Our Take

The Phonitor SE gives you the sound: simple, pure, and unadulterated, with every detail intact. If you want power to drive your headphones, lot’s of power – and you want the sound, the whole sound, and nothing but the sound, the Phonitor SE delivers.

Read the full review.

Note: Due to the nature of SPL’s input buffer design, plugging in or unplugging headphones while the amp is on can damage your amp. Make sure to flip the front switch to the off position before connecting or disconnecting headphones.

From SPL

Our entry model into the world of VOLTAiR headphone amplifiers.

The Phonitor se has the same audio signal amplification as its bigger brothers Phonitor x and Phonitor xe and therefore offers the same sound experience. The DAC768xs is optionally available.

Volume & Source Selection

The volume is adjusted with a milled all-aluminium rotary knob. The Alps RK27 “Big Blue” potentiometer provides a pleasant “spoon in honey” turning feeling.

In addition to an analog source, three other digital sources can be connected to the Phonitor se with the optional DAC.

Headphone Output with Power

The Phonitor se offers a 6.35 mm jack for connecting headphones with jack plug.

Up to 2 x 5 watts of output power is available at this socket. This allows even very power-hungry headphones such as magnetostats or electrostats to be driven effortlessly.

The Revolution

in the headphone amplifier is the Phonitor Matrix, with switchable crossfeed, that allows you to listen to music through headphones with the sound experience of listening through speakers.

The tiring super stereo effect and the exaggerated reproduction of reverberation and effects are a thing of the past.

Enjoy your music without fatigue and exactly as it should be heard.

The Phonitor Matrix in its largest expansion stage has three setting parameters: Crossfeed, Speaker Angle and Center Level.
In Phonitor se the Center Level is preset to -1 dB and the speaker placement Angle to 30°. These are the most common values.

The Crossfeed function determines the crosstalk of the channels, the so-called interaural level difference. There are two switch positions C1 and C2 for the intensity of the Crossfeed.

Connections

The Phonitor se is equipped with gold-plated RCA sockets for the analog input.

The optional DAC768xs adds three more digital sources: USB Coax and Optical.

The Optional DAC768xs

The highly acclaimed AKM AK4490 Velvet Sound™ premium DAC chip is used as the converter chip in the optional digital-to-analogue converter, which thanks to its new architecture reproduces the finest sound details.

It converts PCM audio with a resolution of 32 bits and a sampling rate of up to 768kHz, which corresponds to 16 times the CD resolution. Direct Stream Digital is also supported up to a resolution of DSD4 or DSD256.

SPL Phonitor SE | Headphone Amp