Monoprice M1000ANC, Bluetooth Headset With ANC And Dirac Spacial Sound

Monoprice M1000ANC, For Bluetooth Or Analogue

Monolithic Sound

The impressive name of the Monolith by Monoprice M1000ANC Bluetooth Headphones with ANC and Dirac Virtuo Spatializer does a good job of describing exactly what these headset is.  It offers both Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity and wired via a 3.5mm jack, charging via the included USB-A to USB-C cord.  That cord is rather short, only 1″ in length, the 3.5mm cord is 4″ long which is fairly common for headsets with integral wiring.

On the side are buttons to switch the active noise cancellation from high to low or disable it entirely.  You can also toggle the Dirac Virtuo Spatializer on and off with the push of a button and while there is no light to indicate it is turned on, your ears will have no trouble telling.  The power button and Bluetooth pairing button are one and the same, and it is worth noting that plugging in the 3.5mm jack while the headset is on will turn the headset off.  There are additional touch controls this review will touch on later.

Headset Design

The Monolith by Monoprice M1000ANC headset replaces the BT-600ANC, and they seem to have learned from the feedback uses of that model provided.  The headset still sports swivel hinges for ease of portability, but the new rounded hinge seems sturdier than the original.  The controls are found on the right side, which is easy to figure out thanks to the silk screening on the inside of the earcups.  The pleather cups are made of memory foam and are quite comfortable.  They are large enough to completely envelop your ears,  similar in size to the Corsair HS80’s which Sebastian reviewed and which I happen to have a pair of.

You will find the only physical controls on the side of the right earcup, which keeps them simple enough to find blindly.  At the top is a three way toggle, switching ANC from High to Off to Low, a toggle for the spacial effect and the power/pair button.   The light just below the Low setting indicates battery level, pure white at full charge and growing redder as the charge fades.

The metal headband is enclosed in plastic and also sports pleather and memory foam where it rests on your noggin, just slide to adjust the size.  The enclosed bag to cart them around in doesn’t offer much in the way of protection, but does have drawstrings to keep the headset and cords contained.

Audio Controls At The Tip Of Your Fingers

The Monoprice M1000ANC headphones have gone with touch controls on the outside of the right ear cup to control audio instead of buttons, which makes the headset easier to control than with an inline controller on the cord.  These are only available while using the Bluetooth connection, the gesture controls are disabled while wired in, so you can control them with attached device.  You can easily adjust the volume, including temporarily lowering the volume and disabling ANC if you are forced to talk to someone in person.   Track skipping is supported, as is pausing and if you have it attached to your phone you can take calls; even if you are already on a call.

The controls worked with YouTube as well as songs from a playlist on the phone, with no issues whatsoever.  The Bluetooth connection is, well a Bluetooth connection.  The headset will show up twice in your network, once as an interface device which does not help and once as an audio device which does properly pair the headset.  This is not so much a headset problem as a Bluetooth problem, a couple of power cycles should get you sorted if you don’t see the audio device showing up immediately.

Sound Off On Audio Quality

To properly test the audio, a trip through YouTube’s suggestions offers a mix of content to test out, with these four songs and a game review differing enough to offer a good idea how the headset sounds.

Zero Punctuation – Tunic review

John Zorn’s New Electric Masada: 3/27/22 Big Ears Festival, Knoxville, TN @ Bijou Theatre

Lindemann – Ach so gern

Sabaton – Christmas Truce

Nekrogoblikon – No One Survives

Lou Reed – Solsbury Hill (And I’ll Scratch Yours by Tasseomancy)

The Bluetooth quality is exactly the same as it would be on any other headset, simply due to the nature of the connection.  It is fairly hollow and even Dirac Virtuo Spatial can’t really help much, though it does make the sound somewhat less flat.  Plug in the 3.5mm and things change, and definitely for the better.  To offer a comparison the Corsair HS80 and it’s USB dongle offer audio quality right in between the Bluetooth and wired performance of the Monoprice M1000ANC.

The wired connection fills in the spaces missing in the Bluetooth audio and greatly increases the amount of volume the headset can produce.  Clicking on the Dirac Virtuo Spatial button brings a lot more to the headset, to the point it is questionable why you would not keep it enabled short of having an almost dead battery.

Gaming tests were also successful, when wired in as this PC lacks Bluetooth.  Red Dead Redemption 2 and Metro Exodus seemed appropriate and both offered a great audio experience.  There was certainly evidence of positional audio, though not up to the level of a 5.1 audio device, virtual or physical.  The accuracy was on par with what Dolby Atmos brings to a game, so certainly more interesting than a basic stereo headset.

The active noise cancellation is also very effective at blocking higher frequency signals, though some lower frequency and louder environmental noises do.  This is not a bad thing; you might not want to hear the cars but you do want to hear the horn!  As with the spacial feature, activating ANC will cut the battery life by a third.

Finale

If you are looking for a portable headset which offers both wired and wireless performance, active noise cancellation and a button that makes things sound better, the Monoprice M1000ANC is certainly a choice.  If that is all you are looking for, then you can find it for about half the price but you have to abandon ANC and spacial audio.  You will also likely also see reduced battery life, as 60 hours is very good for a wireless headset, not to mention a few hours playtime off of a five minute charge.

If you are looking for a higher quality of audio, with noise cancellation, spacial audio and gesture controls however, you will not find many equivalent headsets at $130.  Indeed the Corsair HS80 lacks the ANC and touch controls of the Monoprice M1000ANC, but offers better wireless performance, Dolby Atmos, a decent microphone and costs a mere $15 less.  It does also sacrifice the wired connection that makes the M1100ANC sing… unless you can find a USB-A to USB-C adapter it agrees with.

Audio is a very subjective experience so stating that this is a better product than a competitors is not as simple as running through benchmarks and seeing what product performed most effectively.  It certainly sounds better than any of the other headsets in my house, and in conjunction with something like a Sound BlasterX G5 or other external DAC it makes for an enjoyable gaming experience.  It is also lovely on transit, blocking out more audio than my usual ear buds.  For those reasons, and the utter lack of RGBs, I would recommend you at least consider the Monoprice M1000ANC the next time you are shopping for loud ear decorations.