Elite Core EC-PMA Personal Monitor Amplifier

Bought this for personal in-ear mixes on stage. This a great headphone amp albeit a tad bit large. The reason I went with this was because it has combo jacks. Sturdy build, great options, super low noise floor, great for live use. Only thing that surprised me was that the box has hole on the bottom. It’s threaded so that you can screw it onto a mic stand, but it’s fully punched through. Pretty weird. Not enough to change the star rating, but if it bothers you, you can use a mic clip thread adapter and cover it.

I have been using a Behringer HA4700 in my home studio. It works okay and I will keep it for any big projects I have when I need four more monitor mixes.The Elite Core PMA is an upgrade for me. Now the artist can have a little control over the volume of their mix and I can easily send them a mix along with their instrument or voice, via the direct outs. Also, I don't have to run long headphone leads; I can now run the signal with xlr cables and trs cables. These are much more stable and less flimsy. I haven't tried it with a battery yet but I'm satisfied running it off the provided power supply.I didn't go with a personal monitor mixing station for two reasons. 1.) It's more expensive. 2.) I find that most recording artists aren't interested or capable of making their own mix.This is an excellent buy for anyone running a studio or wants to to in-ear monitors on stage but doesn't want to or can't go wireless.

In short, both the initial unit I received and the replacement where defective. This product has very little (if any) headroom.I am a singing drummer in a band. I wanted to run an unpowered mix from our board into a headphone amp into some earbuds.The first unit:Too quiet. I plugged a Shure SM58 mic via XLR into one input and my phones headphone jack into the second jack via stereo patch cable and the appropriate adapter. I could barley hear my microphone when the unit was at max volume; this was when I was not playing the drums, I was just sitting there. I swapped all the cables and adapters and it was still the same, too quiet. I also toggled the input from stereo and mono, and it made no difference. I noticed that the volume knob was backwards when in mono mode. When I played music from my phone into the unit, I also noticed a huge lack of headroom. It sounded like it did not amplify the signal at all. This unit was defective as it was not loud, it was not even close. Does not live up to the product description which states that the unit is "..designed to provide loud and clear monitoring..". I returned it to get another one.Second unit:Too quiet again. I used the same connection setup as stated above. This one also sounds bad. It sounds like I had a connection half plugged in. The highs in all the tracks I played from my phone have a weird chorusy distant sound. This is not acceptable. I also noticed a black sticky smelly substance on the input jacks and on the enclosure by the input jacks. I am returning this one too. You would think for the price tag that this would be a high quality unit.

This Elite headphone amp is a real delight! Nicely constructed and gives great sound and does exactly what I want it to do, drive my studio headphones without adding noise or coloring the sound. This replaces a Presonus HP4 headphone amp that I've had for 10 years which is about to bite the dust and is actually better suited for my purposes. I only need one headphone out but need a good stereo/mono switch for A/B comparison of songs before I archive them. My old HP4 had such a switch but lost its button and too many of its headphone outs were bad, so this one fits the bill nicely. Drive volume to my headphones isn't quite as loud as the HP4 but this still can deliver enough volume even for my 40% hearing loss. I'd recommend this headphone amp for anyone needing something dependable and well-made, and very simple to use.