For those who may be interested at what the Cross Feed does in the Phonitor, the following is worth noting. In fact, the Phonitor allows interplay between the Cross Feed, Speaker Angle, and Center Image. The degree of user adjustments is amongst the most versatile I have seen on all headphone amps.
"...... I increasingly came to think that whatever overkill the 120V technology might be thought to be (the best audiophile units generally only have a third of that figure), it was certainly doing something good — and by the end of this section of the tests, I’d decided that the SPL was better, even, than the comparatively priced Stax, which had been my previous ‘fatigue‐free’ classical reference of choice.
As an audio microscope, then, the SPL Phonitor works extremely well... so I raised the bar to see what else it could do........"
" The first, the Speaker Angle control, “determines the stereo width caused by frequency‐dependent interaural time differences” and is variable between 15 and 75 degrees, representing time delays of 90 to 635 microseconds. (Note that these angles are nominal approximations, for relative adjustment only.) The angle for ordinary headphone listening is assumed to be 180 degrees, so this reduction is supposed to bring the image more to the front.
The Crossfeed control “simulates the frequency‐dependent interaural level differences”, and can be set to one of six unquantified steps, from min to max. This parameter is not so obviously related to its real‐world counterpart. Although the manual explains that “one can compare variations in crossfeed values as approximating the influence of different room sizes and characteristics on a given loudspeaker setup”, I found this as about as useful as a Sarah Palin policy explanation — and simply followed the other advice given in the manual: “engage in your own additional fine‐tuning.” This is necessary anyway, as the two parameters interact, to a certain degree. When you’ve narrowed the image and crossfed the levels, it’s likely that the centre of the image will be too intense, so there’s a third control (Center Cut) that provides gain reduction of the mono sum of the left and right channels, in six steps between 0.3dB and 2dB.
The manual warns that the speaker‐angle and crossfeed circuits are not an ‘effect’, and that you might at first be expecting more spectacular results, and this is a good strategic warning:
the circuits provide a subtle but permanent enhancement which, like most subtle effects, becomes more noticeable in its absence than in its presence (rather like the difference experience when switching off a subwoofer).
I started with SPL’s recommended settings for Crossfeed, Speaker Angle and Center level, adjusted them to give what seemed to my ears to be the closest to my normal listening conditions (a slightly wider presentation), and left them like that for the rest of the review:
once you start playing with such things you might just never stop!
Looks like there can be a lot of fun with the Phonitor
F. Lo
, sorry guys, just to much of everything...
