Monolith Desktop Headphone Amplifier and DAC with THX AAA Technology (Dual AKM 4493 DACs & Dual AAA-788 Modules)

This isn't a perfect unit, it has flaws, namely the analog inputs are converted to digital then back to analog, so there really isn't a passthrough for just the amp (due to the EQ and DIRAC options). If you're a purist, then this is a pretty big red flag, but for the rest of us, it's really not that big of a deal, not even sure they've found change in the output after feeding analog into the device, so it's really only theory that the sound is altered by these 2 extra conversions, but if you have no plans to bypass the DAC, and instead are using it as both a dac and an amp, then there is no extra conversion happening, plus, the balanced dac in the unit is a very good dac, so just use it. The amp...well, it's basically a revolutionary technology developed by THX, and has the audiophile community losing their collective minds over these THX AAA amps. They truly are a wire with gain, the noise floor and THD are so ridiculously low, the power output so high, that you really shouldn't need another solid state amp after this. This may be the 788, inferior to the 789 in power output (not by much, I'm listening to it right now on 300 ohm sennheisers, and it gets loud enough to hurt, and still has a ton of headroom in the volume , like upwards of 40-50%, no chance I'm testing how high it goes, I'll blow the drivers for sure, I'm wincing at -17db, and I think it goes all the way to +16. No gain settings, which is a bit annoying, but whatever, however the biggest flaw of this unit by a long long ways, is the volume control. It is painfully slow, I'm really hoping they fix it in a firmware update, but I'm not holding my breath. Basically you have to spin the knob like 20 times to go down a significant amount, like from high listening volume, to hearing those around you when they're trying to get your attention. It's not really a big deal 90% of the time, once you are at a comfortable volume, minor changes are completely fine, you don't even notice it's slow, only when you need to change it more than like 10-15+ db at once, does it become an annoyance, overall though who cares, the flaws have no effect on the sound (unless you're trying to bypass the dac, in which case it might due to taking the analog signal from your exterior dac, converting it back to digital, and then back to analog, that is the only way you might hear any change in the audio caused by this amp. If you're using digital inputs, then you're golden, nothing but pure unadulterated source material is what you'll hear.Buy this amp, new 887, 888, and 889 units aren't coming until late november/early december at the earliest, unless you want to pay $3,000 for the Benchmark that has a THX AAA 888 amp already. This amp though a few revisions old already, is still state of the art, industry changing, and the measured improvements are so small they aren't even audible to us, as the "inferior" amp is already producing audio that is 99.9999% to the source, at least. It simply doesn't get any cleaner.Oh, and the value is insane, a balanced dac ($200 at least) and a THX AAA balanced amp ($400) for $500. It's a steal

OMG! This thing is an absolute dream. I initially oredered the massdrop THX AAA 789 but got frustrated after the second production delay and SMSL came out with their $289 THX sp200 so I returned the 789 and pre-ordered the sp200 which is supposedly shipping out on Oct. 27, 1019. Started looking for dacs and was leaning towards the SMSL su-8 balanced dac to pair with the sp200. So while I'm waiting for the sp200, I figured I'd give the monolith a shot. Cost is about the same as the SMSL stack, next day shipping, why not? Like many of you, I read both reviews by Amir of Audio Science Review and thought that the monolith THX AAA was quite a bit inferior to the the 789 and the monolith 887 and actually even the $289 sp200. But when looking at the graphs, I thought, that little bit of noise can't be audible enough to take this monolith thx out of consideration. With the exception of the SMSL stack, this seemed to be the best value. Two nice dacs, two 788 amps, and Dirac sensaround 2, line out for speaker amp, onboard peq with shelf eq even for $500. Okay, gotta try it. For reference, I have the akg k712 pro, Sennheiser 58x, Fidelio shp9500s, hifiman he5se, audeze el-8, Sennheiser hd579 and the v-moda m100. Before the monolith thx, I was driving them with a minidsp hd 2x4 over usb asio switching off with a Sennheiser gsx1000 for gaming, all amped by a monolith cavalli liquid spark. So nothing really high end. But even so, I never expected the THX to blow me away like it did. It was just symphonic bliss. The Dirac sensaround was awesome for gaming and pretty eye-opening for certain music tracks as well. That alone is worth the price of admission. The power is admirable too. I turned it up till it hurt with still 35 percent headroom for even the akg k712 pro which is surprisingly hard to drive to its fullest potential. I haven't even tried the balanced output yet but I can't wait. I'm completely smitten. To me this is by far the best value out of the 4 thx amps in existence as of the time of this writing. I suggest you at least try it before making a final decision.