Monitor Audio
Monitor Audio
Monitor Audio Ltd is a British owned and managed global specialist in hi-fi loudspeaker design, incorporating stereo and surround sound systems and a range of sonically matched architectural speakers for ultra discreet high quality sound around the home and outside.
Whatever your taste and budget you’ll discover a Monitor Audio speaker that answers your desire for great sound. Since hi-fi was in its infancy we’ve dedicated all our technical expertise, innovation and craftsmanship to the creation of world-class loudspeakers, which communicate the essence of our brand and reward the people who buy them. We want you to share and enjoy the blend of style, quality, performance and sophistication that makes Monitor Audio unique.
Our success is not simply a matter of excellent sound quality, although expert listeners around the world will testify to that. It’s more about how we deliver the sonic superlatives. By consistently refining and applying our technologies, Monitor Audio has become the world’s foremost expert in developing metal dome drivers. Metal is not the easiest material to shape, which is why many of our competitors choose paper or plastic. But it does have amazing properties for more life-like sound reproduction when treated correctly.
The Ceramic-Coated Aluminium Magnesium (C-CAM®) metal alloy driver cones used throughout our comprehensive range are very light, but very rigid and strong. Such a magical mix of properties allows them to reproduce the most delicate musical atmospherics as well as the dynamic bass excursions of movie action scenes or an explosive kick drum barrage. Our proprietary C-CAM® drivers can be much smaller than conventional designs and yet operate way beyond the limits of human audibility without distortion. This means that we can design slimmer more elegant cabinets around them, so you enjoy class-leading audio performance from speakers that better suit your décor and lifestyle. And since they all share a consistency of tonal accuracy our on-wall, in-wall, floor or stand-mounting speakers may be mixed for the perfect aesthetic and sonic result in any environment. In the strength and depth of our ever-evolving product portfolio, Monitor Audio continues to demonstrate the power of a high quality, high performance loudspeaker brand that serves every application, taste and budget – and every possible desire.
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TECHNOLOGIES
Gold Dome C-CAM
The gold dome tweeter is formed from a ceramic-coated aluminium/magnesium alloy, gold anodised to a specific thickness for ideal stiffness and damping characteristics. Its new profile and surround geometry have been developed using advanced modelling tools, to provide the optimum qualities for accurate sound reproduction. The new design moves the first order of breakup to beyond 35kHz, producing a linear response way beyond audibility, which matches the wide frequency bandwidth available from HD music and cinema sound formats.
The gold dome is thinner, lighter, more rigid and therefore more efficient than domes made from other materials which are prone to distortion in the audio band.
C-CAM Drivers
Ceramic-Coated Aluminium/Magnesium is a material originally developed by the aerospace industry for jet engine components. Its properties are ideal for loudspeaker cones being extremely rigid, yet light enough to yield high overall efficiency. In manufacture, aluminium/magnesium alloy undergoes a three-stage stress-relieving process to remove surface deformation and molecular weakness. Once formed, the alloy cone is subjected to a high temperature anodic coating process in which a layer of pure ceramic alumina is depleted onto its surfaces to a depth of 50 microns, producing a completely rigid sandwich of alloy and heat-dissipating ceramic material.
Conventional cones are liable to flex or twist in operation, producing a significant level of audible distortion. C-CAM cones have a much higher resistance to bending stress and therefore exhibit much greater fidelity over their entire operating range. C-CAM tweeters and woofers share an audible consistency producing a smooth transition of frequencies and a sense of realism and cohesion in the soundstage.
RST
The Rigid Surface Technology (RST) cone profile is inspired by the Japanese art of Origami, which demonstrates how a very light material (like paper) can be strengthened and made more rigid by making small and precise folds on its surface. Monitor Audio has applied this principle in designing the CAM/RST cones for the GX and RX ranges. Developed and perfected using sophisticated computer modelling (Finite Element Analysis), the GX mid and bass driver cones have been strengthened by a series of radial ribs; the RX driver cones by a pattern of dimples. Our simulations have proved that RST significantly increases cone rigidity, allowing the radiating surfaces to resist mechanical bending forces, which can twist the shape of conventional driver cones to produce distorted sound. The strengthening effect of RST means that we can use thinner, lighter and more responsive C-CAM cones, which provide speed and accuracy while offering greatly reduced distortion. The RST patterns also help to displace standing waves that can propagate on the cone’s surface.
FEATURED PRODUCTS
Monitor Audio Platinum Speakers
Platinum is Monitor Audio’s flagship range, a culmination of many years of research and development by Technical Director Dean Hartley and his team. It’s the result of ‘blue-sky’ thinking in driver and cabinet construction involving radical new materials, processes and designs. For Platinum, the challenge was to introduce genuinely esoteric yet affordable performance and quality to the loudspeaker market; and to achieve the most natural sound possible by focusing on each and every design detail. Supremely esoteric in nature, the range sets new standards of aesthetic quality and performance in its class.
Platinum’s innovatively shaped and braced cabinets are finished in a choice of lustrous black lacquer, exotic Santos Rosewood and Ebony natural wood veneers. These are hand-selected, matched and coated with eleven layers of clear gloss piano lacquer. The front baffles are upholstered in Strathspey leather and loaded with custom-developed drive units including a Ceramic Coated Aluminium/Magnesium (C-CAM®) ribbon high frequency transducer. With a mass of just 18mg, the ribbon diaphragm has a very fast transient response and exhibits extremely low distortion. These characteristics coupled with a useable frequency range to 100 kHz allow it to capture the leading edges and natural decay of the most complex musical sounds and their harmonics. The Platinum C-CAM bass/mid-range drivers employ Rigid Diaphragm Technology (RDT) in which a core of honeycomb Nomex material is sandwiched by ultra-thin skins of C-CAM, creating a structure which is extremely light but more rigid than a steel plate. Key design elements such as the baffles, plinths, and the mid-range housings are cast from Anti-Resonance Composite (ARC®) material: a thermo-set polymer loaded with minerals to provide very inert, optimally damped components.
Our ambition for Platinum demanded an utterly purist mentality, the development of new materials and proprietary structures, exhaustive anechoic testing and plenty of good old-fashioned listening. Every component part for each of the seven Platinum models is produced to exacting standards and carefully assembled by a small team of technicians. The Platinum series represents the epitome of British craftsmanship and quality, and demonstrates Monitor Audio’s devotion to music and film sound reproduction.
Features
- Ceramic-Coated Aluminum/Magnesium (C-CAM®) drivers
- Platinum C-CAM high frequency ribbon transducer.
- Rigid Diaphragm Technology (RDT®) mid-range and bass drivers
- Anti-Resonance Composite (ARC) baffles, plinths and mid-range driver housings
- HiVe® II High Velocity reflex port
- Cabinets are constructed from multiple layers of bonded MDF, forming an extremely rigid multi curved shell, hand finished in a choice of lustrous exotic wood veneer or piano gloss.
- ‘Bullet’ spike feet of high-tensile steel, chrome-plated to a mirror finish.
Monitor Audio Gold Speakers
Purer by design, our latest Gold range refines the technology of its award-winning GX predecessor to set a new gold standard for our celebrated high-end speaker line. Equipped with optimised drivers and empowered by the production quality of our world-beating Platinum flagship range, gilt-edged Gold turns another page in the story of Monitor Audio’s audiophile speaker family.
Developing the legacy of three award-winning generations, eight new dedicated stereo, centre channel, surround and subwoofer models share a trinity of enhancements including an evolution of the C-CAM® Rigid Surface Technology (RST®) bass cone employed by their Gold GR and Gold GS predecessors; tighter production tolerances for their advanced C-CAM ribbon tweeters, and a smarter more functional grille design. Energised by these upgrades our new Gold range offers greater transparency, consistency and visual sophistication to devotees of sound and style everywhere, leaving you simply to choose the system that’s right for your room.
Features
- Stunning high-class speaker package
- C-CAM® Ribbon tweeter provides extension to a class-leading 60kHz
- Updated C-CAM RST® drivers
- New magnetically-fixed ‘floating’ cloth grilles
- Curved cabinet profile for increased rigidity.
Monitor Audio Silver Series Speakers
If you love fabulous sound and design, get ready for a blissful experience. From each of eight new Silver Series models you’ll enjoy a unity of form and function that is as precise as it is compelling; the product of over forty years of speaker development, invested with our love for accurate audio, imbued with our belief in design perfection.
Super-slender and finished in a choice of Rosenut, Walnut, Natural Oak, and Black Oak real-wood veneers – and in devastatingly chic gloss black and white – the new Silver range is a beguiling force of nature and state-of-the-art loudspeaker design, made to re-energise entertainment in your home.
Features introduced by our prestigious Platinum and Gold series speakers have been enhanced, and recent innovations in driver engineering incorporated across an extended new range, which includes two stand mount models: Silver 1 and 2; three floor speakers: Silver 6, 8, 10; and dedicated centre, ‘FX’ surround and active subwoofer models. While Silver 1, 2, 6, centre and FX retain the form factor of their predecessors, the Silver 8 becomes a full three way design, and new to the Silver genre, the Silver 10 tower offers an up-scaled floor-standing format, featuring twin 8” bass drivers for a deeper more dynamic and consistent response in larger rooms.
- Ceramic-Coated Aluminum/Magnesium (C-CAM®) drivers
- C-CAM Gold dome tweeter
- Rigid Surface Technology (RST®) mid-range and bass drivers
- Bolt-through Driver design
- HiVe®II High Velocity reflex port
- Real wood veneer and lacquer finishes