Monitor Audio Silver 100 Review (Speaker)

thewas · Dec 21, 2021

Inner Space said:
I agree, but for the sake of completeness (and pedantry, I suppose) we should occasionally bear in mind (and occasionally say) that directivity matters only if choice, family or financial circumstances put you in a reflective room. I have been lucky enough to be able to build non-reflective rooms, where directivity is completely and totally irrelevant.

Some folks think reflections are essential per se, but no, you're better off without them. In my experience, listening in a non-environment is hugely, vastly, entrancingly, magnificently superior.

On the other hand no normal person lives or has such a non-reflective room and if someone has the money and will to make one then usually having a good loudspeaker is no problem either. Also for stereo reproduction such acoustic spaces are questioned by many but they work excellently for multichannel reproduction.

beagleman · Dec 21, 2021

Inner Space said:
I agree, but for the sake of completeness (and pedantry, I suppose) we should occasionally bear in mind (and occasionally say) that directivity matters only if choice, family or financial circumstances put you in a reflective room. I have been lucky enough to be able to build non-reflective rooms, where directivity is completely and totally irrelevant.

Some folks think reflections are essential per se, but no, you're better off without them. In my experience, listening in a non-environment is hugely, vastly, entrancingly, magnificently superior.

Years ago I had several friends quite into the Hi-Fi or Audio hobby. Great systems for sure.

But found after having listened to a handful of the systems in their homes, that the Liveness or Deadness of the room, was a huge contributor to the overall sound.

A few had very reflective and live sounding rooms, and that always sounded sub par to me.
When I got back home, I would often find a couple selections we had just listened to at their homes, and despite (their) great speakers, I seemed to get a better sound, in my much less reflective room.

Inner Space · Dec 21, 2021

thewas said:
On the other hand no normal person lives or has such a non-reflective room

Again I agree, but the advanced and committed hobbyists here aren't "normal" in their relationships with their systems anyway.

thewas said:
... if someone has the money and will to make one then usually having a good loudspeaker is no problem either.

Yes, and my point is that your choice is so much wider than when feeling obliged to cleave to the reflection dogma.

thewas said:
Also for stereo reproduction such acoustic spaces are questioned by many ...

Only by those who haven't tried such spaces.

thewas · Dec 21, 2021

Inner Space said:
Only by those who haven't tried such spaces.

Wouldn't agree to this point, I have heard to stereo reproduction even in an anechoic chamber and its a very headphone or extreme narrow directivity loudspeakers like representation which many people don't like, as also in book of Toole. Personally I also prefer narrow directivity and dry acoustics but it seems there is a significant percentage of the population, also here in ASR, that prefer the opposite.

Inner Space · Dec 21, 2021

thewas said:
Personally I also prefer narrow directivity and dry acoustics but it seems there is a significant percentage of the population, also here in ASR, that prefer the opposite.

Yes, it mystifies me. People value accuracy through the electronic chain, and then positively celebrate distortion in the acoustic realm, in the form of added tones and delays that weren't present in the incoming signal. Weird.

Lorenzo74 · Dec 21, 2021

pierre said:

Nice little speaker.

Score would be 4.9 and climb to 5.4 with the eq below.

Code:

         SPK auEQ                                                                                             
-----------------                                                                                             
NBD  ON 0.54 0.54                                                                                             
NBD  LW 0.36 0.35                                                                                             
NBD PIR 0.34 0.30                                                                                             
SM  PIR 0.73 0.89                                                                                             
SM   SP 0.79 0.93                                                                                             
LFX       44   45                                                                                             
LFQ     0.75 0.74                                                                                             
-----------------                                                                                             
Score    4.9  5.4                                                                                             
-----------------                                                                                             
+4.94 +5.39 Monitor Audio Silver 100

the eq itself which optimise for a flat LW with some smoothing to remove sharp changes and a maxQ of 2. The eq is mostly trying to flatten small
peaks/dips and I am not sure it is very useful.

Code:

EQ for Monitor Audio Silver 100 computed from ASR data
Preference Score 4.9 with EQ 5.4
Generated from http://github.com/pierreaubert/spinorama/generate_peqs.py v0.14
Dated: 2021-12-20-21:38:14

Preamp: -1.7 dB

Filter  1: ON PK Fc   143 Hz Gain -1.17 dB Q 1.96
Filter  2: ON PK Fc   382 Hz Gain +0.97 dB Q 2.00
Filter  3: ON PK Fc  1670 Hz Gain +2.10 dB Q 1.98
Filter  4: ON PK Fc  4494 Hz Gain -0.81 dB Q 1.25
Filter  5: ON PK Fc  2579 Hz Gain +1.25 dB Q 1.98
Filter  6: ON PK Fc  1086 Hz Gain +0.85 dB Q 1.99
Filter  7: ON PK Fc  2111 Hz Gain -1.05 dB Q 0.56
Filter  8: ON PK Fc  2551 Hz Gain +1.45 dB Q 1.96
Filter  9: ON PK Fc  2459 Hz Gain -1.48 dB Q 1.99

View attachment 173714

Pierre, your work is commendable.
why not building a ranking of score/cost?
we need to nail the diminishing return point.

many thanks
Lorenzo

thewas · Dec 21, 2021

Inner Space said:
Yes, it mystifies me. People value accuracy through the electronic chain, and then positively celebrate distortion in the acoustic realm, in the form of added tones and delays that weren't present in the incoming signal. Weird.

The argument of that side is that stereo needs the (mainly side wall) reflections to give the envelopment which many like, which may not be even invalid as an argument as modern studios (which are the reference of the art product "stereo recording") are not so overdamped like in the past. Guess it depends also on the recording and music gerne.

Xyrium · Dec 23, 2021

Overall a fair performance, but the manufacturer has a few "screws loose".

jsrtheta · Dec 26, 2021

AlexanderM said:
Very happy to see they did reasonably well, as Monitor Audio is a speaker brand I may purchase someday! Thanks Amir!!

I've had a lot of Monitor Audios, and I've loved them all. Definitely give them a listen: You'll probably buy them on the spot.

pseudoid · Dec 26, 2021

Lorenzo74 said:
Pierre, your work is commendable.
(A)why not building a ranking of score/cost?
(B)we need to nail the diminishing return point.

(A)I think the quotient that was worked out by Car&Driver magazine (evaluating all cars on a level field) was called "Bang-for-the-Buck". They later had to tailor their 'system' into brackets, because you can't really fully compare as if all vehicles were apples, and there were no oranges (or 'lemons'). It would be quite difficult to use 'bracket' system, because some features for some hardware may merit more emphasis for some people. Additional tailoring had to be worked out where a panel of C&D staff would also score each car with 'subjective' ~~listening~~ driving tests. And yes, they also had to add categories to score each vehicle based on ride-comfort, thd, handling, imd, performance, crosstalk. Oh wait! ASR already does all of those (but never for eq).
(B)I think that you are referring to performance-versus-cost 3dB down point (the proverbial 'knee-of-the-curve'), and that all depends how many zeros we each have in our bank accounts.
Both of your wishes resolve down to the following >> DSOP = Don't Spend Other People's Money. We all do it but not sure if we should.

H-RYCAJ · Dec 30, 2021

How would Kef's q350 compare to something like this or Monitor audio's bronze/ silver 50/10 range?

A Surfer · Jan 4, 2022

I am also glad to see that the results were generally quite positive. I have Monitor Audio PL200 (first gen) and if it wasn't fantastically expensive I would have loved to send them for testing. Sadly as I live in Canada shipping also includes duties and customs. I can only imagine what would happen with a somewhat expensive speaker. Too bad. Maybe somebody in the US will be able to do so.

dgmen · Jan 17, 2022

The Soundstage Network hasn't posted their review of them yet, but they have posted their measurements of the new Silver 500 7G, the largest floorstander from the new Siver Series, and they look exceptional, some of the best I've seen at any price

thewas · Jan 19, 2022

Review and some measurements of the current 7th generation Monitor Audio Silver 50 7G, also not bad...

Monitor Audio Silver 50 7G Loudspeaker Lab Report

Lab Report Just like the larger Silver 500 '7G' [HFN Aug '21] the latest Silver 50's response is remarkably flat and even [see Graph 1, below] with a low ±1.7dB error from 200Hz-15kHz, tightening-up to ±1.0dB from 600Hz-9kHz. The –6dB (re 10kHz) HF response limit of 23.2kHz is defined by the...

www.hifinews.com

VintageFlanker · Jan 19, 2022

thewas said:
Review and some measurements of the current 7th generation Monitor Audio Silver 50 7G, also not bad...

Silver 500 7G also did a great job in both Hi-Fi News and @John Atkinson's measurements.

dgmen said:
The Soundstage Network hasn't posted their review of them yet, but they have posted their measurements of the new Silver 500 7G, the largest floorstander from the new Siver Series, and they look exceptional, some of the best I've seen at any price

SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - NRC Measurements: Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G Loudspeakers

www.soundstagenetwork.com

Nothing but State of The Art performance for passive floorstanders at this price.

A Surfer · Jan 20, 2022

This makes me feel hopeful that my PL200s would also measure well. I know that they sound fantastic.

thewas · Jan 20, 2022

VintageFlanker said:
Silver 500 7G also did a great job in both Hi-Fi News and @John Atkinson's measurements.

View attachment 180317

SoundStageNetwork.com | SoundStage.com - NRC Measurements: Monitor Audio Silver 500 7G Loudspeakers

www.soundstagenetwork.com

Nothing but State of The Art performance for passive floorstanders at this price.

Nice to see my guess confirmed