Little Labs MONOTOR Manuel utilisateur
MONOTOR
Operators Manual
manual printing & pdf formatting 04/2016.
using this manual or any part of it without
permission is a violation of copyright laws.
monotor is a registered trademark of little
labs.
read this first
before using the monotor
There is lots more in this manual, but please read this even if you don't read man-
uals... Thanks!
The external power supply for the MONOTOR must be the 16 volt 0.3 amp dc
regulated bipolar unit supplied with it. If it says INPHASE engineering it is our
new custom made for audio switcher and you don’t need to worry about voltages
in other countries. If it says Advanced Power Solutions it is a linear supply and it
MUST BE SWITCHED TO THE PROPER VOLTAGE for the country using it.
If you don’t change the voltage (this is obvious to some of you) and it is set for 110
volts and you plug it in to 220 volts it will BLOW UP the supply, and possibly dam-
age the MONOTOR. If you set it for 220 volts and you plug it in to 110 volts, the
performance of the MONOTOR will be severely degraded. Blowing up the supply
this way, is not covered by warranty.
The dc power connector jack used on the MONOTOR looks like a CB microphone
connector. Although difcult to misalign because it is keyed, take care to align the
plug and jack properly when inserting.
The 3.5 mini jack sums what is plugged into it with the signal from the main trs/
xlr jacks but after the MONOTORs level potentiometer and mono functions.
So the volume when using this 3.5 mm jack will be controlled by what is feeding it
(e.g., iPod, phone).
Do not place the MONOTOR in close proximity to a wi- router, the high gain
although well shielded MONOTOR will pick up the wi- “chirps.” Wi- routers
have no place near any hi-end audio gear.
The Monotor is vulnerable to failure by extreme static discharge. In dry envi-
ronments prone to static, use de-stat on carpets and discharge yourself before
touching and placing headphones on head. Metal body headphones and planar
magnetic phones are particularly strong static magnets.
The trs/xlr and trs jacks on the MONOTOR are balanced, but the source can be
balanced or unbalanced. For rca plugs you will need a ts (tip-sleeve) to rca adapter,
or a cable made for the purpose. The adapter will connect the ring of the jack
to the sleeve. If making an rca to trs cable, tie the ring and sleeve of the trs to
ground and shield, with the tip hot. If making an rca to xlr cable, tie pins one and
three together of the male xlr, with pin 2 hot.
Thank you for purchasing the Little Labs MONOTOR™ source analyzing
professional headphone amp.
The MONOTOR is designed to fulll the need for professional monitoring
at the highest resolution possible, allowing you long fatigue-free analytical
listening sessions.
Headphone listening amounts for 80% of what the consumer listens
with today, and as the world gets more populated, this percentage will
increase. For the professional mixer, monitoring on headphones is not
only necessary, it is essential.
As a tech at A&M records recording studios and mastering rooms
throughout the 80’s and 90’s, I found the studio control rooms, although
excellent rooms and ne for evaluating a balance, they never came close to
having the high resolution monitoring capabilities of the mastering rooms.
Every component in the audio signal chain of the mastering rooms was
carefully selected and anything not necessary was deleted, compared to
the studios large mixing consoles going through (necessarily) dozens of
ampliers before reaching your ears, the resolution between the two was
readily apparent.
The mastering rooms were very carefully appointed under the direction
of a legendary staff of mastering engineer greats including Alan Yoshida,
Bernie Grundman, Patricia Sullivan, Dave Collins, Stephen Marcussen and
others through out the years. Much of the electronics used were built in
house. In these rooms we were able to analyze minute differences in the
sonic signature of components, even different brands of resistors could
be detected and evaluated for sonic neutrality. This allowed us to have a
mastering chain that would allow an engineer to come in and hear details
such as edits, hums, hiss, unwanted distortions, reverb tails, things that
thanks and a little background on the
monotors development
would get by often un-noticed in the studio control room environment.
This allowed a nal polish to be put on a mix, with the engineer condent
that no matter what system it was played on by the consumer, all that
would be heard would be what was intended.
Fast forward to 2016, a much different recording monitoring environment
is the norm, often makeshift and acoustically imperfect. Despite huge
quality improvements in digital technology, the monitoring environment
has, in most cases, become less than ideal and resolution has suffered.
The Little Labs MONOTOR was designed so two people per MONOTOR
(each headphone out is independently powered) could listen deep into a
track at the highest resolution possible when paired with a quality set of
headphones.
The headphone amp in the pro world has been neglected with few offerings,
most of it junk, or the more expensive stuff available includes the gimmick
cross feed circuitry, and quite often is driven by several active stages with
unsuitable output drivers, great for old consoles to get a guitar sound, but
not for driving high resolution headphones.
Many audiophile headphone amps exist with often euphonic yet inaccurate
reproduction, and at a ridiculous price. A trend of digital to analog
converters combined with headphone amps is also popular. Some of the
digital to analog converters are of decent quality, but typically a studio
or mastering facility will have much better digital to analog converters in
house (the MONOTOR makes evaluating converters easy).
The USB powered headphone amp/digital to analog converters are
crippled by default by use of dc to dc converters used to squeeze every
bit of power out of a usb port.
Internally powered headphones and bluetooth headphones are also crippled
by a neutered power supply.
I’m not saying these headphone amps sound bad, it’s just that they are not
at a level of resolution found in a properly appointed mastering facility.
The Little Labs MONOTOR is designed with what I call a zen circuit
topology. Only a single state of the art active stage is used at its optimum
gain, in the circuit path of each headphone ear, with all else, straight wire
passive (this includes all the mono functions as well). All passive components
in the audio path were selected for sonic neutrality, this includes dale/
vishay resistors, nichicon muse series caps and specialized polystyrene
lm decoupling caps. The MONOTOR uses a full voltage state of the art
super low noise internal linear regulation system (4 uVrms) with massive
capacitance for power on demand on each rail. Just one internal lter
capacitor used (there are 6) is bigger than a whole USB dongle digital to
analog converter/headphone amp. This allows for a noticeably improved
dynamic range over other headphone amps. You will also be able to drive
even high impedance phones to full volume without any strain whatsoever,
and no detectable hiss even at the highest volumes. The MONOTOR when
I say it is state of the art, it truly is, and could not have been built just a
year ago. I’m proud to say, this is not a rehashed old analog circuit, with
this labor of love, we’ve taken analog to another level.
The MONOTOR paired with a good set of headphones will give you a
reference at the highest resolution, so in imperfect environments you’ll
quickly be able to evaluate as you only could in the best mastering facilities.
You might be wondering what I use for headphones, (the headphone eld
has become huge in the last ten years) but the reference I use with the
MONOTOR is the relatively reasonably cost Sennheiser HD600 with a
Cardas cable (cable given to me by Bernie Grundman’s Mastering facility
and ex A&M super tech Beno May, thanks Beno)! This simple set up will
set you back less than $1000 usd (slightly more with the Cardas cable) and
give you performance you could spend easy 10 times that trying to achieve,
with most likely worse resolution. This doesn’t mean your own favorite
headphones aren’t suitable for the MONOTOR, it will drive almost any
headphone to the best of the ability of that headphone. I should note
here the only devices I do not reccomend for pairing with the monotor
are super duper efcient, typically IEMS, which get too loud too quick and
will not give you adequate volume range on the level control.
So cheers, thank you for your purchase, be sure to take a look at the rest
of the manual (especially the read this rst part).
Oh and thanks to all the people for the help, patience, and good insights
while developing this product especially Zack McCormley (DTS), John
Caldwell (Texas Instruments), Raymond, George, and Joyce Lui (G&J mfg),
and my wonderfully supportive amazing girlfriend, Randi Kory.
Happy Listening,
Jonathan Little
The front of the monotor has four headphone output jacks, two
3.5mm and two 1/4” . The two jacks to the left are fed by one stereo
amp and the two jacks to the right are fed by a separate stereo amp.
For the best performance use one set of phones per stereo amp
output. But if you need to use all four, you will not damage the
monotor and performance difference for casual use is minimal.
The little holes on either side of the level
potentiometer conceal a push switch set back
about an inch. The left switch pushed in
bypasses the left side of the level potentiometer,
the right, the right side of the level
potentiometer. These can be used for a variety
of scenarios (see more in the manual). The
most common is when using the monotor with a
high quality digital to analog converter that has a
built in level control (like the Oppo 105). The
highest quality level pot is no level pot.
Stereo / mono function switch selects: stereo reverse (maybe that hi hat
sounds better on the right?), regular stereo, mono left plus right, left only (in
both ears), right only (in both ears), left minus right for hearing what is out of
phase (between what is feeding the left and right in) and also useful for
compressed digital audio file artifact analysis.
front hook up
The xlr trs combo jacks and
trs stack jacks are in paralell
with each other.
Shown here with powered
speakers connected to the
trs jacks used as a thru.
The stereo aux in mini jack can be fed from a phone or any
3.5mm stereo jack device, including ipods or stereo video
camera mic headphone outs (talkback). This input sums with
the main inputs post the mono functions and volume control.
The xlr combo jack inputs to the MONOTOR
are typically fed from line level sources such
as your stereo buss of your console, the
output of your D to A converter, the output of
the monitor section of your console, a cd or
dvd player, a phono pre amp. a tape
machine, or to any line level device you
want to monitor. The inputs to the
MONOTOR are balanced, but the source
can be balanced or unbalanced.
rear hook up
The xlt trs combo jacks and trs jacks
are in paralell with each other.
Shown here with multiple monotors
daisy chained.
The xlr combo jack inputs to the
MONOTOR are typically fed from line
level sources such as your stereo
buss of your console, the output of
your D to A converter, the output of
the monitor section of your console, a
cd or dvd player, a phono pre amp. a
tape machine, or to any line level
device you want to monitor.
The
inputs to the MONOTOR are
balanced but the source can be
balanced or unbalanced.
daisy chain
hook up
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