... going to let them breath for awhile (no rear foam and paper towel circles) I like the open sound. Need to re-print the fazors red or something!

Really neat everyone out there sharing print designs.

 

The fazors could be orange to match the cable and that'd be a good look. I don't use the rear foam either. The only thing inside I have is a "fuzzor", a fazor made of adhesive felt, and some thin speaker cloth on the back of the honeycomb grills. I also have the fuzzor on the ear pad side and some custom alcantara pads from Vesper Audio.

Can you take a pic of how your pad adapters are attached? It'd be nice to not have to tape the pads.

 

Spoiler: TMI

In cad, I subtracted those transparent pieces, resulting in the green (printed) pieces.


Before 3m'ing (comes with the dekoni) the pad to the adapter: (printed on glass, one side has a mirror finish)


Pulled off a pad: (finished m1060's)


@OldDude04 I started with fazor/fazor adapter v4.1 (Thingiverse)

See cad pic:
1. Lobbed off the corners of the fazor to better fit the pad, it was digging in.
2. Took that new fazor and subtracted it from the adapter

The result is the adapter perfectly fits the fazor and ends up with good friction to snap into place... if I do another run may add little subtle biscuit joints to do it properly.

Also mine fits flush with the cleaned/deglued m1060, not sure why the existing one it the way it is, to reuse the glue or something-- there's a gap and hovers above, it would be finicky.

Oh, the fazors are attached to the m1060 with nice 3m goo strips... have unused shit-ton from iMac screen reattachments. If another run, might explore how to attach it w/out goo... ie extend out tabs to reuse screws or pegs into holes that are there.

pics in the spoiler, it needs explanation... but its working out so far! Hope this gives you an idea what I did. Sorta baked into my custom print, the snap on pads .

 

Can't resist chiming in again (sorry), these dumb things are COOL open like this... binged last 3 episodes of WestWorld, even replayed parts, the sub bass, soundtrack microdyn./layered, dialog positioned so good. Can go louder as the sharpness is outside your head, not into your eardrums...

you can let 'em rip like speakers!

Listening to music same, room to breath. Also tried adding the padding, but is claustrophobic and old traits back. Source: battery digione/r2r dac Amp: lyr3 (i'm a noob planar magnetic guy- but wow, stock these are unremarkable compared to this) I think the fazors are correcting them.

HD650 my ref, can't do deep bass, speed, or room cues as well, but everything else--> better.

 

If you have an stl (3dprint) file on that wood design I can print a set for you. Or if a cad/cnc (dxf/???) I'll try to convert it.

 

I appreciate the offer, but I don't have the file at all. I paid someone on Head Fi to print them for me. He had designed a similar grill and I asked for a few changes and he made the changes and printed them up.

 

Couple odds & end re: 3dprinting... added a pi (octoprint) makes QOL so much nicer, mounted with 3d printed enclosure/brackets.

Bracket for the Y idler pulley (see how shitty the layers look, after installing this fixed it) ... replacing stock. Really nice prints after that. Stock only held one side of the pulley and kinda binds up.

Need to burn thru some PETG filament (don't want to use it, a bit too much heat, stress and picky on this particular printer so sticking with PLA & want to get rid of it) so started printing closed cups to experiment with on the M1060 (sorta makes it an M1060C) pretty sure it will be terrible sounding!

Update:

They sound like ass.