Excellent, very detailed and very easy of use , after a few usage of getting use to , a bit pricey ,at $700 Canadian with shipping express ,
I used the Sonarworks True-Fi pc full licensed program , with selected headphones , running with this monoprice thx 788 , sounds amazing , very good bass and excellent mids , on my Focal Elear headphone, I also recommend the Creative Super xfi amplifier , if you are looking for a awesome portable amplifier , now with purchase comes with a headphone , it is totally a cool amplifier , major surround sound watching movies on Netflix and music is good ,too !

The AMP is stellar. Absolutely no channel imbalance from mute to sound. Also perfectly silent. The DAC is perfectly fine from what I can tell. I own the JDS labs element and Modi 2, and the Monolith sounds just as good. One thing is that if you’re using this as a DAC only option the RCA output is a pre-out. I found that upping the volume on the unit to 0db works best. The digital screen is nice to look at and tastefully done. My endgame dac/amp. i current output to JDS labs el amp. The unit is not affected by cell phone signal, as no interference can be heard at all). Which is a plus.

Buy it, buy it twice, true balanced internally and amazing clarity.

Build Quality:

The build is great. It has a nice hefty and well put together metal chasis with a great volume knob. The inside board is well laid out and extremely clean. The front has balanced XLR and single ended 1/4 inch headphone jacks. On either side of the volume knob are a menu button and an enter button. These buttons do feel a bit cheap compared to the rest of the unit but are quite usable.

The display is a light blue OLED which displays a lot of information at once.

On the back, there are XLR-inputs, RCA, Coax, Digital Toslink inputs, and RCA outs. No XLR output unfortunately.

UI/Menus:

I found the menus to be quite cumbersome at first. There's a lot here!

First off, the menu and enter buttons are not placed next to each other, so using the menu is a struggle sometimes. But once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad.

The first set of menu items is the built-in Equalizer. You have the option of doing a quick Bass/Treble EQ (Shelf-EQ) or a 5 band parametric EQ that lets you customize very finely. You can pick which frequency, the gain level and the Q-factor. It's quite handy if you know what you're doing!

The second set of menu items is pretty much useless and a waste of space. It's Dynamic Range Compression. Why would any one want to reduce the dynamics of a song? WHY?

The third set is DIRAC, which is a DSP. This new DSP is called Sensasound II by DIRAC, and it works very well for some songs. Basically it manipulates the crossfeed and extends the height and depth of the soundstage while trying to maintain the width, creating a 3D stage in front of the listener. It works very well for songs that do not have heavy bass/beats emphasis. In songs where you want to feel it more than hear the intricacies from your surroundings, you'll lose a lot of richness and fullness to songs.

Finally, the last set of menu items is the Settings, which is where you'll find Line Out option. I wished this was active all the time.

The Enter button, when held down, will activate the Device input. I have the amp connected to my PC via USB and the TEAC PD-301 CD Player using Coax and I constantly use this function to switch devices.

Sound:

I have to say, the THX amp is extremely clean. EXTREMELY clean sounding. Yea. It is as advertised. It sounds transparent, whatever that means. I never feel like anything is overly emphasized and music sounds ultra smooth throughout and is well extended. It will sound a little leaner than other amps, and thats quite evident on those heavier songs, but the detail that is put out on this amp is excellent.

Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase. I do want to make users aware that there were some bad shipments sent out to some users that had a BETA version of the firmware. Luckily, I had v1.01 on my unit and did not have the same issues as what Amir of Audio Science Review experienced. Hopefully, he will be able to get a production unit to test in the future.

Until then, I am happy to report my findings. Great sound. A little clunky UI (at first), and could use a remote. But otherwise, the music speaks for itself.

I love this thing. I use it for my PC (music/games/movies) via USB and also have an XboneX hooked up via optical. My headphones are my trusty HD 650s. I decided to get a balanced cable for them to use with this amp and the thing is LOUD even at -20. It feels like it's just casually driving the HD 650s like it's no big deal. Easy work for this amp!

In my previous setup I used an Asus Xonar STX sound card to do all this (external DAC to feed the line in for the console). While it was a good soundcard with a respectable DAC and decent amp, it had its drawbacks. It could not make my HD 650s nearly as loud without any kind of distortion. Comparing it again it also feels... slower? if that makes sense. The bass on the Monolith is faster and tighter, especially at high volumes. In fact everything is just cleaner. Instruments feel more distinct. I'm not used to trying to come up with words to describe audio stuff. It just sounds better.

I am not a huge fan of the Dirac Sensaround. It works well on some types of music, but not so well on others. It definitely moves the sound away from inside your head (sort of forward and up) but at the cost of fullness (sorry, like I said I don't have the vocabulary for this). It also can make some music sound more detailed, but I don't like the trade off. I've been experimenting with movies and games and think it might have more merit there for me (it's good at moving dialogue outside of your head, for example). It's too bad there were no settings with the Dirac so you could adjust its strength or other properties. It's just on or off. I could see a milder version being more suited for me, or maybe it just doesn't pair well with my headphones. Maybe it would sound different with closed cans? The good thing is it does not make the sound feel hollow like traditional virtual surround.

All of the EQ options are great and work well, but this brings me to the interface. It's kind of clunky to use. There's only 2 buttons so they both have to have multiple functions. It's too bad that there was no remote, or at least a couple more buttons. It's not such a big deal if you use a single pair of headphones, but if you like swapping headphones all the time and want different EQ for each, then you have to do it every time. There's no way to save presets.

In terms of drivers on PC, this thing seems to want additional drivers for something called "XMOS DFU" in device manager -- it functions without it though. It shows up as MONOLITH DESKTOP HPA under audio devices and I can set it up to 24-bit/352.8KHz in Windows.

Physically, the construction and overall quality is excellent. It's solid and nothing feels cheap. Great feeling digital volume control as well.

While there are improvements to be made, none of them are in regard to raw sound quality.

This new THX unit from Monoprice is an excellent performer, and packs in an unmatched feature set. The feedforward amp designs from THX are wonderfully clear amplifiers and this is no exception.

With this in mind, the obvious comparison is the Massdrop THX789. You'll obviously need your own DAC if you go this route and interconnects will mean your performance drops. Also keep in mind that this Monoprice unit is actually balanced: when pressed THX admits that op amps are utilized to amplify differential only on the 789 - not balanced, sneaky marketting!

For an actual balanced Amp/DAC, the closer comparison is the Schiit Jotunheim. Ignoring the glaring issues with multibit and assuming you opt for the delta sigma variety, keep in mind you would still need a 'balanced loki' to match the digital EQ that this monoprice unit offers.

Great performance, great flexibility, unbeatable value. Absolutely recommended!

I've owned and listened to a number of sub 500 dollar modern amps and dacs that I can compare this one to. Simply put, no other combo touches the clarity of this setup. I could immediately tell everything I heard through it was distinctly clearer and better separated. It is very neutral and adds a nice shine to sounds it produces. It also dead silent, something I can't say about some other highly rated amps I've heard.

Although I've only played around with them so far a little bit, the EQ and other effects seem pretty useful. They prescribe to the 'do as little as possible to achieve your goal' mindset that I prefer. The EQ is clean and allows for 0.5db increment adjustments which is nice.

For the most part I use this amp for listening to music, music production and gaming. For games I run a Sound BlasterX G5 optical out to the DAC. On every front it excels.

Simply put, I can't imagine anyone not being happy with this amp. It excels in every regard.