“If you always thought SPL products were out of your price range, think again. The vaunted German manufacturer recently released a new range of affordable headphone amps and monitor controllers called Series One.”
At Mix Online (as well as in the printed edition – Mix Magazine) you can find a great review about our Monitoring And Recording Controller SPL Marc One. You can read the complete review at mixonline.com for free. Here we provide a short summary:
“Manufactured in Germany, the Marc One is a tabletop unit that’s a little over eight inches wide and eight inches deep. It appears quite solidly built, with an aluminum faceplate and metal housing.”
“The feature that sets the Marc One apart from the Control One is its A/D and D/A conversion and USB connectivity (class compliant for Mac and iOS, a driver required for Windows).”
“Why would you use Marc One as your interface if you already have one? A good reason is its conversion. SPL equipped it with 32-bit AK4490 DAC chips that can handle sampling frequencies up to 768 kHz PCM and support Direct Stream Digital playback. The audio quality is pristine and impressive. I compared its conversion with that of another interface that I really like, and the sound quality of the Marc One was even better.”
In practice:
“At times, I used it strictly as a monitor controller and headphone amp, and at other times as my audio interface. It has impressive sound quality and a well-thought-out feature set including the incredibly useful Phonitor Matrix.”
“Having the Phonitor feature allowed me to mix on headphones with a lot more confidence. As a result, I was able to work on projects late at night or early in the morning without worrying that the sound from my (not-completely soundproof) studio would bother anyone.”
“To get an SPL hardware unit with this type of sound, you’d expect to have to spend quite a bit more. It represents an impressive breakthrough from a price/performance standpoint.”
Conclusion:
“Testing out Marc One for this review was a positive experience from start to finish. It was easy to set up and simple to use. It was a snap to integrate it into my workflow, both for tracking and mixing.”
“…if you’re also intrigued by the idea of being able to run your audio through an SPL unit with high-quality converters – both on the way in and the way out – you’ll want to check out Marc One.”
“Excellent sound quality. SPL quality at an affordable price. Phonitor Matrix provides speaker simulation over headphones. Powerful and clean headphone amp. 32-bit/768kHz AK4490 converters. Speaker switching. Subwoofer output for speaker A. Solid build quality.”
