September 2019


Best Of 2019 Blue Note Equipment Awards

Monoprice Monolith Liquid Platinum Headphone Amplifier
By Alex Cavalli
Price: $699
Click here to read the complete review.

  True end-game-level detail, nuance and emotion is hard to come by at the modest $699 price of the Blue Note Award-Winning Monoprice Monolith Liquid Platinum. But this is no ordinary amplifier. A bang-for-buck seekers dream, the Liquid Platinum is a miniaturized version of the legendary Cavalli Liquid Crimson, a $3000 super amplifier.

The newer Liquid Platinum is more cost efficient, but keeps pace with its legendary predecessor in impressive fashion. It delivers the signature jaw-rattling bass and make-you-cry-like-a-baby midrange you come to expect from a Cavalli design, and the mythical level of detail and airy treble extension that made the Crimson such a beast. Plus, this updated version offers balanced inputs and outputs to boot!

The Liquid Platinum offers very nice staging and an inky-black background, regardless of the headphone sensitivity. It was even pretty black with the insanely sensitive Campfire Andromeda. This is a great pick for pretty much any headphone, from easy-to-drive 32 Ohm dynamics to more picky 300 Ohm headphones too hard to drive planars like the Abysss AB-1266.

But perhaps the most impressive thing about the amplifier is the experience of listening to it. The amplifier, like many of Alex Cavalli's designs, is extremely evocative – transporting you into the music in a different kind of way. Here's an excerpt from our World Premiere Review:

"Listening to the Song "Already Dead" off Beck's album Sea Change, there is a little acoustic guitar riff at 1:10. Comparing to the HeadAmp Gilmore Lite Mk2 ($499), I can hear a very accurate picture of the guitar playing the riff in the studio on the GLM2. With the Liquid Platinum, it's like I get a completely different, and perhaps even more vivid image – I hear that guitar and it's like I'm transported to a dusty old western town with a tumbleweed blowing across the street. It's like it evokes something that is halfway between a thought and an emotion in me. It triggers the imagination. The amplifier just has that right combination of tone, midrange musicality and subtle nuance to make that experience exceptionally vivid."

Click here to read the complete review.

Previous Annual Blue Note Awards

Product of the Year Awards 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001.